Engineer Loses Savings to ‘Evil Spirits’ and Swindlers

A Woodland Hills engineer told police that he was swindled of his life savings of $10,000 on Thanksgiving Eve by two women who persuaded him that evil spirits had invaded his body and the women would spiritually “cleanse” his money.

Police are investigating the report, the latest in a string of similar crimes involving supposed curses and sleight-of-hand tricks.

Gaudencio Ruiz Soliven, 63, who recently immigrated to the United States from the Philippines, said he gave the money to the women in a Canoga Park house for use in a series of rituals that he was told would guarantee good health to him and his family, police said. He said they promised him all the money would be returned at the fourth and final ceremony.

The fourth ceremony never took place. When Soliven arrived Wednesday night, the two women had vanished.

“I am a man of science,” said Soliven, who worked as a mechanical and electrical engineer in the Philippines. “But I still believe in my heart some things that are superstitions.

“In my country there are people who can put the curse on someone that even the doctor cannot cure. I believe that. I guess that is why I believed these women. I did not want any harm to come to my family.”

Soliven said his troubles began Monday when a woman who appeared to be a Latina in her mid-50s rapped on the window of his car as he pulled to the curb on Vanowen Street. “She was very insistent,” Soliven said. “She was speaking in Spanish and it seemed urgent that she talk to me.”

Soliven, who does not understand Spanish, said the woman called herself Yolanda and led him to a house in the 19800 block of Vanowen. There a younger woman, identified as Gina, translated, telling him that Yolanda said she saw in his face “some terrible sickness and also sickness in my family that will come and cannot be cured.”

Soliven, who has a heart condition that has not responded to medical treatment, lives with his wife, daughter and son.

“She told me I would have to bring money,” Soliven said. “She would bless the money and it would be wiped on my body to get out the evil spirits.” The treatments, he was told, would cost him nothing.

“She said that she would give me lottery numbers and that if I win, I should give her a donation,” Soliven said.

He returned to the house later that day as instructed with $1,000 and a carton of eggs. One of the eggs was rubbed over his body and broken, revealing a worm inside, which the women told Soliven was a sign that evil spirits had invaded his body.

“That’s an old trick,” said Officer Vic Monroe of the West Valley Division of the LAPD. “It’s just sleight of hand. We’ve seen that one before.”

Yolanda “blessed” the $1,000, wrapped it in a handkerchief and rubbed it over Soliven’s chest and then handed it back to him. “She told me it was not enough for the spirit, that I have to bring more.”

She also told him that grave harm would come to him if he told anybody about the rituals.

On Tuesday, he returned with an additional $4,000, but was told to bring at least $10,000.

Soliven withdrew all his savings from his bank account, giving him a total of $9,500, and borrowed $500 from his daughter, he said.

On Wednesday, Yolanda sewed the money in a cloth bag and Soliven noticed that she switched it with another bag during the “ceremony,” he said. When he pointed this out Yolanda became angry and “told me that the switching was part of the ritual.

“She said ‘You have destroyed the power of the ritual.’ ” Soliven was told that he had to leave the money there and return Wednesday evening to restage the ritual. When he arrived, there was nobody there.

The swindle was similar to several that have been reported to the police in the San Fernando Valley in recent years. In July, a North Hollywood woman, Olga Cruz Diaz, was arrested and charged with bilking several Los Angeles women out of more than $200,000 in cash and valuables.

In 1986, a Northridge man reported he gave $58,000 to a fortune-teller to cure his “restlessness,” but a suspect in the swindle was never found.

A year later, a Sherman Oaks fortune-teller known as Sheena was sentenced to a year in jail after pleading no contest to a charge that she took $40,000 from four customers to remove curses.