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Part 1. School and Institute
Svetlana began to invent stories and characters as a child. According to her, this tendency of hers developed gradually. Svetlana had a school friend Katya, they talked from elementary grades. The stories were harmless at first, then she began to say that she was seriously ill. Her friend believed her.
According to Ekaterina (in 2017, she published a post about Svetlana on her Vkontakte social network page), she considered her best friend:
“Periodically, she told funny fantastic stories“ from her life ”, but they were not particularly embarrassing.
We were friends all school years, then entered different institutes, but still often talked. Svetlana continued to tell amazing stories, but they became more and more sinister. In her first year at the institute, Svetlana told that her father had completely lost his mind, beat his grandmother, raped Svetlana (everything was terrifying and in detail), that Svetlana deprives him of his legal capacity, draws up guardianship over him. She goes on to describe how she puts him in an insane asylum, where he subsequently dies. Looking ahead, I want to say that her father is currently alive, healthy and capable.
Ekaterina also wrote that Svetlana’s relationship with young people “always resembled actions from a movie or TV series”, but none of Svetlana’s relatives saw them live.
“Toward the end of the institute, Svetlana began to periodically borrow money for her treatment, talking about cancer, chemotherapy. According to her, her mother brushed her off with the words “you fucked me with your problems” and, according to the court, she was discharged from the apartment, but allowed to live there for the time being. She was given loans for treatment, in particular, by my mother and the parents of our mutual friends from school. Everyone was extremely sympathetic to the poor girl and condemned the behavior of her mother.
In order for people to believe in her illnesses and injuries, Svetlana regularly engaged in self-mutilation, talking about attacks and thefts. At the same time, she beat herself, cut her wrists and asked for money, because “everything was stolen.”
Another way to attract attention and arouse sympathy was stories about the death of loved ones. According to Svetlana, during that period (2014–2015), her cousin, her daughter, and an institute friend died.
Svetlana herself told The Insider that it was in communication with Catherine that she began to show a tendency to invent non-existent details of her life. Then just stories were not enough, and Svetlana began to win people’s attention with gifts:
“I started lying, inventing fairy tales that I was sick with something terrible. What there just was not for these twenty years of communication. Then there was a need to give disproportionately expensive gifts to people (a collectible guitar to a friend, a car to a brother), alternately borrowing money from other people.
When Sveta graduated from the institute, she told Katya that she became stronger and sick more often, she constantly needed money for expensive devices, consultations and medicines. The amount of debts began to reach half a million rubles.
Then, in 2017, Svetlana worked in a hospital in the city of Ivanovo as a resuscitator. She paid off her debts when she went to work. And then I got new ones.
Part 2. Svetlana decides to die
People who were ready to lend money to Svetlana ran out in Ivanovo.
“At some point, my debts accumulated to cosmic proportions, and I didn’t understand what to do at all. I got loans. So I decided ‘how to die’.”
According to Svetlana, it was a gesture of desperation. She called her work and said that Svetlana Bogacheva had died. She was aware that the deception would quickly come to light.
“These processes in the head existed simultaneously and in parallel: at one moment there was a normal part of consciousness in which I could understand that this was all bullshit and it would not end in anything good, and an impulsive part that I couldn’t control.”
Ivanovo is a small town, her acquaintances quickly found out that Svetlana staged her death. She was seen in the city, and she behaved as if nothing had happened.
After a failed staging of her own death, Svetlana decided to leave for Kavalerovo, in the Far East. She simply found a point on the map as far as possible from Ivanov and went there. She had no one in Kavalerovo.
Svetlana got a job at a local hospital where there was a shortage of doctors.
“It got worse there. I continued to do the same – I bought some tickets for someone, weaved some fairy tales. As a result, a whole criminal case of fraud was brought against me. This is a tiny settlement where everyone knows each other, so it would not be possible to deceive people for a long time.
That criminal case, according to Svetlana, was closed due to active repentance. She left for the neighboring city of Arsenyev, got a job again, and allegedly gave all the money she earned to the people she owed – only about 200 thousand rubles.
