31.10 Russian Paid Conmen $9,000 For
MOSCOW, October 31 (RIA Novosti) An elderly woman in northern Russia who sought supernatural help was duped into paying thousands of dollars just to listen to music on the phone, police said.
The woman saw an ad for psychic help in solving lifes problems on local television in her native Murmansk Region, the report said.
Conmen offered her the chance to listen to exoteric music on the phone that they said would solve her problems, local police said on its website.
The 60-year-old paid 282,000 rubles ($8,800) for the healing phone calls, the report said Wednesday.
When she eventually stopped paying, the psychics started calling her with warnings that giving up the supernatural music would lead to unspecified personal disaster.
The unnamed client then complained to police, who opened a case on fraud charges, punishable with up to a decade in prison. The police did not say if the fraudsters have been apprehended.
The report did not specify what problems the woman sought to resolve. Vesti.ru claimed in 2010 that the core client base of Russias psychic industry were women aged 25-55 looking for magic to bring success in love.
About 20 percent of Russians have sought help at least once in their lives from those claiming to possess supernatural powers, according to a nationwide poll by the independent Levada Center in 2010.
