The psychic, sex workers and the scam: ‘These grifters are unbelievable at their skill’
On a spring night last year, Gina Rita Russell stopped a woman on a Los Angeles street and told her they were destined to meet.
Russell told the woman she sensed something was bothering her and offered to help with a psychic reading, according to documents filed in federal court in March. She read the woman’s palm, charged her $300 and identified her frustration: The woman was a performer, but her music career was faltering.
The woman, identified only as “V1” in court documents, told the FBI that Russell said darkness and negativity followed her and prevented her from succeeding. Russell, she said, offered assistance.
Soon, she told the FBI, she was giving Russell tens of thousands of dollars to cleanse her negative energy. She said she purchased two cars for Russell and her family and turned over her debit card. Russell, she said, instructed the woman to lie to her father, a Canadian physician, to get him to wire her more than $180,000, the majority of which went to Russell.
Eventually, she told authorities, Russell persuaded her to engage in sex work and give Russell the overwhelming majority of the proceeds.
A Washington, D.C., prosecutor laid out the incredible tale in a March federal court filing asking a judge to issue a bench warrant for Russell’s arrest.
The criminal conduct, Assistant U.S. Atty. Kondi J. Kleinman wrote, was “eerily similar” to something Russell had admitted to that had unfolded across the country — a $4-million extortion scheme for which Russell was waiting to be sentenced. Last week, as mastermind, she received 10 years in prison.
Russell’s ex-common-law husband, Robert Evans; his brothers Tony John Evans and Corry Blue Evans; and the brothers’ parents, Archie Kaslov and Candy Evans, all of New York, were also convicted in the East Coast scheme, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia.
Russell’s attorney did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“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,” Kleinman wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
The earlier extortion scheme traced back to Russell meeting and performing a psychic reading for a young woman in New York City around October 2009, according to the government’s sentencing memorandum. The Times is identifying her by her initials H.N. because she is a victim of human trafficking. She was “going through a vulnerable time in her life” when she met Russell, Kleinman wrote.
If Russell didn’t receive money and other items, she told H.N. that bad things would happen to H.N. and her family, Kleinman wrote. At one point, Russell made H.N. beat herself to drive “the demons out which would make her feel better,” according to the sentencing memo.
H.N. eventually worked as a personal assistant to Russell and her family, booking their vacations, arranging their transportation and running their personal errands. She also bought the clan several vehicles, including a Bentley GT.
“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,” Kleinman wrote.
First, H.N. provided money to the family through her lawful jobs. Then, according to the prosecutor, Russell told H.N. to lie to her father and say she needed money for therapy, school and extensive sleep studies. Russell even arranged for her mother to impersonate a therapist while on a call with H.N. and her father in an attempt to get more money.
After giving H.N. enormous sums — a significant amount of which went to Russell and her family — her father eventually cut H.N. off. That’s when, Kleinman wrote, Russell pushed H.N. to earn money “by using sex to sell herself.”
H.N. advertised sensual massage services through internet websites, including Backpage.com, according to the sentencing memo. Through one of her ads, she met Daniel Zancan, a Maryland man who, despite being married, fell in love and proposed to H.N.
Prosecutors said that, working with Russell and her family, H.N. “spun tales of distress, physical danger, and financial woe” to get Zancan to give her money and valuables, which she turned over to the Russell-Evans-Kaslov family.
H.N. told Zancan she owed money to bad people and said her life was in danger. Zancan, then chief financial officer of R&R Mechanical, a heating, air-conditioning and plumbing construction company in the District of Columbia, started embezzling funds from his employer, first wiring H.N. $110,000, believing she “was indebted to mobsters and that her safety was in jeopardy if she did not pay.”
As part of the scheme, according to the U.S. attorney’s office, Russell had Tony John Evans impersonate a mobster during calls with Zancan. During one call, Evans asked whether he needed to remind Zancan where his children went to school. All told, Zancan embezzled more than $4 million from his employer between January and March 2017.
After the FBI interviewed H.N. in April 2017, she and Russell got married, “per the directions of Candy Evans for the purpose of creating a purported spousal privilege” that would keep H.N. from testifying against Russell in the future, according to the prosecutor.
H.N. was charged with a variety of crimes, including fraud, extortion and conspiracy. A spokesperson with the U.S. attorney’s office said there is “no indication” that the charges against H.N. have been dropped. She did not respond to requests for comment.
Zancan pleaded guilty in 2017 to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He is awaiting sentencing.
In April 2018, a federal grand jury indicted Russell, Robert Evans, Tony John Evans, Corry Blue Evans, Archie Kaslov and Candy Evans.
Tony John Evans, 35, and Robert Evans, 37, pleaded guilty to interference with interstate commerce by extortion and were sentenced to five years. Corry Blue Evans, 31, pleaded guilty to bank fraud and received a 41-month sentence. Kaslov, 57, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and got 30 months. Candy Evans, 55, pleaded guilty to tampering with a witness by corrupt persuasion or misleading conduct and was sentenced to one year and a day in prison.
“These grifters are unbelievable at their skill,” Zancan’s attorney, David Felsen, said in an interview with The Times. “If they get their hooks in you even just a little, you can’t get out.”
Russell pleaded guilty to interference with interstate commerce by extortion in July 2019. She was originally scheduled to be sentenced in May and was out on release in California. But before Russell could be sentenced, according to Kleinman, authorities learned she was carrying out a scheme — this time in L.A.
Kleinman laid out details of V1’s interview with the FBI in the March filing. V1 told the FBI she had met Russell — who introduced herself as “Lauren” — while walking home from an evening shift at a restaurant. Russell performed a palm reading, and the two exchanged numbers.
Soon, the women were meeting every few days. Russell didn’t ask for money at first, but focused on learning about the victim’s past so she “could determine the sources of negativity and blockages,” according to Kleinman.
Russell said she went into deep meditation and prayer on V1’s behalf and needed money to do the work and to purchase necessary “materials,” such as enormous candles that always had to remain lighted. Russell showed the victim a picture of a human-sized candle, which she said later fell and broke because of V1’s negativity. She required V1 to give her the money to replace the candle, according to the March filing.
The California woman said she obtained tens of thousands of dollars from family and friends to keep paying Russell. Then, the woman said, Russell told her to leave her serving jobs because it was “time to move on.”
Russell, she said, suggested that she do “sugar daddy” work, Kleinman wrote. After V1 agreed to perform sex work for money, she said, Russell told her she should charge clients $500 per hour, more for three hours and $1,500 for an overnight session. She said she was told that the money earned would go toward Russell’s spiritual work on her behalf.
“V1 believed the sex work could fast track the spiritual work and allow V1 to realize whatever end game existed (which V1 believed was full time work in the music industry and the ability to help others spiritually),” Kleinman wrote in the March filing.
According to the prosecutor, the victim wanted out of the scheme, but she “was worried that terminating it could negatively affect her and people in her life. The defendant made it seem like the spiritual work was critical to V1’s safety and the safety of her loved ones.”
Russell was arrested on March 19 and was later sentenced to 10 years and five months for the East Coast crime. The judge also ordered her, along with her co-conspirators, to pay $4.2 million in restitution.
Russell does not appear to have received additional charges tied to the California case.
“Given the facts of the case in D.C.,” Felsen said, “it does not surprise me that Ms. Russell continued to use deception, manipulation and fear in an effort to bilk people out of money.”
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