In Arseniev, Svetlana was doing quite well, she managed to build normal relationships with people and stop (for a whole year – from 2018 to 2019) to borrow money.
“At that moment, when I realized that all this would start again, I left there to leave normal memories of myself. I went to St. Petersburg.”
Part 3. Tanya, beginning
In St. Petersburg, Svetlana got a job as a doctor at Children’s Hospital No. 17. At the same time, she studied the disorders of premature babies, was looking for a person who would help her make a video on this topic, and met Tanya. Tanya is doing stand-up. At the time of her acquaintance with Svetlana, she was 20 years old:
“I immediately became attached to her. I generally have some kind of need for care, and we agreed on this. And I began to beg her care with these manipulative methods of mine – to tell fantastic stories about how my husband died, then my brothers.
According to Tanya, Svetlana wrote to her at work. She said that she was at her performances and knows that she writes scripts for YouTube channels, saw her portfolio. She needed a video for the hospital: she had to write a text about the problems of premature newborns.
“She made an appointment for me, we met, talked, everything was fine, she paid me an advance payment of 100 thousand rubles. I didn’t have any questions about the manipulations with her, we treated her well, ”says Tanya.
She recalls that Svetlana constantly dragged out the video production process, adding something all the time. It seemed to Tanya that the person was simply passionate about his work.
So for three or four months they met exclusively on work issues. But one day, a sobbing Svetlana called Tanya after hours, apologized and said that she had no one else to turn to.
“She said that her husband hanged himself and she was very ill, she did not know how to live on. I began to console her and said that the main thing is not to be alone. I asked if there was someone with her and if she called a psychotherapist, and she said no.
Tanya offered her help and came to her. Svetlana sobbed and talked about the accident: allegedly her husband was driving, their three-year-old daughter was in the back seat, and Svetlana herself was nine months pregnant. She said that a trucker who fell asleep at the wheel crashed into them, her daughter died immediately and the baby in the womb also died. The husband was not particularly hurt, could not forgive himself for this and hanged himself.
“It was impossible not to believe it. The whole entourage of the apartment was such that doubts did not creep in: children’s drawings, a photograph of a girl in a frame on the bedside table.
Later, when Svetlana’s deception was revealed, Tanya found out that Svetlana herself was in the photograph as a child, and she took the drawings from work.
“I believed her. She told in very colorful detail what happened and how, how she felt that her child froze inside, how blood poured down her legs and that she abruptly turned to her daughter, and she threw her head back and her badges began to expand. Well, how can you talk like that if you haven’t experienced it?
Svetlana asked Tanya to stay with her for the night and wake her up because she couldn’t be alone with her nightmares.
Tanya was sitting in the living room, watching YouTube, and heart-rending cries were heard from the room every two hours or more: “Daughter, don’t leave me, it’s my fault!”
According to Tanya, this went on until about 8 in the morning. Then she went home, and later she saw a message from Svetlana: “Tatiana, I’m sorry! I’m still so embarrassed. This is the first night I’ve been able to get any sleep. You are so kind and wonderful, thank you.”
Tanya advised her to find a psychotherapist, and soon he appeared.
Part 4. Tanya, friendship and cancer
Svetlana and Tanya continued to communicate and even became friends. Tanya says that she felt sorry for her. At some point, Svetlana said that she had found a good psychotherapist who was ready to work with her, but he had a condition – it was necessary for someone to live with her.
“It seemed logical to me, and I said that I would live with her, but not more than a month. And so I lived with her for a month, every night she had these nightmares, when I did not sleep and went to wake her up. In parallel, she allegedly underwent therapy.
When the month was coming to an end, Svetlana’s psychotherapist wrote to Tanya asking her to stay with her for another month:
“Tatyana, you live with Sveta. She is secretive and does not tell me anything. I really want to work through this injury, please help me. This is a very complex injury and difficult to handle. I understand that this is none of your business, but thank you for this, you return my faith in humanity.”
