Police in Austria have issued a European arrest warrant for a lady they imagine posed as a shaman to defraud victims out of enormous sums of cash.
Police stated they found money, jewelry and gold value over 10m euros (£8.3 million) on the girl’s home in Mödling, close to Vienna.
They stated the suspect is a 44-year-old Austrian citizen named solely as Mariana M, who glided by the identify Amela.
Her 29 year-old son has been arrested and is in custody within the city of Wiener Neustadt.
Police say they imagine Mariana M could have defrauded folks in Austria, Germany and Switzerland.
Police say Mariana M advised one sufferer {that a} “shut relative had been cursed and that she foresaw her demise. To be able to break this alleged curse, the accused then demanded 730,000 euros for ‘cleaning rituals'”.
They stated after the sufferer had handed over the cash to the accused in a number of instalments, the suspect broke off contact. One other girl then knowledgeable the sufferer by phone that the “shaman” had fallen right into a extreme coma because of the ritual.
Director of Police in Decrease Austria, Franz Popp, stated: “In a world during which many individuals are in search of solutions to the important questions of life, profiteers have established themselves who declare to own supernatural powers.”
“They exploit the belief of their victims who’re in emotional or monetary misery and are in search of assist and help,” he added.
Police have appealed to every other victims to contact the Decrease Austrian State Workplace of Prison Investigation.