A still from the film "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." A little-known Canadian law outlaws the false practice of witchcraft and sorcery. Photo: supplied A Quebec man who advertised his services as a “clairvoyant medium” is in trouble for not delivering on his prophecies after being charged for falsely claiming to practise witchcraft and sorcery.
Yacouba Fofana, who worked under the name Professor Alfoseny, was arrested in April and charged with fraud for allegedly swindling people, according to the QMI news service. Police later added the sorcery charge.
Both in print and online, Fofana listed himself as a medium who “solves your problems,” and could facilitate “return of the beloved, luck, gambling, protection, etc.”
“Guaranteed results,” the ad said.
The Crown says one person was charged over $5,000 for these dubious services. If convicted, Fofana could spend up to 14 years behind bars for fraud and another six months under the witchcraft statute.
Charges under the anti-witchcraft law, Section 365 of the Criminal Code of Canada, are not that uncommon. In Toronto alone there have been at least two incidents in the last five years. Gustavo Valencia Gomez was arrested in 2012 for posing as a healer who could lift a curse on a 56-year-old woman’s family for $14,000, and in 2009 Toronto Police charged Vishwantee Persaud for bilking lawyer Noel Daley out of $27,000 by claiming to be possessed by the man’s sister.
The law is intended to clamp down on scam artists who take advantage of the gullible and vulnerable. It reads:
Every one who fraudulently (a) pretends to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration, (b) undertakes, for a consideration, to tell fortunes, or (c) pretends from his skill in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science to discover where or in what manner anything that is supposed to have been stolen or lost may be found, is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.
Curiously, the law is silent on those with actual magical powers.
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