Conviction Divination and fortune-telling services Vetluzhsky District, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia · 2019

Russia: a shop assistant told she faced death, the shop bolted from inside and the curtains drawn, for a ring worth 2,400 roubles

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

a woman who told a shop assistant a curse had been placed on her and performed a rite claimed to remove it, a second woman, convicted with her, whose assigned role under the plan was to prevent anyone entering the shop

Organization

Vetluzhsky District Court, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast (Ветлужский районный суд Нижегородской 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 a porcha and to remove it by rite. What the judgment shows with unusual clarity is the rite functioning as a mechanism of control rather than merely of persuasion: the victim was made to supply the paper and matches, so that the apparent proof was produced with her own participation; the premises were sealed while it was performed; and the outcome announced was not a fee but a death sentence from which the defendants offered rescue. The ring was surrendered as a step in the cure — to be buried at night in a cemetery — not as a payment.

Curse or witchcraft threat
Spiritual healing or treatment

Scope decision

This judgment is only partially anonymised: one defendant is masked as ФИО1 while the other's full name appears in the operative part, and a third surname appears once in a passage on the measure of restraint. In accordance with CODEBOOK §10 this record names no one, and no attempt has been made to resolve the inconsistency or to identify anyone from other sources; the case is identified by number and court — case no. 1-10/2020 (also numbered 1-62/2019), Vetluzhsky District Court, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. The victim appears only as the initial З. and is not named. Both sentences are suspended and neither is a period in custody. The 2,400 roubles is the value the court assigned to the ring. The judgment states an appellate route but records no appellate outcome, and none was found.

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2020-02-05 · conviction and sentence at first instance

Vetluzhsky District Court, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia (Ветлужский районный суд Нижегородской области). Two defendants were convicted of fraud by a group acting in prior conspiracy under ч.2 ст.159 of the Criminal Code for an offence committed on 17 October 2019 in a grocery shop in the Vetluzhsky District. The court found they told the shop assistant a curse had been placed on her; that one asked her for a sheet of paper and a box of matches for the removal rite and ran the matches over the paper while the other bolted the shop from inside with a metal latch and drew the window curtains so that no one would enter; that after the rite they told her she faced death and that they were ready to help; and that the first defendant then asked for her gold ring, wrapped it in the sheet of paper, put it in her pocket and said it had to be buried in a cemetery at night. The ring was valued at 2,400 roubles. The first defendant received two years three months' deprivation of liberty, suspended under ст.73 with an eighteen-month probationary period, with obligations to register monthly, not to change residence and not to leave the district without notice; her house arrest from 19 October 2019 to 6 February 2020 and two days' detention in October 2019 were to count against the term at two days of house arrest for one day of imprisonment if the suspension were revoked. The second defendant received one year six months' deprivation of liberty, also suspended under ст.73.

Documented coercion mechanisms

the victim approached at her workplace, where she could not leave and was alone behind the counter
the shop bolted from the inside with a metal latch and the window curtains drawn by the second defendant, so that no one could enter or see in
a rite improvised from objects the victim was asked to supply — a sheet of paper and a box of matches — so that she participated in producing the apparent proof
a death warning delivered after the rite: the defendants told her «ей грозит смерть» and that they were ready to help her
the victim's gold ring taken on the stated basis that it had to be buried in a cemetery at night for the curse to be lifted

Cited record

Sources

court of record criminal judgment Приговор № 1-10/2020 1-62/2019 от 5 февраля 2020 г. по делу № 1-10/2020, Ветлужский районный суд (Нижегородская область) — Уголовное.: The full text of the criminal judgment, read directly from the Russian judgments database sudact.ru. The court records that the defendants, «действуя умышленно, из корыстных побуждений, группой лиц по предварительному сговору, путем обмана продавца магазина З., сказали, последней что на ней наложена порча», and that «под предлогом снятия порчи, путем проведения обряда» the first asked the victim for «лист бумаги и коробок спичек которые необходимы ей для ритуала снятия порчи». While she «стала проводить различные манипуляции, а именно водить спичками по листу бумаги», the second defendant, «действуя согласно разработанного плана и отведенной ей роли, для того, чтобы в помещение магазина никто не зашел, закрыла магазин изнутри на металлическую задвижку и задернула занавески на окне». The judgment then records that «проведя обряд» the defendants «сказали З.., о том, что ей грозит смерть, и они готовы помочь ей», and that the ring, once handed over, was wrapped in the paper and pocketed with the explanation «что для снятия порчи данное кольцо необходимо закопать ночью на кладбище», causing loss «на сумму- 2400 рублей». The operative part convicts both under ч.2 ст.159 and suspends both terms 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/FsjFlMKt45lR/ 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 conduct findings, the sealing of the premises, the death warning, both sentences and the house-arrest credit taken verbatim from the judgment; partial anonymisation noted and no party named)

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