Brandi Weaver-Gates of Bellefonte, conned people into believing she had the disease for two years, producing fake medical bills and even shaving her head to make it appear she had undergone chemotherapy, prosecutors said.
Advertisement
A 24-year-old Pennsylvania woman has been sentenced to up to four years in prison for conning her family, friends and strangers into believing she had cancer while she pocketed $30,000 in donations.
According to Daily mail, she posted this after receiving the money.
“Many, many people have been affected by cancer and when someone takes advantage of that to make money as fraud in a calculated and elaborate way, it is incomprehensible”, prosecutor Stacy Parks Miller told the Centre Daily Times last month when the former Miss Pennsylvania U.S. global pageant victor pleaded guilty.
“Her callousness evidenced an unusually cruel scheme to defraud people who were at their most vulnerable, friends and relatives of real cancer survivors”, the district attorney told People. They hosted fundraisers in her honor, drove her to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for treatment, and even had her carried across the finish line of a race.
Weaver-Gates, who claimed she had faked the illness to get more attention from her family, pleaded guilty to theft by deception and receiving stolen property last month.
Brandi Weaver-Gates must pay back all $30,000 as restitution.
CNN reached out to Weaver-Gates’ lawyer, Deborah Lux, but did not receive an immediate response.
“She’s liberated from the lies she’s been living”.
Advertisement
She has been in jail since August 2015, which will count toward her sentence.
