The riddle of the healer: what is the new star of extrasensory perception Valery Kustov hiding?
The recently appeared healer Valery Kustov caused a lot of attention on television. He claims to heal anyone from any illness. Where did he come from? In a recent TV appearance, Valery Kustov was described as someone who can understand people’s thoughts. Along with this ability, the program's protagonist showcased several instances of supposedly curing people with severe, nearly incurable conditions.
For instance, the program producers shared with viewers the story of a girl suffering from an extremely rare condition – haemolacria. According to the host, only 15 people worldwide have been affected by it in the past 20 years.
Prior to meeting Kustov, 21-year-old Anastasia Zennikova from Yekaterinburg was reportedly experiencing bleeding from her nose, ears, and eyes for a long time. Photos of Zennikova's blood-stained face were displayed on screens in the studio, in stark contrast to the smiling, seemingly completely content guest seated beneath them. She was allegedly cured by Valery Kustov.
It's no surprise that after that, there was a real commotion on the internet – during the broadcast, the psychic convinced many people of his abilities. Searching for the full name Kustov on search engines leads to resources where people inquire about how to contact a psychic.
It's interesting that Kustov doesn't appear to be in a rush to communicate with potential clients. Many of those who found the healer's contact information report that they never received a response to their inquiries.
Why psychic Kustov collects information about people
While examining the healer's background, Life noticed several peculiarities and contradictions.
Valery Kustov has his own website. A message is posted there stating that appointments can only be made in writing through a special form. The applicant needs to provide their full name, age, city of residence, mobile phone number, email, and provide a detailed description of their illness. It's also advisable to attach a medical report and other documents from their medical institution.
It's worth noting that in today's world, this amount of personal information is sufficient to learn a lot about a person: their social status, marital status, employment history, ownership of vehicles and real estate, legal issues, bank accounts, social media accounts from which information about their friends, hobbies, and habits can be obtained.
The individual seeking help needs to provide the psychic with their personal information. It's impossible to know how this information might be used.
In theory, when responding to a client's appointment request, Kustov may already know enough about them to have insight into their past, situations, and possibly manipulate this knowledge in some way.
Furthermore, the healer doesn't take on all illnesses: the same website lists a long collection of excluded conditions, including oncology, mental disorders, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, diabetes, psoriasis, vitiligo, multiple sclerosis, tuberculosis, substance abuse, gambling addiction, and drug addiction, as well as eye diseases. It's a mystery why Kustov agreed to treat Zennikova's eye bleeding.
Experts say that fortune tellers avoid such illnesses for a specific purpose.
“This list might show that the fortune teller is not willing to get involved in scandals. These illnesses are hard to treat, the outcome is uncertain and could lead to legal and reputational consequences,” lawyer Elena Balakir told Life.
The picture indicates that the “blood” under the girl’s right eye doesn't seem to have come from the tear duct, but seems to have been applied unnaturally.
Doctor or fraudster
With the main patient of Kustov, by the way, not everything is so simple. After the program on TV, the girl’s classmates and teachers gossiped, Life only managed to find out that, at least in the lower grades, Anastasia’s then environment did not notice such a problem.
At the same time, eye specialists interviewed by Life confirm that hemolacria is an extremely unusual illness and is still not fully researched. However, today there are several studies indicating that in teenage girls it can appear during puberty due to hormonal imbalances. In this case, hemolacria goes away on its own as suddenly as it begins. It is quite possible that Kustov may not have been able to treat Zennikova at all: if there was an illness, it could have disappeared without any magical techniques.
By the way, after the broadcast on the girl’s social media page, messages about the procedures for seeing a fortune teller were plentiful – it seems that Anastasia was actively involved in promoting her supporter. A little over a year ago, she came to Moscow from Yekaterinburg and offered the services of a content manager and a specialist designer on one of the free classifieds sites.
It appears that Anastasia Zennikova decided to capitalize on her fame.
How Kustov became a fortune teller
Another interesting story: in a TV program, Kustov described his experience as an assistant to the director of the Rostov NPP. Say, then he allegedly predicted an accident at the station and even “saw” a possible culprit of the emergency. According to the psychic, it was about an accident that allegedly happened “many years ago.”
Life discovered that during this time Valery Kustov could not have been an employee of the station, as he worked at the 10th city polyclinic of Rostov-on-Don and at the same time practiced at the local private clinic “Family Doctor”.
Kustov officially appeared in state medical institutions in August 1999 – then he was listed as an employee of the departmental hospital of the North Caucasus Railway. He worked there for only 4 months and moved to the 10th polyclinic, where he was listed until December 2002.
In the “Family Doctor” he worked until the end of 2007, and for the next three years he did not officially work anywhere again. In January 2011, the psychic established an individual entrepreneur with activities in the field of scientific research, medicine, and physical culture and health procedures. In this capacity, he works to the present.
In the SPARK information system there are several records about the involvement of the psychic’s full namesake in three business projects in the 90s, two of them were registered in Rostov-on-Don, where Kustov is from, in 1992 and 1994, and one in St. Petersburg.
All firms were liquidated by the Federal Tax Service as inactive by 2014. It is no longer possible to understand what the Rostov companies OAO Vozrozhdenie and LLP Kub were doing.
Like any self-respecting magician, healer and psychic, Valery Kustov has a bunch of various diplomas and certificates. Most of them were signed by the late Yakov Galperin, a man who called himself the personal doctor of Joseph Stalin (while yesterday’s intern was only 26 years old when the Secretary General died), a well-known businessman from everything unknown, chairman of the board of the All-Russian Research Center for Traditional Folk Medicine “ENIOM “.
The center is known for making money by selling the services of fortune tellers, astrologers, palmists, massage therapists, energy channel cleaners, as well as various courses on meditation, spiritual practices. Including applied ones – for example, for 60 thousand rubles, anyone who wishes will be given a diploma of a healer. You don’t even need to ride anywhere – all classes are held via Skype or Zoom, and the diploma will arrive by mail.
Among them stands out the diploma of “Healer No. 1”, issued by the Ministry of Health of the Rostov Region in 2011. At that time, the regional Ministry of Health was headed by Tatyana Bykovskaya. Ten years later, she will become a defendant in a criminal case of abuse of power.