Tanya lived with Svetlana for another month, after which her brother (who is still alive) allegedly hanged himself. The nightmares resumed, and then the cancer began. At that time, Tanya had been living with her for four months:
“I was very immersed in this story and believed in it. All my friends who came to me talked with Sveta, she made an amazing impression on everyone: how smart, amazing, how strong she is, how she fights, what a pity that this happened to her, that we would probably her place failed. And my friends supported me, that I am so well done and take care of the left person.
Once Svetlana told her that she decided to have a baby and did IVF. She previously mentioned that she hoped that after IVF she would not develop cancer.
A month after she allegedly did IVF, Svetlana reported that she had cancer.
“The cancer was absolutely hellish. She began to go to harsh chemotherapy, from which she developed polyneuritis, when absolutely everything hurts. People with polyneuritis usually kill themselves during chemotherapy. And she constantly fainted with hellish pains and screams, there was involuntary urination, sometimes I came when she was lying in the blood, she had torn veins from chemotherapy. She had huge necrosis, just pieces of rotten flesh. When I was in pain, she broke her finger – she took the little finger and broke it in half.
Then it turned out that Svetlana herself injected calcium chloride under her skin to make it all look like she was really undergoing chemotherapy.
While her friend was “sick”, a large number of people from Svetlana’s entourage corresponded with Tanya – both the psychotherapist and the oncologist Lisa, and others. They wrote: “Tanya, leave her, you don’t need it. People like her die alone, their families are abandoned.” Tanya did not listen and continued to live with Sveta and help her. Both the psychotherapist and the oncologist were Svetlana.
“There were moments when I had to take care of Sveta around the clock, because there was a feeling that if you left her for at least a couple of hours, she would die.”
Before the “cancer” Svetlana went to Vladivostok. As she told Tanya, she had to “serve a week for revealing some kind of medical secret.” She returned to Petersburg all beaten up.
“And it wasn’t make-up, she had bruises, a black eye, her nose was broken, her left arm was just in the meat, as if a skating rink drove over it. I say: “What happened?” – and she: “I did not make friends with my cellmates, because they constantly raped a 15-year-old girl named Lena, and I decided to save her, for which I was beaten.” When Sveta confessed to everything, she later said that she beat herself so that I would believe her.
Tanya corresponded with this “Lena” for a long time. The girl told her how grateful she was to Sveta for saving her, how she dreams of quitting drugs and for Sveta to become her mother. Lena doesn’t exist either, it was also Sveta.
Tanya’s social circle narrowed down to three close people who also believed in Sveta – her boyfriend, her friend Fedya and manager Anya. Due to the need to take care of Sveta, Tanya could not leave the house, canceled some of her concerts.
“I left the house, and they immediately wrote to me:“ Tanya, she will die now. Stay with her for a little while.” Friends at some point could not withstand the oppressive atmosphere in the apartment, and for three months I had an environment exclusively from the characters of Sveta.
Tanya herself went to a psychologist to somehow cope. The psychologist also believed in everything that happened in the life of Sveta, and therefore Tanya. Meanwhile, gradually, living with Sveta, she began to feel bad. Tanya has a severe allergy to fish, seafood, algae, and even a drop of fish oil can cause Quincke’s edema.
“When I lived with Sveta, I had bouts of edema that started in the morning for no reason. I woke up with the feeling that some piece was stuck in my throat – my tongue swelled, my eyes popped out of their sockets, and Sveta very heroically saved my life, rushing to her nightstand and getting prednisolone and adrenaline. I don’t know what they were doing in her bedside table, I thought that she needed them herself. I didn’t eat fish, and to cause Quincke’s edema, it’s enough for me to put a drop of fish oil in my nose when I sleep.”
Sveta explained Tanya’s Quincke’s edema by the fact that she had ulcerative colitis, which is why proteins are poorly broken down. When Tanya asked the proctologist now about this, he said that it was impossible, this does not cause Quincke’s edema.
