'Witchcraft' pair arrested in Cyprus

[icymist]

October 6, 2006


NICOSIA -- Two women have been arrested in Cyprus on suspicion of sorcery and fraud after allegedly swindling gullible victims by convincing them they were sick and cursed, local media said Friday.

In one case, a Greek Cypriot woman was arrested after bilking C£496,000 ($1 million) from a bank clerk between May 2005 and July 2006 after convincing the woman that she was cursed and suffering from reproductive cancer, the English-language Cyprus Mail reported.

The newspaper did not name the bank or say where the clerk got the money.

"My God, how can you still be alive?" Vera Georgiou, 39, allegedly asked her unnamed victim after turning over a succession of tarot cards that revealed pictures of devils and demons.

Georgiou "told her that a foreign woman had put a curse on somebody close to her and that the curse had spread to her and her two children," police investigator Iraklis Pitsillis told the newspaper. "The suspect then touched the woman's genital area and told her that she would have cancer in that area and then die."
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