Russia: a 500-rouble fortune-telling offer in a shop escalated over three days into 424,000 roubles in cash, gold and household goods taken for curse-removal rites

Proceedings

1. 2020-07-15 · conviction and sentence at first instance

   Pavlovsky District Court, Voronezh Oblast, Russia (Павловский районный суд Воронежской области). The defendant, anonymised in the published judgment as ФИО1, was convicted of fraud by deception on a large scale under part 3 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and sentenced to one year six months' deprivation of liberty, suspended under article 73 with a probation period of one year six months and conditions of residence and monthly reporting. The court found that on 24 July 2019 she approached a woman she did not know in a shop and offered to tell her fortune for 500 roubles; the victim, whom the court described as susceptible to psychological influence and inclined to trust strangers, agreed. The defendant then told her a curse and the evil eye had been laid on her and sold her a pendant as a protective amulet, taking 2,000 roubles. The next day she telephoned to say she had 'read the book of her family' and discovered the curse lay on every member of it, which she could lift by special rites for payment; she also told the victim's mother a curse lay on her, and took a further 7,000 roubles. On 26 July she asked for the victim's gold and silver jewellery to be handed over for ritual 'cleansing'. The total taken was jewellery valued at 92,022 roubles 50 kopeks, 311,830 roubles in cash and goods worth 21,000 roubles.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• an unsolicited offer of a cheap fortune-telling as the opening approach
• the diagnosis of a curse (порча) and the evil eye (сглаз), followed by the sale of an amulet
• the claim to have 'read the book of her family', extending the curse to every member of the victim's household
• a demand that gold and silver be handed over so it could be 'cleansed' by ritual