A Brazilian woman has been arrested after tricking her mother, Genevieve Boghici, into handing over a painting worth over $82-million.

Genevieve's husband was an art collector who had amassed a very impressive art collection over his lifetime, but their daughter, Sabine, managed to get her hands on it.

The artwork in question was Sol Poente by Tarsila do Amaral (1949) and had previously been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Sabine's sneaky strategy involved bribing a psychic to tell her mother that the painting was cursed and needed to be removed for a cleansing.

The mother allowed for the painting to be removed (aka stolen), and it was never returned. The mother's shock can be summed up by Edvard Munch's The Scream painting. Sabine got her mother's trust by providing a psychic with personal details about her, and therefore "proving" her abilities to be real.

The daughter even went around to various other psychics using the same strategy, and managed to swindle her mum via money transfers for 'spiritual treatment.'

The mother clocked onto the thieving operation after sixteen paintings were stolen and millions of dollars in jewellery.

Locals grew suspicious when they saw a woman wearing fifty kilos of pearl necklaces.

Genevieve reported the crime to police and Sabine was then arrested, along with seven others involved in the operation, no doubt including those psychics. No word yet on whether they predicted their own demise.