Russia: a chicken egg, gold earrings and 2,000 roubles, borrowed for a rite and never returned

Proceedings

1. 2017-10-02 · conviction and sentence at first instance

   Sverdlovsky District Court of Krasnoyarsk, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia (Свердловский районный суд г. Красноярска). The defendant, anonymised in the published judgment as ФИО1, was convicted of fraud causing significant damage to a citizen under ч.2 ст.159 of the Criminal Code. The court found that between 13:00 and 13:30 she became acquainted with a woman she did not know and, under the pretext of removing a curse, asked her for a chicken egg, her gold earrings and 2,000 roubles, promising to return them after a time; and that, having no intention of returning them, she left with the earrings, worth 10,000 roubles, and the cash, causing a loss of 12,000 roubles. The loss was compensated in full. She was sentenced to one year six months' deprivation of liberty, suspended under ст.73 with an eighteen-month probationary period and obligations to register with the penal inspectorate, to report on a set schedule and not to change her residence without approval.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• an acquaintance struck up on the spot with someone she did not know, the whole offence occupying about thirty minutes
• a chicken egg requested alongside the valuables, the egg being the standard prop of this rite across the Russian judgments and lending the request an air of ritual necessity rather than acquisitiveness
• the earrings and money asked for with an express promise to return them «через некоторое время», which the court found she never intended to honour