Bernie Madoff has dominated the news from the revelation of his Ponzi scheme for investment to his recent sentencing. We should remember he is not the first, nor will he be the last, of the villains who separate people from their money. In collecting the French Colonial Allegorical Group Type for over thirty years, I noted a small sub-group of about ten covers in my collection addressed to a Professor A. Victor Segno of Los Angeles, California. All are from the 1905 – 1915 period, and are from a variety of colonies including many from small villages. A typical example is shown below. It is a registered cover posted from Port Sandwich, New Hebrides, on October 27, 1907, and franked at the proper 50c rate with four Group Type stamps of New Caledonia. The New Hebrides islands were administered by New Caledonia at this time, and because of the tiny amount of mail coming from there the stamps of New Caledonia were used. From the postal history point of view, this cover is among the rarest in my collection of more than 2400 Group type covers.

Registered cover addressed to Professor Victor Segno

Who was Professor Segno and why do I have so many covers addressed to him? Recently a Google search struck pay-dirt. Professor Segno was a self-proclaimed mentalist who wrote a book entitled The Science of Mentalism. In the early 1900’s he formed the Segno Success Club as evidenced by the advertising card shown below.

For the sum of $5.00 per year he would regularly send his ‘good vibrations’ in your direction. These were guaranteed to improve your life in the areas of love, wealth, health, success, hope, ambition, happiness, etc. He even promised that his vibrations would promote hair growth! Five dollars was a considerable sum one hundred years ago. How successful was Professor Segno’s Success Club? According to the web it had over 12,000 members at its maximum. He employed a staff of more than two dozen to handle his correspondence and mailings, and was able to build a most impressive home/office in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles as seen below. Numerous club members sent in testimonials noting how successful his ‘good vibrations’ were in improving their lives in the noted areas.

The Los Angeles Times ran articles in the early twentieth century noting that Professor Segno was a fraud, yet they had little impact on his success. In addition to the New Hebrides cover, I have Segno covers from Madagascar, Reunion, Saint Pierre & Miquelon, Martinique and Guadeloupe. I have seen Segno covers from French Guiana, many of the South and Central American countries, and a few from Europe. How was he able to reach so many distant places in the world before radio, television and the web? I don’t know, but he was clearly successful at getting his message out.

In 1931 he was charged with fraud by the Federal Trade Commission. In addition to memberships in his very successful Success Club, he was also selling talismans called ‘lucky sheckles’. He had these made in the US from materials which he claimed were from 1891 BC and found in Palestine. These talismans combined with membership in his club would promote your overall well-being. No follow-up on these charges is shown in subsequent FTC annuals, and Professor Segno seems to have disappeared around this time.