Russia: suspended sentence for large-scale fraud by a woman posing online as 'the healer Lyudmila', who charged a disabled woman 76,000 roubles for a rite to speed up her prosthetic leg

Proceedings

1. 2025-10-14 · conviction and sentence at first instance

   Serdobsk City Court, Penza Oblast, Russia (Сердобский городской суд Пензенской области). The defendant, anonymised in the published judgment as ФИО1, was convicted of fraud committed by deception on a large scale under part 3 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (ч.3 ст.159 УК РФ) and sentenced to three years' deprivation of liberty. Under article 73 the sentence was suspended with a probation period of two years and six months, subject to conditions not to change residence without notifying the penal inspectorate and to report for registration. Her pre-trial detention was replaced with an undertaking not to leave, and she was released from custody in the courtroom. The court found she had formed the intent in June 2022 and created a page on the VKontakte social network under the nickname 'Lyudmila', advertising services of divination, love spells and the removal of curses (гадание, привороты, снятие порчи) that she knew she would not perform, in order to attract and defraud an unlimited circle of people. In late January 2024 the victim, a resident of Serdobsk, contacted the page and was offered a 'magical rite' costing 76,000 roubles to speed up her receipt of a prosthetic leg, paid by transfer to the defendant's bank card on 6 February 2024. Judge S.V. Malashin presided.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• a fabricated healer persona created on VKontakte to attract an unlimited circle of victims
• the claim that a magical rite could hasten the delivery of a prosthetic limb
• escalating demands for payment once the victim had engaged