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Gina Rita Russell is the sixth person to be sentenced in the elaborate scheme, in which she pretended to have psychic powers.
WASHINGTON — A 35-year-old woman was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison Thursday for her part in an extortion scheme that resulted in a Maryland man embezzling more than $4 million from his D.C. employer.
Gina Rita Russell, who is originally from New York, is the sixth person to be sentenced in the elaborate scheme, in which she pretended to have psychic powers.
According to the Department of Justice, the elaborate scheme actually began nearly 15 years ago. In October 2009, Russel met another woman in New York and convinced her Russell had psychic powers. During a psychic reading, she told the woman bad things would happen unless she raised large sums of money for Russell and her family.
To avoid the bad predictions, the woman began giving Russell money. The faux psychic then convinced the woman to start lying to her father and say she needed money for therapy, sleep studies, and college courses. The woman’s father eventually stopped giving her money and that is when Russell persuaded the woman to earn more money through sex work.
The woman then began advertising “sensual massage services” online. That is where she met a Maryland man, who fell in love with and proposed to the woman. However, the man was already married and had children when doing he proposed.
The DOJ says that Russell and the woman conspired with her ex’s family to prey on the Maryland man’s affection to extort more money and gold bars by telling him the woman he loved owed money to bad people and that her life was in danger.
Officials say due to the lies, the Maryland man embezzled more than $4 million from his employer between January and March of 2017.
One of the other people involved reportedly pretended to be a mobster while on the phone with the Maryland man and threatened his children, asking if he needed to remind the Maryland man where his children went to school.
The Maryland man took the embezzled funds and gold bars and delivered them to a New York drop-off location, including a hotel room, believing he was paying off mobsters. In reality, it was going to members of the Russell-Evans-Kaslov family.
Russell pleaded guilty to interference with interstate commerce by extortion in 2019. She was originally supposed to be sentenced in May 2024 but officials then learned this wasn’t her first run as a fake psychic. Before sentencing the government learned she had convinced a woman in Los Angeles that she was psychic and worked with her to defraud her father out of money before convincing the woman to make money through sex work. She was arrested again and has been in custody since March 19.
The other member of the family, Robert Evans, his brothers Tony John Evans and Corry Blue Evans, and the brothers’ parents, Archie Kaslov and Candy Evans, all pleaded guilty to various charges and have since been sentenced.
On Thursday, Russel was sentenced to 10 years and five months in prison. She will also be required to pay $4,217,542.86 in restitution and serve three years of supervised release.
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