Mullah Landay’s career in deception began in Maimana, the provincial capital. There, he first collected fees from people seeking to use a public toilet, said Noor Mohammed, the tribal elder from his village. But he may have seen an opportunity in the superstition on display around the corner: People would come to hammer nails to a tree, a practice believed to cure toothaches.

Mullah Landay moved away from the toilet, put down a small rug and started reading palms. From there, he expanded to amulet writing, a superstitious healing practice in which papers inscribed with religious phrases are enclosed in jewelry and worn around a person’s neck or arm to cure their problems.

He specialized in offering to cure women who were unable to have children, reassuring them by using other women, one of them a police officer, to promote his services.

“He had developed a group that spread the word and brought people to him,” Mr. Fayeq said. “He would first give amulets, then he would say, ‘Bring a chicken,’ and next visit, a sheep. When their problem still wouldn’t be solved, he would say, ‘Now there is one more thing for me to do,’ and he would do. That’s what the people we have arrested have said.”

Mullah Landay and his accomplices would then blackmail the women for regular payments. But his scheme was turned against him when a local strongman found out about it, barged into his house with two armed guards and took his phone and videos, Mr. Selab said.

“They demanded about $2,500 a month from him,” Mr. Selab said. “Rasool Landay paid about $700 at first, and then he couldn’t make the payments. So they started releasing the videos.”