Tanya is sure that Sveta did not want to kill her, but she wanted to tie her to herself with what saves her life.
Part 5. FSB and emigration
Before the war, Tanya mentioned that she would like to go to university in Berlin, that it would be nice to live in Europe someday, but she had no plans to leave anytime soon.
At Sveta’s birthday, Tanya met Jan. He worked for the FSB.
Sveta invented incredible stories about their relationship, about what wonderful friends they are and how he helped her. Tanya began to correspond with Jan, they became friends. He said that he could not stand the authorities and the FSB, that 90% of the employees hate Putin, but all of them have families, and that they try not to take political cases.
“In general, she poured shit for me and left and said what I wanted to hear. By the way, is it worth saying that I did not communicate with Jan, but with Sveta? Communication with the real Yang ended on the day we met him.”
When the persecution of stand-up comedians began, Tanya turned to Jan. She was scared, she participated in the “Big Microphone”, which was attended by eshniki (employees of the Office for Combating Extremism) with their cameras. She asked if she was being followed. “Yan” wrote: “Yes, they visit you, but so far there are no questions. If suddenly they start digging under you, I will immediately inform you.”
When the situation in Russia began to heat up and when the troops were drawn to the border with Ukraine, Tanya began to actively speak out against the war on social networks. A day or two before the war, Sveta woke Tanya with shouts: “Tanya, get up immediately! You need to leave Russia today, they’ve come for you.”
At the same moment, a message came from Jan: “Tanya, you are in danger. You must leave Russia within 24 hours, they gave you 24 hours. Pack your things and leave.”
“On the same day, I ran to my grandmother, who lived not far from us, to inform me that I was going into forced emigration. We took a plane to Istanbul the same day. I left without a phone and without anything at all, so that they wouldn’t follow me.”
All Tanya’s friends believed in the persecution. According to her, her best friend arrived, a guy rushed in, and they all sobbed under DDT in the evening. No one had any question that this could be a lie.
Tanya flew to Istanbul, rented a small room in a hostel, and two days later the war began: “There is a feeling that reality itself adjusted to Sveta’s legends.”
“There is a feeling that reality itself adjusted to Sveta’s legends”
Tanya’s boyfriend Misha did not have a passport, so he could not fly to Istanbul, but he could fly to Armenia, and he and Sveta went to Yerevan. Tanya flew to them a couple of days later. According to legend, the FSB agent Jan fled to the Finnish embassy when the war began, sat there, drank and shouted: “How could we let this happen? I have no forgiveness, my people never ask me that I worked for this state.” Tanya consoled him in correspondence.
Some time after moving to Armenia, Sveta said that she was called to the police – allegedly she was a witness to some kind of crime. She went to the police, said that her phone was taken away from her, she only had time to write to the lawyer and Tanya: “They are looking for you.”
Tanya was still frightened by the persecution, so she left home. Later, Misha wrote to her: “Tanya, the cops have arrived.”
“We think that Sveta wrote some kind of denunciation, but the cops behaved disgustingly, they started yelling that they would knock down the doors. Misha asked them through the window who they were, said that they did not have the right to do this, to which he was told: “What rights? This is Armenia, you have no rights here, only in Russia you have rights.” They behaved horribly. They stuffed him into a car, threatened him, took him to the police station and kept him there for several hours. We still don’t know what it was, but I’m pretty sure it was Sveta.”
In an interview with The Insider, Svetlana denied her involvement in this case:
“I have nothing to do with the story when we were called to the police and accused of something, it just happened. I didn’t initiate it in any way, I didn’t control it in any way, it’s just a coincidence.”
Tanya and Misha flew to Turkey, and Sveta joined them later (waiting for a passport).
Part 6. Grandmother
When Tanya decided to leave Russia, it was a big blow for her grandmother. Tanya had the keys to her grandmother’s apartment at home: they always lay in case her grandmother became ill, so that she could call and Tanya would come and open the door.
