More than 140 million dollars in works of art: the scam of a woman to her mother in Rio de Janeiro

A woman was arrested this Wednesday by the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro accused of a monumental scam against her mother.

Between transfers, jewelry and paintings, she and her gang stole 725 million reais (more than 142 million dollars).

The story is full of bizarre details that start in January 2020.

Geneviève Boghici, widow of an important collector and art dealer, Jean Boghici, is leaving a banking agency in the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of Copacabana when a seer approaches her.

The woman tells him that her daughter Sabine is sick and that she will die shortly if she does not undergo some "spiritual work".

He escorts her to the door of her apartment, where she throws shells that fatally confirm her tragedy.

The 82-year-old victim, who was already adept at mystical rituals and knew that her daughter had had psychological problems in the past, is finally convinced to make the payment to save her daughter.

This is how the story begins;

In just two weeks, she transferred five million reais (more than $980,000).

Days later, the woman began to mistrust and stopped making the transfers, after her daughter began to isolate her more and more from friends and acquaintances.

She prevented him from using the phone and also fired the domestic workers who frequented the house.

The excuse for so much isolation was covid-19.

But there was no problem for her and her cronies to enter the house for the most valuable objects.

Several seers entered and took them away with the unanswerable argument that they were "cursed" and had to be "prayed".

The widow, increasingly aware of the whole scam, tried to resist, but Sabine threatened to kill her.

According to the police, she even denied him food and put a knife to her neck.

Police officers hold the painting 'Sol poente', by Brazilian painter Tarsila do Amaral, after recovering it. Rio de Janeiro Civil Police (EFE/Rio de Janeiro Civil Police)

The victim told the police that she was sure that her daughter had a relationship with one of the alleged seers, Rosa Stanesco Nicolau, relatively popular in Rio as 'Mãe Valéria de Oxossi, already known to the police for various scams.

As of September 2020, in the face of coercion and threats, the old woman made another 38 bank transfers to the gang led by her daughter.

In total, 16 paintings and sculptures were stolen.

They were all sold to art galleries.

Two of those works, by the modernists Vicente do Rego Monteiro and Victor Brecheret, went to the collection of the Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires (Malba) and have not yet been recovered.

The São Paulo gallery owner who mediated said he was not suspicious because he had known the family for a long time and the seller was the daughter of the deceased collector.

It is not the first time that these works of art suffer some other adventure.

In 2012, part of Boghici's collection went up in flames after a fire in his Copacabana apartment destroyed such classics as

Di Cavalcanti's

.

The work

, which Tarsila do Amaral painted in 1929, is one of the most valuable in the collection (it is valued at 250 million reais, more than 49 million dollars) and survived that fire, but not the excessive ambition of the daughter Sabine.

The painting was stolen and appeared this Wednesday, hidden under a bed in one of the houses visited by the police.

In the police operation, in addition to Sabine, three other people were arrested, including the supposed seer, who, to give the last surreal touch to the story, tried unsuccessfully to escape through a window.

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