‘Psychic’ and family of extortionists scammed man out of US$4.2 million

Gina Russell in a surveillance image from a California bank where she was allegedly victimising another person. Photo / US District Court for the District of Columbia

Gina Russell’s act as a psychic was so convincing that she convinced another woman bad things would happen to her and her family - unless she sent Russell large amounts of money, prosecutors said. When the woman struggled to come up with the cash, prosecutors alleged, Russell persuaded her to take up sex work.

The deception, prosecutors allege, was part of an elaborate extortion scheme in which Russell and her family netted millions of dollars - spending it on jewellery, vacations and a Rolls-Royce Phantom - while leaving a trail of people in financial and legal ruin. Russell was sentenced last week in federal court in DC to 10 years in prison, after prosecutors asserted she was the “mastermind” of the scheme and deserved the harshest penalty.

Russell had married into the Evans family of New York City, headed by matriarch Candy Evans, who Russell’s lawyer said was the actual mastermind of the extortion plot. Evans’ lawyer denied that. Evans, her husband and three sons also pleaded guilty in the scheme. Their lawyers declined to comment or did not return requests for comment.

The plot blossomed financially for Russell and the Evans family when the woman they were manipulating developed a client who had access to millions of dollars: a chief financial officer for a DC mechanical contractor. In short order, the man stole more than US$4.2 million from the company he worked for, thinking he was doing it to help his lover in distress. Meanwhile, the Evans family was posting photos online of themselves flaunting the huge wads of cash that the man provided, court records show.

The scheme collapsed in 2017, when the woman and her client were first charged, followed by the arrests of the Evans family members: Candy Evans; her sons Tony John Evans, Robert Evans and Corry Blue Evans; her husband, Archie Kaslov; and her daughter-in-law, Russell, who prosecutors allege had directly manipulated the victims since 2009. All pleaded guilty starting in 2018, but prosecutors allege in court filings that the scams kept coming.

Last year, while awaiting sentencing, prosecutors allege Russell, 35, persuaded another woman in Los Angeles to work as a prostitute and give about $180,000 to her. Candy Evans and her husband managed to accrue $925,000 in income from “friends” during the three years between their pleas and sentencings, court records indicate. None of the three received additional charges in these incidents.

Russell pleaded guilty in 2019, but her sentencing was delayed until Thursday. Her attorney, Brandi Harden, said in court filings that Russell had been raised in a family that never sent her to school and forced her to marry her third cousin, Robert Evans, at 16, after which she had four children by age 24. She said Russell could not read or write.

Prosecutors in legal motions described Russell as “a dangerous woman” who is “dedicated to exploiting others” by posing as a psychic and declaring she had special intuitive powers. Harden did not return messages seeking comment.

Three of the six family members are behind bars, two have finished their sentences, and Candy Evans has postponed her surrender date for more than two years because of medical issues, court records show. The government described her case as “a manipulative and sinister extortion, fraud, and money laundering scheme”, which was “motivated by pure greed”.

“Candy Evans was not the mastermind,” her attorney, Carmen Hernandez, said in an email, pointing to Russell’s similar alleged activities in Los Angeles. Hernandez noted that Evans was not charged in the original extortion scheme, “only with obstruction of justice after the others had engaged in the scheme”.

The scam had its beginnings in October 2009, when Russell met a 25-year-old New York woman named Hollie Nadel and performed a reading. “Russell knew full well that she did not have psychic powers,” Assistant US Attorney Kondi J. Kleinman wrote in her sentencing memo, “but convinced [the victim] that she did.”

The relationship between Russell and Nadel began as a positive one, with Russell providing emotional support, Kleinman wrote, but soon, Russell said bad things would happen to Nadel or her family if she didn’t provide money - a turn that took Nadel down a path that would ultimately end in criminal charges for herself and a man whom prosecutors allege she conned.

Prosecutors said Nadel provided Russell and the Evans family with “large amounts of money,” first from the woman’s jobs, then by lying to her father. The amount taken from the father was not disclosed. Nadel and her attorney did not return requests for comment.

