Conviction Divination and fortune-telling services Proletarsky District, Tver, Tver Oblast, Russia · 2018

Russia: a bogus clothing order, a card reading, and a tailoring shop locked from the inside

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

a woman who entered a tailoring shop as a customer, offered the proprietor a card reading, and then announced a curse and evil eye on her family

Organization

Proletarsky District Court of Tver (Пролетарский районный суд г. Твери)

Archive classification

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

The authority is the claimed capacity to read cards and to lift an evil eye and a curse. Two features distinguish this judgment from the street approaches elsewhere in the Russian set. The approach was commercial: the defendant arrived as a customer commissioning work, which gave her a legitimate reason to be present and time to establish trust before any claim was made. And the securing of the premises was performed by the victim herself — she was asked to lock her own shop so the reading would not be interrupted, and she did. The diagnosis then arrived inside a locked room, directed not at her but at her family, and the return visit the next day recast the whole thing as treatment in progress rather than a transaction completed.

Curse or witchcraft threat
Spiritual healing or treatment
Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim

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. 1-167/2018, Proletarsky District Court of Tver — in accordance with CODEBOOK §10. The victim is unnamed and appears as a masked designation, as do details of her dependants. This is a separate case from the two Zavolzhsky District Court judgments the archive holds from the same city; the courts, years, defendants and methods differ and the three are not double-counted. The 151,000 roubles is the total the court found across both visits; the individual figures legible in the published text do not sum to it, further items being described in passages that are redacted. The victim's stated monthly income of 20,000 roubles is recorded because the court used it to establish the significant-damage element, not as a characterisation of her circumstances beyond that. The eighteen-month term is suspended and is not a period in custody, and the loss was voluntarily compensated before sentence. The judgment states an appellate route but records no appellate outcome, and none was found.

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2018-10-15 · conviction and sentence at first instance

Proletarsky District Court of Tver, Tver Oblast, Russia (Пролетарский районный суд г. Твери). The defendant, anonymised in the published judgment as ФИО3, was convicted of fraud by deception and abuse of trust causing significant damage to a citizen under ч.2 ст.159 of the Criminal Code. The court found that on 14 June 2018 at about 12:00 she entered a clothing alteration and repair shop, approached the proprietor about having a leather jacket and a leather skirt made, and in the course of that conversation offered to tell her fortune, asking her to lock the shop door from the inside so that they would not be disturbed; that the victim did so; that she then produced fortune-telling cards and, during the reading, told the victim an evil eye and a curse lay on her family; that she began rites to remove them and, under the pretext of that removal, obtained the victim's gold ring worth 1,000 roubles; and that she said she would return on 15 June for a further ritual, which she did between 15:00 and 16:00, obtaining further jewellery. The total loss was 151,000 roubles. The court held the significant-damage element established on the basis that the victim's monthly income was 20,000 roubles and she had dependants. Voluntary compensation of both pecuniary and non-pecuniary loss was recorded in mitigation, confirmed by receipts and by the victim in court, and no civil claim was brought. She was sentenced to one year six months' deprivation of liberty, suspended under ст.73 with an eighteen-month probationary period.

Documented coercion mechanisms

an approach disguised as ordinary business — an order placed for a leather jacket and a leather skirt — which established a reason to be there and a rapport before anything was claimed
the victim asked to lock the shop door from the inside «для того, чтобы им никто не мешал», so that she sealed the premises herself
fortune-telling cards produced and the diagnosis delivered mid-reading: that an evil eye and a curse lay on the victim's family
rites begun immediately on that basis, and the victim's gold requested as part of them
a return visit the following day announced as a second ritual, which converted a single encounter into a course of treatment

Cited record

Sources

court of record criminal judgment Приговор № 1-167/2018 от 15 октября 2018 г. по делу № 1-167/2018, Пролетарский районный суд г. Твери (Тверская область) — Уголовное.: The full text of the criminal judgment, read directly from the Russian judgments database sudact.ru. The court records that the defendant approached the victim «с целью пошива кожаной куртки... а также юбки из материала кожи для себя», and then «обманула потерпевшую, предложив погадать ФИО1 и запереть изнутри дверь помещения ателье, для того, чтобы им никто не мешал. ФИО1, поверив ФИО3, закрыла дверь помещения изнутри». It continues: «После чего ФИО3 достала гадальные карты и в процессе гадания обманула ФИО1, сказав, что на их семье лежит сглаз, порча. Продолжая свои преступные действия, ФИО3 продолжила вводить ФИО1 в заблуждение, начав проводить ритуалы по снятию сглаза и порчи». The victim «передала принадлежащее ей золотое кольцо, стоимостью 1 000 рублей», after which the defendant «сообщила ФИО1, что придет 15.06.2018 года для повторного проведения ритуала» and did so. The total is recorded as «значительный материальный ущерб на общую сумму 151 000 рублей», the significant-damage element resting on the finding that «ежемесячный доход потерпевшей ФИО1 составляет 20 000 рублей». The operative part convicts under ч.2 ст.159 and suspends the eighteen-month term under ст.73.

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/LAY90bd7BCZh/ 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 commercial approach, the request that the victim lock her own shop, the card reading and diagnosis, the return visit, the total loss, the income finding underpinning the significant-damage element and the suspended term taken verbatim from the judgment; distinctness from the two Zavolzhsky District Court Tver records confirmed by court, year and method)

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