Deceitful woman faked cancer for seven years to swindle £85,000 in donations

dailystar.co.uk:

jailed for five years.Amanda Christine Riley pleaded guilty to soliciting more than $100,000 (£80,000) in donations to pay for cancer treatments she never received and didn't even need.

The 37-year-old, originally from California, was living in San Jose at the time of her scam and has been ordered to return the money to those she swindled, and will be placed under supervision for three years after her release.Court documents argued that Riley had started the claim online in 2012, saying she had Hodgkin's lymphoma and tried soliciting donations to cover medical expenses.Riley had even created social media accounts to document her battle with cancer, a blog named Lymphoma Can Suck It and shaved her hair off to keep the ruse going.The donations, totalling $105,513 (£84,399), were deposited into her personal bank accounts and were used to pay for her living expenses.Her scheme was discovered by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2019, with Riley being charged with one count of wire fraud in July 202, which she pleaded guilty to last October.Riley alleged she had been diagnosed with cancer in June 2012 and had a brief remission the following year before the lymphoma returned "with a vengeance" as a stage-four metastatic cancer.Documents show that Riley had received donations from her friends, family and members of her church, as well as fundraisers including a Facebook challenge, CrossFit fundraiser, eBay auctions and a Christmas ornament sale.Riley had even gone as far as to sue one person who doubted her diagnosis, with the 37-year-old convincing her family that she had cancer, the Mail reports.Judge Freeman sentenced Riley to five years in prison, ordered her to pay the full amount of $105,513 (£84,399) back to those.