California woman collected $100k from fake cancer fundraising

(NewsNation) — A California woman claiming to have cancer scammed more than 300 family members, friends and strangers out of roughly $105,000 for fake cancer treatments.

She has now been sentenced to five years in prison.

Amanda Christine Riley, 36, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in October. Her lie was uncovered after the Internal Revenue Service began investigating her in 2019, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.

Riley's seven-year scam involved her shaving her head, falsifying medical records and forging doctors' signatures to convince 349 different people and organizations that she had Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system.

Riley even went as far as suing one person who suggested she was faking...