Left: Gina Rita Russell. Right: Cash from a seizure in a federal conspiracy case. (Court documents)
Recalling the Gypsy curse in Stephen King’s novel “Thinner,” a self-professed psychic “raised by parents who quite literally taught her how to con people out of money under the guise of the Gypsy-Romani culture” learned her own fate this week in a $4 million conspiracy.
Gina Rita Russell, 35, was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years and five months in prison and ordered to pay more than $4.2 million in restitution, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced in a news release.
“Russell has proven herself to be a complete menace to society, a true danger to any person unfortunate enough to believe that she has actual psychic ability,” prosecutors said in their sentencing memo, arguing for a 151-month sentence or more than 12 ½ years behind bars. “Russell is a master manipulator who has shown no genuine remorse for her horrific criminal conduct, no respect for the rule of law, and no intention of behaving in a law-abiding manner.”
She was indicted in 2018 on a slew of charges, including conspiracy, extortion, fraud, money laundering, and tampering with a witness. Also indicted were Russell’s ex-common-law husband, his two brothers and the brothers’ parents, whom authorities called the “Russell-Evans-Kaslov family.” The others pleaded guilty and have been sentenced.
Prosecutors said they did it for expensive jewelry, cars, luxury vacations, and fine dining — a lifestyle they craved but did not earn.
“Russell and members of the Evans/Kaslov family have a penchant for the finer things in life but are averse to engaging in honest work, choosing to callously use people instead,” prosecutors said in their memo.
Court documents outline the $4 million caper and its origins, which date back to October 2009, when Russell met a woman in Manhattan and performed a psychic reading on her. Russell told the woman that bad things would happen to her or her family if money and items were not provided.
At one point, Russell had the woman beat herself to drive “the demons out which would make her feel better,” court documents said.
The woman initially started giving Russell money from her lawful jobs. But then Russell convinced her to lie to her father for more money for therapy, sleep studies, and university classes. In one phone call with the father, Russell had another relative impersonate an actual New York therapist, court documents said.
He gave his daughter enormous sums of money. When he eventually stopped paying, Russell came up with another plan, convincing the woman to earn money through sex work and advertising sensual massage services online.
Through one of her ads, she met a chief financial officer for a Washington, D.C., HVAC and plumbing construction company who eventually fell in love with her, even though he was married with children.
Russell instructed the woman to tell the CFO she owed money to purported mobsters in New York and that she’d be harmed if she didn’t repay a large debt.
The man “fell for the mafia con hook, line, and sinker,” prosecutors said in their sentencing memo.
From behind the scenes, Russell instructed the woman on what to tell him in regular and increasing demands for money as her co-conspirators arranged the logistics of collecting the ill-gotten gains.
The man ultimately went so far as to embezzle more than $4 million from his employer between January and March 2017, believing his paramour was “indebted to mobsters and that her safety was in jeopardy if she did not pay,” court documents said.
Russell had one of her co-conspirators impersonate a mobster on a phone call, threatening him and his family if he didn’t pay up, court documents said.
The man delivered cash and gold bars to locations in New York, including a hotel room, thinking the money was going to mobsters.
“In reality, all the funds the man embezzled and delivered to New York went to members of the Russell-Evans-Kaslov family,” authorities said in the news release.
The case came to light in 2017 when he did not report for work, and an investigation was launched when his employer noticed financial irregularities with the company’s account.
In its news release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office summarizes another twist in the case after Russell pleaded guilty to interference with interstate commerce by extortion in July 2019 and when she was originally scheduled to be sentenced in May 2024, after her five co-defendants were sentenced.
“However, prior to her sentencing, the government learned that Russell engaged in similar criminal conduct in Los Angeles, convincing a woman there that she had psychic powers, working with the woman to defraud the woman’s father out of money, and persuading the woman to raise funds through sex work,” the news release said. “The government brought Russell’s conduct to the attention of U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who promptly issued a warrant for her arrest.”
Russell was re-arrested on March 19 and has been in custody since.
In Russell’s sentencing memo, her lawyer wrote she has never attended school and is functionally illiterate. Her mother convinced her to continue the Gypsy-Romani traditions of providing psychic readings and obtaining money from unassuming clients, the memo said.
“Ms. Russell was raised by parents who quite literally taught her how to con people out of money under the guise of the Gypsy-Romani culture,” the sentencing memo said. “While this consideration does not excuse for Ms. Russell’s criminality, it certainly explains how Ms. Russell finds herself before this Court facing prison. There is no excuse for Ms. Russell’s conduct that serves as the basis for her rearrest. However, the Court should consider that Ms. Russell was unstable, depressed and suffering from opioid addiction.”
In their memo, prosecutors acknowledged her tough upbringing but said she is not nice to other people at all, despite being described by someone they called “another con artist” as having “the biggest heart in the world” and being “the most loving person.”
“On the contrary, Russell has shown a complete lack of care for her fellow human beings” and “every person who has been unlucky enough to cross paths with her for a psychic reading and bought into her web of lies,” prosecutors wrote. “There is no doubt that she is a danger to society.”
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