Conviction Divination and fortune-telling services Tver, Tver Oblast, Russia · 2020

Russia: three women convicted on nine counts of taking more than 16 million roubles from six people under the pretext of removing curses

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

a woman presenting as able to detect and remove a curse, to whom victims were directed by a stranger while in a distressed state, a second woman convicted of theft and of fraud in prior conspiracy on three of the counts, a third woman convicted on two counts committed in prior conspiracy, sentenced to a suspended term

Organization

Zavolzhsky District Court of Tver (Заволжский районный суд г. Твери)

Archive classification

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

The authority is the principal defendant's claimed capacity to detect and remove a porcha. The judgment records that the belief was not merely exploited but manufactured: the egg and the notebook page were staged so that the victim would perceive proof that a curse had been placed on her, and each successive demand — money, then gold, then groceries — was framed as a requirement of the removal rite. The court found that the defendant continued demanding purchases after realising the victim had no money or gold left, which is what distinguishes this from ordinary deception: the victim could not refuse without, in her own frame of reference, leaving the curse in place.

Curse or witchcraft threat
Spiritual healing or treatment
Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim

Scope decision

The defendants are not named. Russian courts anonymise published judgments as a matter of course, and this record identifies the case by number and court — case no. 1-164/2020, Zavolzhsky District Court of Tver — in accordance with CODEBOOK §10. No attempt has been made to identify any defendant from other sources; the victims are unnamed and appear as numbered complainants. Count 2 is a theft rather than a fraud and is recorded so the nine counts are not read as nine frauds. The custodial terms are the aggregates under ч.3 ст.69, not the sum of the individual counts; the third defendant's term is suspended and is not a period in custody. The figure of more than 16 million roubles is the sum of the per-count losses as the judgment itemises them; the court did not state a single aggregate, and the civil awards are lower than the recorded losses because two further civil claims were left without consideration. The judgment states the appellate route to the Tver Regional Court but records no appellate outcome, and none was found.

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2020-07-09 · conviction and sentence at first instance

Zavolzhsky District Court of Tver, Tver Oblast, Russia (Заволжский районный суд г. Твери). Three defendants, anonymised in the published judgment as ФИО13, ФИО14 and ФИО15, were convicted on nine counts committed between 1 January 2015 and 20 June 2019 against six victims. ФИО13 was convicted under ч.2 ст.159 (two counts), ч.3 ст.159 (two counts) and ч.4 ст.159 (three counts) of the Criminal Code and sentenced, by partial addition under ч.3 ст.69, to three years six months' deprivation of liberty in a general-regime correctional colony. ФИО14 was convicted under п.«в» ч.2 ст.158, ч.2 ст.159 (two counts) and ч.4 ст.159 and sentenced to three years three months in a general-regime colony. ФИО15 was convicted under ч.2 ст.159 and ч.4 ст.159 and sentenced to three years one month, suspended under ст.73 with a three-year probationary period and monthly registration. Recorded losses by victim were 90,750 roubles (victim 1); 118,000, 185,000 and 214,000 roubles (victim 2); 8,182,000 and 1,301,000 roubles (victim 3); 416,900 roubles (victim 4); 810,000 roubles (victim 5); and 5,422,183.20 roubles (victim 6). Civil damages were awarded against the defendants individually and, on the conspiracy counts, jointly and severally — including 6,682,000 roubles and a further 1,299,000 roubles jointly and severally in respect of victim 3, and 5,422,183.20 roubles jointly and severally in respect of victim 6.

Documented coercion mechanisms

staged proof of a curse: an egg brought by the victim broken into a bag and displayed as containing something dark resembling fur or a feather
a sheet torn from a notebook the victim had brought, on which the words «Вам сделана порча» and a cross appeared
removal of the curse conditioned first on all money the victim had, then on gold jewellery, then — once the court found she knew nothing further remained — on the victim buying food and other goods
roles divided in advance between participants on the counts charged as prior conspiracy

Cited record

Sources

court of record criminal judgment Приговор № 1-164/2020 от 9 июля 2020 г. по делу № 1-164/2020, Заволжский районный суд г. Твери (Тверская область) — Уголовное.: The full text of the criminal judgment, read directly from the Russian judgments database sudact.ru. The court records that on meeting the first victim «у ФИО13 возник прямой преступный умысел, направленный на хищение путем обмана и злоупотребления доверия имущества, принадлежащего ранее не знакомой Потерпевший №1 под предлогом снятия порчи», and describes the staged proof: the defendant «взяла у Потерпевший №1 принесенное куриное яйцо и ткань, положила все это в пакет и разбила у себя за спиной», after which the victim «увидела в нем что-то темное похожее на мех или перо, при этом ФИО13 пояснила, что на последней наложена сильная порча». For a later victim a notebook page produced the words «Вам сделана порча» together with a cross. The escalation is recorded as demands for «все денежные средства», then «все золотые изделия... для проведения обряда по снятию порчи», and then, «осознавая, что денежных средств и золотых изделий у Потерпевший №1 в наличии более не имеется, под предлогом проведения обрядов по снятию порчи и улучшения жизненной ситуации», requests that the victim buy «продукты питания и иные предметы». The operative part convicts all three defendants and itemises the custodial, suspended and civil outcomes.

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/8QL16bqpCSmO/ 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; all nine counts, the three sentences, the aggregation under ч.3 ст.69, the suspension under ст.73 and the itemised losses and civil awards taken verbatim from the judgment)

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