“My grandmother was absolutely healthy, vigorous, cheerful. In general, all the women in our country were long-lived – my great-grandmother died at 95, my grandmother’s older sister is alive, and my grandmother was very mobile, she had no problems with her legs or joints, nothing at all, just a very cheerful grandmother, who at six in the morning chasing buses.
She called Tanya the day before her death, her voice was healthy. She asked someone to bring her the keys that were left in Tanya’s apartment. Sveta, who was still in Russia, volunteered to do this.
She took the keys, went to Tanya’s grandmother and told Tanya that she had found her corpse.
“I was absolutely heartbroken, I was screaming:“ What happened to her? ”- because we just talked to her. Sveta told me: “Tanya, she is over 80 years old, people are dying.” It sounded logical, of course. I asked: “How did she die? Was it a stroke or what? ”- to which Sveta replied:“ No, she just made pancakes, fell and now lies. ”
Sveta began to call the police and an ambulance, looked for documents and, in addition to the documents, found money – about 6 thousand euros. They are gone. Later, Sveta admitted that she took them. In a conversation with The Insider, she explained this by saying that she thought that no one would notice the loss.
Tanya suspects Sveta of killing her grandmother:
“She’s an anesthesiologist, she had a bunch of strong drugs in her nightstand, like propofol, which you can’t buy without a prescription, and I always thought that these were some of her drugs that she needed to treat cancer or to relieve pain.”
Later, Tanya contacted Svetlana’s former colleagues, they said that she was stealing medicines, for which she was often fired. By the way, fellow doctors also believed in Sveta and even raised money for the treatment of her non-existent cancer.
Sveta herself claims in a conversation with The Insider that she did not harm Tanya’s grandmother in any way:
“When I arrived in St. Petersburg because the dog ate my passport, which had to be restored, I went to her and found her dead. I didn’t contribute to it in any way.”
After the death of her grandmother, Sveta came to Tanya and consoled her.
“I cried for days because my last meeting with my grandmother was when I was leaving. Grandma was crying, and I was crying, and grandma said: “Promise me that we will see each other,” and I told her that everything will be fine. Sveta knew the whole story. Of course, I suspect her of murder. “I couldn’t kill her, how do you imagine that?” she says. But at the same time, you can rob a dead person, and then come and look into the eyes of your granddaughter and console her.”
Part 7. Exposure
A couple of days after moving to Turkey, Tanya received a large letter from her mother. Previously, they almost did not communicate: mother condemned Tanya’s attachment to Svetlana and was wary of her.
In the letter, she wrote that she understood that this message could end communication with Tanya forever, but she must say that she suspects Sveta of swindling, of murdering and robbing her grandmother. She asked me to check every document of Sveta, every translation, and in general everything that can be checked.
“I started yelling at my mother:“ How dare you! Sveta is a holy person, she did so much for me!“ The fact is that somewhere in the second year of our life, Sveta convinced me and everyone around me that it was not me who was living with Sveta because she had permanent cancer and psychotherapy , and she lives with me because she cares about me.
However, Tanya promised her mother that she would check Sveta’s documents, after which their communication with her mother would end forever.
Sveta herself says that at that moment Tanya already had suspicions, because everything was getting more complicated:
“I said that I paid for my studies in Greece, that I bought a house there – all this required documentary evidence, which was not there. First there is a fantasy, and then thoughts about what to do with it.
After arriving in Turkey, Sveta said that she again had metastases in her lungs, she had about a year to live. As soon as she arrived, Tanya and Misha asked her for lung scans and, in general, all her documents. Svetlana was offended and said that soon they would all go to get a residence permit and then it would be possible to see all account statements and other documents.
“She put pressure on the fact that we, such bastards, suspect her and believe my mother, who is just jealous that we have such a relationship with Sveta. My mother left me in childhood, I lived with my grandmother until the age of 8, and Sveta skillfully used this in her manipulations.
Two days later, Tanya and Misha realized that they still had not seen a single paper from Svetlana.
