7/3/05 Watch out for fake Brazilian spiritualists
Watch out for fake Brazilian spiritualists
July 02 2005 at 05:38PM
By Michael Schmidt
Gangs of Brazilians posing as wealthy relatives of spiritualists have allegedly been preying on the Portuguese-speaking communities in Johannesburg and Durban.
The gangs strip them of hundreds of thousands of rands in cash and jewellery, before hopping a flight back to São Paulo.
Police inspector Dennis Adriao confirmed that a case had been opened at the Sandton Saps after a well-dressed Brazilian "family" allegedly made off with close to R250 000 in money and jewellery, including an elderly couple's wedding rings and the nest egg a mother had saved up for her daughter's education.
'I was suspicious'
The elderly couple lost most of their savings and were too distressed to speak about their ordeal. A Portuguese-English interpreter who acted as the Brazilians' driver said she had uncovered another three "families" operating in the country.
The interpreter, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals, said that on May 16 she was called by the manager of a café in the Bruma Lake area that is frequented by Portuguese-speakers.
There the interpreter met a smartly tailored couple in their twenties going by the names of Renato and Rosina Caldeira, and travelling with their "children" - a girl of 8 and a boy named Cristiano, or Cristie .
The couple said they were relocating Renato's clothing manufacturing business to Johannesburg from São Paulo, and had applied for residency via the Brazilian Embassy, but spoke no English and needed help finding an apartment.
The interpreter helped them choose a luxury apartment in Sandhurst Gardens, Sandton. The selected apartment belongs to a woman who wanted to be known as Liz.
It is a polytheistic religion
Liz said she had charged the Caldeiras R9 000 a month in rent and they had agreed to give her a breakage deposit of two months' rent on June 15, when they said Renato's parents would come out from Brazil to establish the business. The couple hired a Portuguese-speaking maid, and agreed to pay her R1 800 a month.
The interpreter then drove Renato around: supposedly he was looking for business premises and was keen on setting up shop in Sandton City.
Meanwhile, he and Rosina took out adverts in local Portuguese-community newspapers, marketing her services as a spiritualist and fortune-teller specialising in solving love and business problems and in reading Tarot.
They gave her the name "Professor Wilma Soares".
Another Johannesburg woman, who was experiencing problems with her marriage and whose daughter was troubled by bad dreams, consulted "Wilma" after growing suspicious of the motives of another Brazilian "spiritualist", a blonde named Patricia.
Patricia told the woman that her daughter had been cursed by someone who cast a spell using a corpse in a graveyard, but then the fortune-teller demanded too much money to heal her.
On June 3 the mother went to Sandhurst Gardens where she met Wilma, who impressed her as "well dressed, pretty, about 28 years old. She read cards and seashells, which they do in Brazil."
The mother identified Wilma's practice as Kardecism, a form of spiritualism popular in Brazil. She said she had been amazed to find that Wilma also told her she was experiencing problems with her daughter because black magic had been performed on a corpse "and that soul had entered my daughter's body.
"On June 8 Wilma said she needed a large amount of money to pray over. I was suspicious, but she asked me how much my daughter was worth."
The apparition of a skull in a towel that had been handled by Wilma convinced the mother her daughter was in danger, so she "withdrew R60 000 from the fund I had kept untouched for my daughter's education".
She later added another R20 000 and, as per Wilma's instructions, four bath towels worth R1 200 to the cache that Wilma had prayed over.
Wilma then let her take back the money, apparently in order to establish trust, but on the weekend of June 11 to 12 she asked for it again to pray over it.
The interpreter said she later discovered that the Caldeiras caught a flight back to Brazil on June 12. The phone number and address they gave in S‹o Paulo were fake.
The Caldeiras allegedly took with them the mother's R80 000, cash and jewellery from the elderly couple, R76 000 from a woman who runs a trucking company and R90 000 in cash and jewellery from a Sandton woman.
They also failed to pay the maid, and left the Sandton apartment in ruins.
The mother opened a charge against the Caldeiras, alerting the Brazilian Embassy in South Africa, and the South African embassy in Brazil. "I know I'm not going to get my money back, but I want justice served and to stop them. "
The interpreter, who was still owed R5 000 by the Caldeiras, was aware of at least one other Brazilian "family" operating in Joburg, and one in Durban.
Essentially, there are two main types of espiritismo in Brazil:
Kardecism: a quasi-Christian spiritualist "practical science" founded by Allan Kardec, the pseudonym of a "prior incarnation" of French polymath Hyppolite Rivail, in 1857 with the first of a series of publications, the most influential of which was The Gospel according to Spiritism. Kardecism, as it became known, is based on the belief that Christ is spirit guide for all humanity, and is marked by prayer and charity work. It experienced a brief prominence among the smart set in the late 1800s, establishing strongholds in Brazil, where it has some two million adherents today, and in the Philippines.
Candomble: a syncretic Afro-American religion of Brazil, similar to Cuban Santeria and Haitian Vodoun, that is an amalgam of Catholicism, Native American animism and African tribal beliefs brought by slaves to Brazil from regions today approximating Nigeria and Angola during the slave trade of 1549 to 1888. As with its Caribbean counterparts, Candomble provided cover for slaves to organise politically in secret.
It is a polytheistic religion, dominated by priestesses, and is marked by spirit possession, trance-states, animal sacrifice and banqueting. Today some 2-million Brazilians give Candomble as their religion, but up to 70-million may participate in its rituals. A form called Umbanda combines elements of Kardecism.