When Nadel’s father stopped providing the money passed to Russell and her family, Russell “encouraged [the victim] to earn more money by using sex to sell herself”, Kleinman wrote. Nadel began to advertise sensual massage services online. In late 2016, in addition to funds raised from “sensual massages and sex work”, Russell encouraged her to extract more from clients by falsely claiming she was in danger of harm unless she repaid a large debt, the sentencing memo states.

Around then, according to court filings, Nadel met Daniel Zancan, then chief financial officer of R&R Mechanical, a D.C. company specialising in HVAC and plumbing construction. Prosecutors said Zancan, though married, fell in love with Nadel. Nadel “spun tales of distress, physical danger, and financial woe” invented by Russell or her family, Kleinman wrote, to get Zancan “to provide money and valuables to her [Nadel], which she then provided to” Russell and the Evans family.

Nadel convinced Zancan that mysterious people in New York would sometimes hold her against her will for days at a time over a debt, prosecutors said in court filings. Russell would instruct Nadel on what to tell Zancan as the demands for money increased, while the Evans men and Kaslov handled the logistics of collecting. Tony John Evans would pretend to be a mobster during phone calls with Zancan, prosecutors said.

Over the next few months, Zancan repeatedly withdrew money from the accounts of his employer, court records show: $110,000 on January 11, 2017; $350,000 on January 19. On January 27, he took out $500,000 after Tony Evans told Zancan they knew where his children went to school, Kleinman wrote. The Evanses also followed Zancan’s car and sent him a photo of it, to convince him he was being watched by the mafia, prosecutors said. Zancan and R&R did not respond to requests for comment.

The payment demands kept coming from Russell and the Evans family, with Zancan anxious to cooperate because he feared for both Nadel and his family, according to court records. The Evanses posted photos of themselves at Mardi Gras in New Orleans while Zancan was scrambling to secure $1.6 million in gold bars for another demand, prosecutors said. He delivered them in luggage to a Manhattan hotel, where Tony Evans retrieved them, the records state.

In late March 2017, Zancan drove toward Texas, hoping to pick up phony identification that would enable him and Nadel to escape from their tormentors, prosecutors said. But when Zancan didn’t show up for work, R&R noticed “financial irregularities” and notified police, court records state.

The FBI took the case and interviewed Nadel. After that, Nadel and Russell went to New York city hall in April 2017 and got married, court records show, although Russell was already married to Robert Evans. This was done at Candy Evans’ direction, Kleinman wrote, to create a “spousal privilege that would keep Nadel from testifying against Russell in the future”. Then, Russell and Nadel signed a handwritten confession that implicated only them and falsely exonerated other members of the Evans family - also at Candy Evans’s direction, court records show.

Nadel and Zancan were charged in 2017, and Russell and the Evans family were charged in 2018. All six members of the family pleaded guilty. Tony Evans and Robert Evans received five-year sentences; Corry Blue Evans received a 3½-year sentence; Kaslov received a 2½-year sentence, and Candy Evans was given a year and a day to serve. The family members were jointly ordered to pay $4.2 million restitution to R&R.

Prosecutors said Russell “was the mastermind of the scheme and warrants the most serious sentence”. Kleinman said Senior US District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who handled the case for the first four years, “described it as one of the worst nonviolent crime cases that he has seen in all his years on the bench”. The cases were handed off to US District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan in 2022, and she sentenced Russell to 125 months.

Zancan pleaded guilty in November 2017 to two counts of fraud, but his sentencing was stayed pending the prosecution of Russell and the Evans family, court records show. It is now scheduled for September. In 2019, Zancan submitted a victim-impact letter in Tony Evans’s case and said Evans and his co-conspirators “destroyed and decimated my life and that of my family as well. … I’ve been humiliated learning the facts of this case and that this all was an elaborate hoax designed to extract as much money as possible”.

Nadel, charged with fraud, extortion, witness tampering and conspiracy, has not entered a plea, and her case has not had a hearing since 2019. She has become an advocate for survivors of human trafficking and has lobbied recently for anti-trafficking legislation in Congress.