Every year, hundreds of Russians report that they have been hypnotized out of their money by gypsies. All across Moscow, an ancient idea harking back to crystal balls and gypsy curses shows up in the crime logs, victims who say they were seduced out of their money in what seem like chance encounters with strangers. Most claim they were hypnotized by intense stares, mesmerizing words and warnings of curses on their loved ones.

Cynical Russian detectives, who have their hands full with Mafia assassinations and billion dollar fraud cases, find the very idea of street hypnosis absurd. But Russians are raised on folk tales of vampires, witches - and, in this era of parapsychology, the hidden powers of the mind.

Consider these events from Russian history: Czarina Alexandra fell under the influence of the hypnotic powers of the mad monk Rasputin, in the early 20th century. The late Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had a personal psychic healer, Former President Boris Yeltsin's staff included a security consultant hired to protect the former chief executive from "external psychophysical influence" after an unidentified antenna, probably a psychotronic generator, was found in his private office.

For some time now, Russian chess masters have reported that their games were impaired by hypnotists planted in the audience. Garry Kasparov has long insisted that the Azerbaijani psychic Tofik Dadashev helped him win the world chess championship in 1985. His opponent had his own psychologist trained in hypnotic techniques.

As far as the street fraud goes, some of the gypsies have honed their hypnosis skills to perfection - they have been pulling these kinds of confidence tricks on people for centuries, for generations.

Many psychic investigators say they are certain that some suspension of logical thought is involved here. After all, how could a person operating with all of his mental faculties agree with a plan under which all of the money he saved during his entire life should be given to these people in the street?

Russian police have made a few arrests among the close-knit, secretive gypsy community. Ethnic Russians are involved sometimes, usually as accomplices who show up to swear to the gypsy's curse-lifting abilities.