This article was originally published on page 2 of Saturday Star on July 02, 2005
July 02 2005 at 05:38PM
By Michael Schmidt
Gangs of Brazilians posing as wealthy relatives of spiritualists have allegedly been preying on the Portuguese-speaking communities in Johannesburg and Durban.
The gangs strip them of hundreds of thousands of rands in cash and jewellery, before hopping a flight back to São Paulo.
Police inspector Dennis Adriao confirmed that a case had been opened at the Sandton Saps after a well-dressed Brazilian "family" allegedly made off with close to R250 000 in money and jewellery, including an elderly couple's wedding rings and the nest egg a mother had saved up for her daughter's education.
'I was suspicious'
The elderly couple lost most of their savings and were too distressed to speak about their ordeal. A Portuguese-English interpreter who acted as the Brazilians' driver said she had uncovered another three "families" operating in the country.
The interpreter, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals, said that on May 16 she was called by the manager of a café in the Bruma Lake area that is frequented by Portuguese-speakers.
There the interpreter met a smartly tailored couple in their twenties going by the names of Renato and Rosina Caldeira, and travelling with their "children" - a girl of 8 and a boy named Cristiano, or Cristie .
The couple said they were relocating Renato's clothing manufacturing business to Johannesburg from São Paulo, and had applied for residency via the Brazilian Embassy, but spoke no English and needed help finding an apartment.
The interpreter helped them choose a luxury apartment in Sandhurst Gardens, Sandton. The selected apartment belongs to a woman who wanted to be known as Liz.
It is a polytheistic religion
Liz said she had charged the Caldeiras R9 000 a month in rent and they had agreed to give her a breakage deposit of two months' rent on June 15, when they said Renato's parents would come out from Brazil to establish the business. The couple hired a Portuguese-speaking maid, and agreed to pay her R1 800 a month.
The interpreter then drove Renato around: supposedly he was looking for business premises and was keen on setting up shop in Sandton City.
Meanwhile, he and Rosina took out adverts in local Portuguese-community newspapers, marketing her services as a spiritualist and fortune-teller specialising in solving love and business problems and in reading Tarot.
They gave her the name "Professor Wilma Soares".
Another Johannesburg woman, who was experiencing problems with her marriage and whose daughter was troubled by bad dreams, consulted "Wilma" after growing suspicious of the motives of another Brazilian "spiritualist", a blonde named Patricia.
Patricia told the woman that her daughter had been cursed by someone who cast a spell using a corpse in a graveyard, but then the fortune-teller demanded too much money to heal her.
On June 3 the mother went to Sandhurst Gardens where she met Wilma, who impressed her as "well dressed, pretty, about 28 years old. She read cards and seashells, which they do in Brazil."
The mother identified Wilma's practice as Kardecism, a form of spiritualism popular in Brazil. She said she had been amazed to find that Wilma also told her she was experiencing problems with her daughter because black magic had been performed on a corpse "and that soul had entered my daughter's body.
"On June 8 Wilma said she needed a large amount of money to pray over. I was suspicious, but she asked me how much my daughter was worth."
The apparition of a skull in a towel that had been handled by Wilma convinced the mother her daughter was in danger, so she "withdrew R60 000 from the fund I had kept untouched for my daughter's education".
She later added another R20 000 and, as per Wilma's instructions, four bath towels worth R1 200 to the cache that Wilma had prayed over.
Wilma then let her take back the money, apparently in order to establish trust, but on the weekend of June 11 to 12 she asked for it again to pray over it.
The interpreter said she later discovered that the Caldeiras caught a flight back to Brazil on June 12. The phone number and address they gave in S‹o Paulo were fake.
The Caldeiras allegedly took with them the mother's R80 000, cash and jewellery from the elderly couple, R76 000 from a woman who runs a trucking company and R90 000 in cash and jewellery from a Sandton woman.
They also failed to pay the maid, and left the Sandton apartment in ruins.
The mother opened a charge against the Caldeiras, alerting the Brazilian Embassy in South Africa, and the South African embassy in Brazil. "I know I'm not going to get my money back, but I want justice served and to stop them. "
The interpreter, who was still owed R5 000 by the Caldeiras, was aware of at least one other Brazilian "family" operating in Joburg, and one in Durban.
Essentially, there are two main types of espiritismo in Brazil:
Kardecism: a quasi-Christian spiritualist "practical science" founded by Allan Kardec, the pseudonym of a "prior incarnation" of French polymath Hyppolite Rivail, in 1857 with the first of a series of publications, the most influential of which was The Gospel according to Spiritism. Kardecism, as it became known, is based on the belief that Christ is spirit guide for all humanity, and is marked by prayer and charity work. It experienced a brief prominence among the smart set in the late 1800s, establishing strongholds in Brazil, where it has some two million adherents today, and in the Philippines.
Candomble: a syncretic Afro-American religion of Brazil, similar to Cuban Santeria and Haitian Vodoun, that is an amalgam of Catholicism, Native American animism and African tribal beliefs brought by slaves to Brazil from regions today approximating Nigeria and Angola during the slave trade of 1549 to 1888. As with its Caribbean counterparts, Candomble provided cover for slaves to organise politically in secret.
It is a polytheistic religion, dominated by priestesses, and is marked by spirit possession, trance-states, animal sacrifice and banqueting. Today some 2-million Brazilians give Candomble as their religion, but up to 70-million may participate in its rituals. A form called Umbanda combines elements of Kardecism.
This article was originally published on page 2 of Saturday Star on July 02, 2005
posted by Aestrea Raven at Sunday, July 03, 2005
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