Conviction Divination and fortune-telling services Veliky Novgorod, Novgorod Oblast, Russia · 2019

Russia: a newly widowed cashier persuaded to drop her wedding rings and her husband's into a glass of water

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

a woman who approached a cashier at her till, drew out that she had recently been widowed, and offered to remove a curse and help her bear the loss

Organization

Novgorod District Court, Novgorod Oblast (Новгородский районный суд Новгородской области)

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 detect and lift a curse, and this judgment records it being aimed at a specific vulnerability. The bereavement was not incidental: the court found the defendant established it in conversation before making her offer, and then framed the offer as removing the curse and helping the victim bear the loss of her husband. The rite was then constructed around the objects that carried that loss — the victim wrote her dead husband's name on the paper pressed to her body, and was asked whose the wedding rings were before being told to put them in the water. What made the surrender unrefusable was not a threat but the promise attached to grief; the items that went into the glass were the ones the victim had most reason to protect.

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. 1-875/2019, Novgorod District Court — in accordance with CODEBOOK §10. The judgment's anonymisation is internally inconsistent, using ФИО2, ФИО3, ФИО4 and ФИО7 at points where the same person appears to be meant; no inference is drawn from that. The victim is identified in the judgment only by the initials И.Г. and is not named here; she is described as recently widowed because the court treats that fact as part of the offence, and the record does not state anything further about her husband or his death. This is a separate case from no. 1-1051/2019 before the same court, which the archive holds as a distinct record: the offence dates differ (24 April against 17 April 2019), the settings differ, and the sentences differ, this defendant having previous convictions and receiving a custodial term where the other received compulsory labour. The four-year term is the aggregate under ч.5 ст.69 with an earlier judgment of the Okulovsky District Court, whose subject matter is not stated here and about which no inference is drawn; the two years is what was imposed for this offence. The judgment states an appellate route but records no appellate outcome, and none was found.

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2019-09-15 · conviction and sentence at first instance

Novgorod District Court, Novgorod Oblast, Russia (Новгородский районный суд Новгородской области), sitting at Veliky Novgorod. The defendant, anonymised in the published judgment as ФИО2, was convicted of fraud causing significant damage to a citizen under ч.2 ст.159 of the Criminal Code for an offence committed on 24 April 2019 between 13:00 and 14:00. The court found she approached the victim at a till in a shop, established in conversation that the victim's husband had died and that she was a trusting person, and then told her falsely that a curse was upon her which she would remove, helping her bear the loss of her husband. Seeing the gold the victim was wearing, she led her by the hand into the second trading hall, said a cleansing rite was needed, had her write her own and her husband's names on a slip of paper which was applied to her body, and asked for a glass of water and a personal item. Having asked whose the two wedding rings on the victim's chain were and been told one was her husband's, she directed the victim to put the chain and both rings into the water, whispered and blew over it, lifted them out with scissors, and had the victim wrap them in a 100-rouble note and hold them in her fist while she whispered over it. The items taken — a chain, two wedding rings and earrings, itemised by weight and 585 standard — totalled 53,500 roubles. She was sentenced to two years' deprivation of liberty, aggregated under ч.5 ст.69 with a sentence imposed by the Okulovsky District Court of Novgorod Oblast on 5 June 2019 to a final term of four years in a general-regime correctional colony. The court recorded that she had previous convictions.

Documented coercion mechanisms

the approach made at the victim's workplace, where she was behind a till and could not leave
a recent bereavement established in conversation first, and then made the substance of the offer — the court found she said she would remove the curse «и поможет справиться с горем (потерей супруга)»
the victim led from one trading hall into the second, out of view of the entrance, for the rite
the victim made to write her own name and her dead husband's on a slip of paper, which was pressed against her body
the rite built around the wedding rings specifically: the defendant asked whose they were, learned one had been her husband's, and directed both into a glass of water
whispering and blowing over the water and over the victim's closed fist «создавая видимость проведения обряда», and a 100-rouble note used to wrap the gold before it was taken

Cited record

Sources

court of record criminal judgment Приговор № 1-875/2019 от 15 сентября 2019 г. по делу № 1-875/2019, Новгородский районный суд (Новгородская область) — Уголовное.: The full text of the criminal judgment, read directly from the Russian judgments database sudact.ru. The court records that the defendant «выяснила, что у И.Г. скончался супруг, а также, что И.Г. является доверчивым человеком», and then «сообщила И.Г. заведомо ложную, не соответствующую действительности информацию о том, что на И.Г. порча, которую она (ФИО2) снимет с И.Г. и поможет справиться с горем (потерей супруга)». She «взяла И.Г. за руку и отвела в торговый зал № 2... где сказала И.Г. что необходимо провести обряд очищения от порчи», asked her to bring «ручку и листок бумаги, на котором написать ее имя... и имя ее супруга», and applied the paper to her body. She then asked «кому принадлежат золотые обручальные кольца, висящие на золотой цепи», and on being told one was her husband's, «сказала И.Г. снять с себя золотую цепь, с находящимися на ней двумя золотыми обручальными кольцами и положить их в стакан с водой», over which she «что-то шептала и дула на воду, создавая видимость проведения обряда по снятию порчи», retrieving them «при помощи ножниц» and directing that they be wrapped in a banknote. The itemised loss is «на общую сумму 53500 рублей». The operative part imposes two years, aggregated under ч.5 ст.69 with the judgment of the Okulovsky District Court of 5 June 2019 to «4 лет лишения свободы с отбыванием наказания в исправительной колонии общего режима».

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/mIzp6ymmpLg/ 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 establishing of the bereavement, the rite with the named slip of paper and the glass of water, the questioning about the wedding rings, the itemised loss and the aggregation under ч.5 ст.69 taken verbatim from the judgment; distinctness from case 1-1051/2019 before the same court established by offence date, setting, prior convictions and sentence)

Named in this record? Request a correction, report a changed disposition, or submit a response.

Related record

Related cases · Divination and fortune-telling services

Browse all 80 Divination and fortune-telling services records

← Explore all cases