Placeholder when loading item promotions
A wealthy, elderly widow was walking out of a Brazilian bank in January 2020 when a psychic approached with a horrific prophecy: her daughter would soon become ill and die.
To prove this, the fortune teller had the widow participate in a divination game using cowrie shells, and then took her to two other seers, who spoke of ridding her daughter of the “evil spirit” that would soon plague her, the Brazilian newspaper reported Correio Braziliense.
The widow Geneviève Boghici became skeptical when the psychics charged her the Brazilian equivalent of nearly $1 million for her divination services, and she turned to her daughter for advice, according to Correio Braziliense.
She told her mother to pay her immediately, the newspaper reported.
Over the next two weeks, the 82-year-old followed that advice, spending about $970,000 on “spiritual treatment,” at the start of what police in Brazil are claiming was a multimillion-dollar scam carried out by the very daughter was cited, whose lawyer trusted Boghici. Instead of honoring that trust, police said the daughter spent years orchestrating a group of alleged psychics to swindle about $140 million worth of high-quality art, jewelry and money from her mother.
On Wednesday, Rio de Janeiro police tasked with working on elder abuse cases arrested four members of the gang who exploited Boghici, police said in a statement. According to Portal, those arrested included the daughter, and they face charges of embezzlement, robbery, extortion, false imprisonment and criminal association.
In all, police believe at least six people were involved, meaning the investigation is continuing.
The scam began that day in January 2020 when 48-year-old Sabine Boghici allegedly gave inside information to the psychics she was sending to meet her mother, information they would use to gain her trust, reported Portal.
After getting their mother hooked, Sabine and her accomplices allegedly spent months maintaining the scam to rob the woman of money, jewelry and artwork. In part of the charade, Sabine and an accomplice posing as a psychic began “taking the artwork out of the [mother’s] House, and claimed the painting was cursed with something negative, with negative energy that needs to be prayed for,” Gilberto Ribeiro, a Rio de Janeiro police officer, told Portal.
Sabine then reportedly fired her mother’s domestic workers so her accomplices could enter the home and take the artwork unhindered, the Associated Press reported. When her mother at one point refused to continue making cash payments, Sabine allegedly took her cell phone, stopped feeding her, and threatened her with a knife, according to Correio Braziliense.
Over the course of the scam, the suspects are accused of stealing 16 works of art, including museum-quality paintings by Brazilian masters Tarsila do Amaral and Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, according to the AP. Three of the stolen works – ‘O Sono’, ‘Sol Poente’ and ‘Pont Neuf’ – were painted by Amaral, described by the Museum of Modern Art as a ‘daring modernist’ with a ‘characteristic style of sensual, vivid landscapes and landscapes’ everyday scenes.”
During a raid on the home of an alleged psychic, police found 11 paintings under a bed, Portal reported. At the bottom of the stack, they discovered “Sol Poente,” which investigators said was worth about $48.5 million.
According to the AP, police caught video of the moment an officer spotted the work.
“Wow! Look who’s there!” exclaimed the officer as she removed the bubble wrap from the painting. “Oh, little beauty. Glory!”
The painting is a lush depiction of unidentified mammals wading through blue water. Behind a green tree, a green hill, some green cacti. Behind everything, a bright, radiant sun ripples and dominates the background.
The multimillion-dollar masterpiece’s title – allegedly stolen and hidden, only to be unearthed at the unseemly end of an unraveling art plot – translates to ‘Setting Sun’.
María Luisa Paúl contributed to this report.