Gild the tube: who monopolized the online psychic market in Russia

The largest online consulting services for esotericists, tarologists, parapsychologists and similar "specialists" are controlled by a group of IT businessmen from Novosibirsk, and business management can be conducted from Germany, Izvestia found out. Through such call centers, anyone can, for an average of 100 rubles per minute, get advice from a "psychic" of interest to them, and order additional services. The public financial statements of these companies have shown a 13-fold increase in revenue over the past few years. And according to some estimates, Russians spend more than 2 trillion rubles a year on such practices. How a group of Siberian IT specialists managed to take control of earnings based on Russians' passion for esotericism — in our article.

Help with fire and candles

— In the current situation, I can help you as an energy practitioner — this is working with your condition through consultations and through working with fire and candles. You can order a separate service, and I will work with your condition directly with the help of fire and candles, not in real time, where we are talking, but myself after a working day," a brisk voice sounded on the other end of the line.

According to information on the Ezoteo portal, the Izvestia correspondent communicated with Yasmina Shanina, a "tarologist, psychologist and energy practitioner." She responded to a request that had been posted on the website earlier — we requested a three-minute consultation on how to establish a relationship with her wife. After hearing the details of the breakdown in family life, she offered to help with fire and candles.

The service offered to her cost 2,500 rubles, according to the information on the website. After talking with Yasmino, the correspondent was contacted by the operator, who announced that the expert had decided to provide a personal discount of 40% and offered to use it by making an advance payment for the next consultation on the website.

There are thousands of such calls to esoteric call centers on the Runet every day. Moreover, the overwhelming market share is controlled by only four of the largest portals – Astro7, Aura7, Ezoteo and Ezochat (all in the .com and .ru domain zones, as well as partially in .su), Izvestia established based on web analytics data. These are mostly visitors from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova.

On these portals, the user selects a specialist, deposits money, and then communicates in a convenient format — chat or call. Services are usually paid per minute, and the duration of the session is unlimited. The cost starts from 75 rubles per minute, but the average is about 100 rubles, i.e. 6 thousand per hour.

The "experts" of these "call centers" often promise to solve any problem in the shortest possible time, conduct fortune-telling and attract money, success in business and love, and make up horoscopes. Among them are representatives of such areas as "tarologist", "cosmoenergist", "parapsychologist", "psychic", "runologist", "numerologist", "bioenergist", "energy practitioner", "clairvoyant", etc.

Izvestia selectively checked who conducts receptions at the venues. And it turned out that these are often people with ordinary civilian specialties: nurses, security guards, salesmen, storekeepers, and even journalists. Some of them combine their main place of work with esotericism.

For example, an expert named Iva Sanj from the Astro7 portal, who positions herself as a "psychic, tarologist, clairvoyant and psychologist," in ordinary life may be a resident of Tolyatti named Snezhana Ivanova, the Izvestia correspondent discovered after studying the social networks of a similar person. It says that she graduated from the Tolyatti Academy of Management (TAU), that is, she probably does not even have a specialized psychological higher education (there is no psychology department at the university).

Or the "tarologist and astrologer" from the Ezochat portal, Andrey Radmirov, is most likely Alexander O., a teacher of Russian language and literature from Nizhny Novgorod, who graduated from Nizhny Novgorod State Pedagogical University (NSPU). The photos of their profiles completely match.

Air Sellers

To work as a consultant on such platforms, you usually do not need to have a specialized diploma: it is enough to provide a passport, fill out a questionnaire and pass an interview, the owner of one of these services told Izvestia on condition of anonymity.

— They write to us almost every day. Most of them are beginners who have completed some regular courses, and for many, esotericism is nothing more than a side job," he noted.

The first step for candidates is to fill out the application form, then the decision on the interview is made.

— Preference is given to people over the age of 35, life experience is important. It is important that you have at least two years of experience working with clients. In order for two new people to appear on the platform, approximately 80 questionnaires need to be processed. Of course, it is impossible to assess the competence of a chakrologist during an interview. Based on customer reviews only. Whether they are satisfied with the consultations or not," the Izvestia interlocutor explained the principle of "personnel selection."

At the same time, all consultants are not full—time employees, but registered users. That is, the organizers of such a business provide them with a platform and technological solutions to attract customers, charging a certain, very significant percentage of earnings, a source from this field explained. Their earnings depend on the number of consultations conducted and the user rating; on different services, income can range from 60 to 500 thousand rubles per month. Remuneration to consultants is transferred by the platforms themselves.

Who owns the services in Russia

The portals that control almost the entire minute-by-minute online content of the Runet have several seemingly unrelated owners.

So, portals aura7.ru and astro7.com It is owned by A-Content Solutions LLC, according to open data. The company was founded in 2021 in Moscow, it is listed as the copyright holder of the Astro7 trademarks in various forms. Almost the same psychics work part-time on both portals.

The founder of the company is entrepreneur Pavel Parfenov. There is little information about him, but in his social networks he points out that before founding the astrology business, he worked at the Russian representative office of LG and lived in Novosibirsk for a long time. Izvestia contacted him for comment, but he did not respond to the correspondent's Telegram messages.

