Russia: an elderly woman told her savings had to be 'cleansed' of a curse, and handed back advertising leaflets

Proceedings

1. 2020-05-14 · conviction and sentence at first instance

   Kovrov City Court, Vladimir Oblast, Russia (Ковровский городской суд Владимирской области). 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 she approached the victim, a stranger, outside a shop and told her a curse had been placed on her and that removing it required her money to be 'cleansed'; the victim collected 26,000 roubles from her home, withdrew a further 195,000 roubles from her account at a Sberbank branch, and met the defendant, who led her to an area among garages and took the 221,000 roubles, handing back advertising leaflets prepared in advance to imitate banknotes. She was sentenced to 10 months 15 days' deprivation of liberty in a colony-settlement, with time in custody counted at one day for two, and remained in custody pending the judgment taking effect. The judgment records voluntary compensation of the loss as a mitigating circumstance, along with support for two children without independent income and care for a father with a group 2 disability. The prosecutor withdrew from the charge the investigation's characterisation of the victim as defenceless and helpless by reason of advanced age, on the ground that the case file contained no evidence supporting it; the court nonetheless treated the victim's advanced age as raising the offence's degree of public danger when assessing sentence.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• an unsolicited diagnosis delivered to a stranger in the street: the defendant told the victim «на ней «наложена порча»»
• the removal rite defined so that it required the victim's money itself — the cash had to be «очистить» (cleansed), so all of it had to be handed over
• the victim directed home and then to a bank branch to withdraw her savings, and finally to a location among garages away from view
• advertising leaflets prepared in advance and substituted for the banknotes, so the loss was not apparent at the moment of handover