Conviction Divination and fortune-telling services Tomsk, Tomsk Oblast, Russia · 2018

Russia: money for church candles and a wedding ring for a 'church cleansing rite'

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

a woman who told a shop assistant she had the ability to help people resolve their problems, and offered to remove a curse and to help with difficulties in the victim's family life

Organization

Oktyabrsky District Court of Tomsk (Октябрьский районный суд г. Томска)

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The authority invoked here differs from most of the Russian set. The defendant did not claim a personal power to lift a curse by her own rite; she claimed access to an ecclesiastical one, asking for money to buy church candles and for the victim's wedding ring so that a church cleansing rite could be performed. That framing does work a folk claim cannot: the money and the ring appeared to be going to a church rather than to the person asking, which makes the handover feel less like payment and the request harder to refuse without seeming to refuse the Church itself. The exit — that she was going to the church now — was supplied by the same frame, and gave the victim a reason to stay behind.

Curse or witchcraft threat
Spiritual healing or treatment

Scope decision

The defendant is not named. Russian courts anonymise published judgments as a matter of course, and this record identifies the case by number and court — case no. 1-369/2018, Oktyabrsky District Court of Tomsk — in accordance with CODEBOOK §10. The victim appears as a single initial and is not named. NO CHURCH OR CLERGY IS IMPLICATED: the judgment records that the defendant invoked a church rite and church candles as her pretext, and contains no suggestion that any parish, priest or religious body was involved in or aware of the offence. The record is categorised with the divination-fraud pattern rather than under any Christian tradition for that reason, and the ecclesiastical framing is noted only because it is the specific claim the court found she made. The one-year-six-month term is suspended and is not a period in custody. The judgment states an appellate route but records no appellate outcome, and none was found.

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2018-07-02 · conviction and sentence at first instance

Oktyabrsky District Court of Tomsk, Tomsk Oblast, Russia (Октябрьский районный суд г. Томска). 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 for an offence committed during the day of 16 April 2018 in a retail kiosk within a shopping centre in Tomsk. The court found that she approached the victim, told her falsely that she possessed the ability to help people resolve various problems, and under the pretext of removing a curse and helping with difficulties in the victim's family life — with no intention of doing so — asked her for 1,000 roubles to buy church candles for a church cleansing rite, and then, continuing the same criminal intent, for her 585-standard gold wedding ring weighing 1.65 grams and worth 8,395 roubles for the same rite. Having received the money and the ring, she left the scene on the pretext of going to the church, the total loss being 9,395 roubles. She was sentenced to one year six months' deprivation of liberty, suspended under ст.73 with a three-year probationary period and obligations including monthly registration, notification of any change of residence and a requirement to be at home between 22:00 and 06:00.

Documented coercion mechanisms

an approach at the victim's workplace, a pet-supplies kiosk inside a shopping centre
a claimed general ability «помогать людям в решении разных проблем» offered before any specific diagnosis, so the victim supplied the problem herself
the removal coupled with help for difficulties in the victim's family life
the rite framed as an ecclesiastical one — «церковный обряд очищения» — with money requested to buy church candles, so that what was handed over appeared destined for a church rather than for the defendant
the victim's wedding ring requested as required for that rite
a departure explained as going to the church, which gave a reason for the defendant to leave with the items and for the victim not to follow

Cited record

Sources

court of record criminal judgment Приговор № 1-369/2018 от 2 июля 2018 г. по делу № 1-369/2018, Октябрьский районный суд г. Томска (Томская область) — Уголовное.: The full text of the criminal judgment, read directly from the Russian judgments database sudact.ru. The court records that the defendant «сообщила А. заведомо ложные сведения о том, что обладает способностью помогать людям в решении разных проблем, под предлогом снятия порчи и оказания помощи в решении проблем в семейной жизни, не намереваясь исполнить взятые на себя обязательства, попросила у А. денежные средства в сумме 1000 рублей на приобретение церковных свечей для осуществления церковного обряда очищения». It continues that she then «попросила у А. принадлежащее ей обручальное золотое кольцо 585 пробы весом 1,65 грамма, стоимостью 8 395 рублей, для осуществления церковного обряда очищения», and that «получив от А. вышеуказанные денежные средства и имущество, ФИО1, под предлогом похода в церковь, с места совершения преступления скрылась», the total loss being 9,395 roubles. The operative part convicts under ч.2 ст.159 and suspends the eighteen-month term under ст.73 with a three-year probationary period.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://sudact.ru/regular/doc/gIRvBdAMR4lW/ Corpus classification: court-of-record; evidentiary role: criminal-judgment.
Retrieval: 2026-07-29 · Preserved; Bound by Fear research cycle 2026-07-29 (Russian-language sweep; full judgment read via the browser pane; the workplace approach, the claimed general ability, the church-candle and church-rite framing, the wedding ring, the departure pretext, the total loss and the suspended term taken verbatim from the judgment; confirmed the judgment implicates no church, clergy or religious body)

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