Ezoteo belongs to the Novosibirsk company AIS LLC (Albatros Information Systems), as evidenced by the registration of the corresponding trademark for this company.

And the Ezoteo portals in the zone .ru and Astro7 in the .su zone are owned by IP Razumova Anastasia Yurievna.

By the service ezochat.com It is owned by Novosibirsk businessman Dmitry Kravtsov, who owns the corresponding trademark. Domain ezochat.com at least until 2024, it was registered with the Latvian company Palma Payment Services SIA (as well as a number of others, for example, Astro7).

However, despite the fact that three different legal entities own different portals under the Aura7, Astra7, Ezoteo and Ezochat brands, they use the same Yandex.Metrica counter — 97738514, which indicates a unified management of these projects.

In addition, there are other signs indicating a close relationship between all legal entities. IP Razumova, for example, has common contacts in the USRIP with A-Content Solutions LLC.

Greetings from Dusseldorf

The Aura7 and Ezochat projects have mobile applications, the rights to which belong to the German IT company Iteora Media UG from Dusseldorf.

Stanislav Korelchuk is listed as the head of this company in the registers of European legal entities. He is also a native of Novosibirsk. In 1993-1995, he studied at the Higher College of Computer Science of Novosibirsk State University (NSU), where he studied computing systems and computer complexes. In 2001, he received a diploma from NSU with a degree in economics and law. Then he moved to Germany: he studied "economic informatics" at the University of Paderborn and later founded Iteora Media UG.

Korelchuk, according to the Russian Unified State Register of Legal Entities, was the co-founder of AIS LLC, which owns portals astro7.ru and astro7.su , as well as the Ezoteo trademark.

Korelchuk has other intersections in the "pool" of businessmen who own esoteric online services. In particular, according to Izvestia, it was he who created the multifunctional payment system. payokay.biz . Her domain belonged to the same Latvian company Palma Payment Services SIA, which was listed as the owner of most of the sites of the esoteric online network.

In addition to Iteora Media UG, Korelchuk has another company with a similar name, Iteora GmbH, whose owner, in addition to Korelchuk himself, is Sergey Yakovlev, born in 1984. According to the company's registration documents, both businessmen now live in Germany. Korelchuk is registered in the city of Merbusch, and Yakovlev is registered in Ratingen.

Thus, the array of these data indicates that a large market for esoteric online consultations on the Runet is controlled by a related group of businessmen, mostly from Novosibirsk, and the assets themselves will be controlled from Germany.

The growth of the esoteric market

According to State Duma deputy Andrey Svintsov, in 2024, Russians spent a gigantic 2.4 trillion rubles on the services of tarologists, psychics, fortune tellers, witches, astrologers and other representatives of the esoteric sphere. Previously, the Russian esoteric market had long been associated with disparate provincial fortune tellers, healers, and eccentric showmen known for their TV projects and word of mouth, but by now this area has almost completely moved online. And the beneficiaries who receive the main profit are IT entrepreneurs who have created a digital infrastructure for their work - aggregators of video calls with consultations. Thanks to them, "magicians", "healers" and other "bioenergetics" received a constant stream of customers.

The demand for such services is steadily growing and this is explained by their increased accessibility due to new technologies, according to market representatives themselves.

— 80% of the requests are questions about relationships and love. The general stress in the world is growing, and everyone is looking for their own way to reduce it. And it is growing because the structure of information consumption has completely changed — smartphones and the Internet in your pocket have done many times more to increase anxiety than all pandemics and military actions combined. In fact, we are also a light virtual "antidepressant" — a place where people come to relieve their accumulated anxiety and leave with relief," the owner of one of the services told Izvestia.

In his opinion, Andrey Svintsov's estimate of the volume of the esoteric market in Russia is greatly exaggerated.

— I believe that the entire market of esotericism in Russia is at most 15 billion rubles. This is if you collect everything at all: all the grandmothers in the villages, all the "insta-tarologists", ads on other Internet platforms. The average check per paying customer is 1,700 rubles. In terms of money, this is not a "premium market," he clarified.

At the same time, even the official profit of A-Content Solutions LLC, which manages the Astro7 and Aura7 portals, increased from 11.4 million rubles to 151.5 million rubles in 2021-2024, that is, by 13.2 times, according to the company's financial statements.

Experts believe that if a client of such services considers himself deceived, then it will not be easy to hold the platform or fortune tellers accountable, but it is possible.

"When using psychological pressure, intimidating a client with "negative consequences" and then imposing paid services, such actions can qualify as fraud, since we are talking about deliberate deception in order to extract income," Vitaly Maryasov, a lawyer at the Yenisei Siberia Bar Association, told Izvestia. — Conversation scripts and the distribution of funds will be essential — if a single intent is proven, responsibility can also be assigned to business organizers. However, the reservations in the user agreement and the positioning of the service as "entertainment" significantly complicate the proof of intent or guilt on the part of the platform.

Indeed, on the sites of esoteric call centers, it is explicitly stated that they provide only entertainment services, and not psychological assistance or medical consultations. At the same time, the services separately indicate that they "are not responsible for the promises and statements in the description of the expert services and do not guarantee that the use of the services will lead to the goals and results described on the site."