Conviction Divination and fortune-telling services Kytmanovsky District, Altai Krai, Russia · 2020

Russia: a curse-removal fraud in rural Altai that took a dental bridge, a child's cross, three laying hens and fifteen eggs

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

a woman who told each of two victims, in conversation on a farmstead, that a curse was on her and that she could cure it

Organization

Kytmanovsky District Court, Altai Krai (Кытмановский районный суд Алтайского края)

Archive classification

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

The authority is the defendant's claimed capacity to identify and cure a porcha. The judgment records that in each case she initiated the encounter by announcing the diagnosis unprompted — telling the victim a curse was on her and that she could cure it — and that it was under the pretext of removing it («под предлогом снятия «порчи»») that the victim admitted her to the house and the property was taken. The claim to spiritual competence is what converted an ordinary conversation on a farmstead into access to the victim's home and possessions.

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. 1-25/2020, Kytmanovsky District Court, Altai Krai — in accordance with CODEBOOK §10. The victims appear as the initials D. and K. and are not named here. The two-year term is the aggregate under ч.2 ст.69 and is suspended: it is not a period in custody. The judgment records prior convictions and treats recidivism as an aggravating circumstance. Those convictions are recorded as the court states them and are not independently verified here; they include a 2011 conviction at the Krasnogorsky District Court of Altai Krai carrying ten years, from which she was paroled in March 2017, and a conviction of 5 March 2020 at the Biysk City Court under the same fraud article, which the Altai Regional Court modified on 30 April 2020 to a suspended term. That appellate modification concerns the separate Biysk case, not this one, and does not bear on the appellateStatus recorded here. A second, distinct curse-removal prosecution before this same court — case no. 1-11/2020, against a different defendant — is held as a separate record and the two are not double-counted. The judgment states an appellate route but records no appellate outcome, and none was found. Amounts are the values the court assigned, not market estimates.

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2020-05-25 · conviction and sentence at first instance

Kytmanovsky District Court, Altai Krai, Russia (Кытмановский районный суд Алтайского края). The defendant, anonymised in the published judgment as ФИО1, was convicted on two counts of fraud under ч.2 ст.159 and ч.1 ст.159 of the Criminal Code for offences committed between 23 and 31 August 2019 against two victims, D. and K. From D. she took a pendant-watch on a chain worth 1,764 roubles, a dental bridge of five gold crowns of 583 standard weighing 2.1 grams worth 5,102 roubles, a child's gold cross worth 4,136 roubles, three one-year-old laying hens worth 334 roubles each, a one-litre jar of jam, two two-litre jars of pickled cucumbers and tomatoes, fifteen eggs, and two bags — a total of 12,004 roubles, which the court found significant given the victim's material circumstances. From K. she took a gold wedding ring of 583 standard worth 4,318 roubles. She received one year eight months on the ч.2 count and eight months on the ч.1 count, aggregated by partial addition under ч.2 ст.69 to two years' deprivation of liberty, suspended under ст.73 with a three-year probationary period. Sentencing applied ч.2 ст.68 and ч.5 ст.62, and the court found recidivism as an aggravating circumstance on each count. She was ordered to register twice monthly and to repay, within one year, the outstanding 10,240 roubles to D. and 2,818 roubles to K. The pendant-watch had been recovered and was left with D.

Documented coercion mechanisms

an unsolicited diagnosis delivered in conversation: the defendant told each victim «на ней «порча», которую она может вылечить»
removal of the curse used as the pretext for taking property from inside the victim's home, to which each victim invited her
targeting of victims whose material circumstances made the loss significant — the court found the damage significant «в связи с ее материальным положением»

Cited record

Sources

court of record criminal judgment Приговор № 1-25/2020 от 25 мая 2020 г. по делу № 1-25/2020, Кытмановский районный суд (Алтайский край) — Уголовное.: The full text of the criminal judgment, read directly from the Russian judgments database sudact.ru. For each victim the court records that the defendant «пояснила Д., что на ней «порча», которую она может вылечить. Тем самым умышленно, путем обмана ввела Д. в заблуждение», and that the victim, «находясь под действием обмана, и, не подозревая об истинных преступных намерениях», invited her into the house, where «под предлогом снятия «порчи», путем обмана, введя в заблуждение» she took the listed property. The itemised list for the first victim includes «зубной мост из пяти золотых коронок 583 пробы», «детский золотой крестик», «три курицы-несушки», «1-литровую банку варенья, 2 двухлитровые банки с соленьями (огурцы, помидоры), яйца в количестве 15 штук», totalling «ущерб на общую сумму 12004 рубля, который для потерпевшей является значительным, в связи с ее материальным положением». The operative part convicts under ч.2 ст.159 and ч.1 ст.159, aggregates to two years under ч.2 ст.69, suspends under ст.73 with a three-year probationary period, and orders repayment of the outstanding sums to both victims.

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/tjWjvctiXnNn/ 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; both counts, the itemised property, the aggregation under ч.2 ст.69, the suspension under ст.73, the recidivism finding and the repayment orders taken verbatim from the judgment)

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