“I said: “Sveta, you said that you have a picture of lung metastases on your phone.” She says, “What are you? Do you understand how personal it is?“ “Sveta, I got you out of blood and urine endlessly, how personal is this? Show me one damn picture to calm me down.”
She began to cry, and Tanya, according to her, turned off her emotions. Tanya went to the balcony for a smoke and watched from there as Sveta was looking for a picture on her phone. In fact, she was not looking for a picture, but simply leafing through the screens of her phone. Tanya lost her temper and started yelling at her. Sveta promised to show the picture as soon as she returned from the toilet.
At that moment, as Tanya recalls, it began to dawn on her and Misha that there was no picture and, it seems, cancer too.
“Misha went to see what was with Sveta, and there was an oil painting: Sveta was lying on the floor, her arms, legs, sheets and half of the bathroom were smeared with feces and blood. And here she lies among this painting by Picasso, mercifully dying.
When Tanya decided to call an ambulance, Svetlana quickly came to her senses, washed herself, and the conversation continued. “At some point, I already understood that there was nothing to present, the arguments were over, and I just told everything,” she recalls in an interview with The Insider.
She still didn’t want to show any documents or pictures. Then Tanya took her phone and started calling all Sveta’s “friends” in turn.
“I call oncologist Lisa (who allegedly died and whom we all mourned), and Sveta’s phone rings in her hand.”
After that, Sveta agreed to tell the truth. Tanya turned on the recording, a fragment of which she later posted on her Twitter.
“It was creepy, she spoke in a very even voice, no emotion at all. And this is Sveta – who is almost hysterical. And then it was as if all her muscles relaxed, the mask was off her. She sat and terribly, terribly told the truth.
According to Tanya, Svetlana did not confess to things for which she could potentially face criminal prosecution: in the murder of her grandmother, in causing Tanya to have Quincke’s edema, in communicating with her on behalf of the FSB representatives.
The Insider publishes the full version of Svetlana’s confession for the first time.
“Even after her confession, my rescuer syndrome kicked in. I started screaming: “I want to get angry, but I can’t because you are a sick person!” How can you be angry with a sick person? I told Sveta that I would find her a small house on the outskirts of Turkey, that I would rent an apartment for her, get haloperidol and pay for a psychiatrist, that everything would be fine with her, that I would take away all the equipment from her and I would make sure that she lived a quiet life, so that she worked on medical articles, but through me, so as not to lie anywhere. But Misha sat with an angry face and said in the end: “No, Tanya, this will not happen.”
It seems to me that it was a denial that they could do this to me. It was easier for me to believe that a person was seriously ill and that she needed help than that I was deprived of three years of my life by such a deceit.
Misha believed that Svetlana was dangerous and insisted that she leave.
“We gave her money and a travel card so that she could drive to some embassy and put her out the door.”
Tanya prepared a thread about Sveta deceiving her for three years and posted it on Twitter. She did not expect the story to become so loud, it was originally intended for people who followed Tanya’s life and knew about the Light.
“It’s great that it ended up like this because fewer people will fall for this kind of scam and fewer people will lose three years of their lives saving those who don’t need it.”
A few days later, Tanya wrote that Svetlana had access to all her accounts. Sveta helped Tanya not to forget to pay the loan, she made sure that all state duties and services were paid. When Tanya restored access, it turned out that one of the accounts had a debt of almost 600 thousand rubles.
“When I had to run away from Russia, she told me to remove banking applications from my phone, because it is very easy to calculate the location from them, and they allegedly search for me. I was scared, I believed it.”
All the money Sveta spent on the realization of her fantasies: she bought fake phone numbers, phones themselves, sent gifts and flowers to herself.
Part 8. How she did it
Sveta imitated her illnesses and composed stories with virtuosity. According to Tanya, everyone believed her.
“When a man who lost his daughter in a terrible accident is crying on your knees, you are unlikely to say:“ So, show me the death certificate. Or when he comes in and says, “I have cancer,” and half of his body is rotting from chemotherapy, it doesn’t occur to him to ask if this is real necrosis or a hallucination.
I lived for three years in absolute hell, pulling her out of some nightmarish states. She simulated uncontrolled urination, she could pierce her nose with a knife so that there were pools of blood everywhere, she dripped atropine into her eye so that one pupil dilated and it felt like she was having a stroke. Since she is a doctor, she knew how to imitate all this.
As for fictional characters, Tanya still does not fully understand how Svetlana managed to communicate with her on behalf of so many people for so long and not get caught:
“During our life in Russia, she managed to completely pass out with urinary incontinence and nosebleeds, and at the same time I corresponded with her doctor and psychotherapist in horror that she would now die right here, and they answered me.
Maybe she managed to write this when I went out for rags or water. I still can’t believe it. I don’t know if we have a real dog, maybe it’s Sveta too.”
I don’t know if our dog is real, maybe it’s also Sveta
Tanya considers Sveta a very smart person. She is sure that she acted with cold calculation, and does not believe in any affection and love on her part. When everything turned out and Tanya posted this story on Twitter, hackers wrote to her, who revealed some of Sveta’s passwords. One of them was “Gartman” – this is a scientist who worked with the philosophy of the unconscious.
“She directly studied how to work with the unconscious of people, some kind of criminal well-read element.”
Tanya says that she managed to find Sveta’s old documents. It turned out that the court had already declared her insane and she worked out 800 thousand rubles in public works. She also had a criminal case in Kavalerovo, which Svetlana herself had previously mentioned. However, this case is not closed – Svetlana simply disappeared.
Tanya plans to seek criminal punishment for her:
“I have at least a confession that she robbed a dead person’s apartment. I can’t prove that she stole a lot of money from us, because we ourselves, morons, gave her money, but she can be imprisoned, and I will try, because she is dangerous to society.
If I can return to Russia, first of all I will go to my grandmother’s grave and ask for forgiveness.”
Part 9. The same Munchausen
According to Sveta, she understands the desire of Tanya and Misha to write a statement to the police against her, but continues to insist that she is not a swindler, but just a sick person:
“It will be logical action on their part. Well, I’m a very clueless swindler. The only thing that I received and for the sake of which it was started was emotions. I received care.
I always wanted to be loved, to be taken care of. Since childhood, this strange thing has been in my head: no one is interested in me the way I am, and therefore I need to invent another person. I spent a lot of money on this, and as a result I have nothing – neither expensive property, nor real estate. Everything I have is limited to one suitcase. I have nowhere to go back.”
Since childhood, this strange thing has been in my head: the way I am, no one is interested in me, and therefore I need to invent another person
Now Svetlana is in Turkey and is looking for a remote job. She was helped with temporary housing by people who support her compatriots.
According to psychiatrists interviewed by The Insider, the case of Svetlana Bogacheva is a typical manifestation of Munchausen’s syndrome. People suffering from this disorder (in the ICD-10 code F68) experience a pathological need for attention and care and for this they constantly invent stories, and often harm themselves (sometimes with elements of masochism) or imitate illnesses in order to end up in the hospital. Their motivation is so strong that they often do serious damage to their health just to get attention. Many suffering from Munchausen’s syndrome were deprived of parental attention or were abused in childhood, many were seriously ill in childhood and in the hospital felt the pleasure of care and attention, which they lacked. When they grow up, they are usually unable to start a family, rarely stay in a job for a long time, and if they do get a job, they prefer to work in the healthcare sector.
Patients with Munchausen syndrome experience a crisis of self-identification due to childhood psychological trauma and often “create” personalities, becoming skillful manipulators and thereby regaining self-confidence. While feigning illness, they favor rare, severe, and intriguing cases and pose as professional athletes, foreign university presidents, and pilots. Often they create for themselves the image of people who have dedicated their lives to some noble cause – for example, the treatment of children evacuated from hot spots – in order to arouse empathy and respect from others.
There is no known treatment for Munchausen syndrome.