Amanda Riley is so well known for scamming people with her lies about having terminal cancer that she’s picked up the nickname Scamanda—which is also the title of a popular true-crime podcast about her adventures in defrauding people by preying on their sympathies.
In 2022, she pleaded guilty to defrauding people who donated a total of over $100,000 to her after she pretended to be deathly ill for eight years. She had claimed to be diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and used social media to fundraise for her “treatment.” She flooded social media with pictures of herself in the hospital and pictures of all the medications she had to take. She even went as far as to hold several in-person fundraising events. That was all proven to be a lie, and she was slapped with a five-year prison stint.
But now, only 18 months into her prison time, prosecutors say that she’s fabricated a series of new illnesses and injuries, from chest pains to head trauma. According to the prosecutors and healthcare professionals, Riley has been manipulating tests and faking symptoms to make it seem like she has serious health problems.
Notes from medical records show that healthcare professionals examining her have, on multiple occasions, witnessed Amanda purposely skewing results with methods like holding her breath during an oxygen saturation test and messing with an infusion pump that was administering potassium.
Prosecutors say it could be Munchausen syndrome, which is a very official-sounding way of saying that she’s taking it for attention. But Amanda’s lawyers say the ailments are all real, actually. Just ignore her history of making shit up all the time. They say these new ailments are so real that she needs the kind of close medical observation you can only get when you’re not in prison.
US District Judge Beth Labson Freeman isn’t buying it. Even if Riley’s new health problems were real, they weren’t bad enough to warrant early release. So, unless she somehow finds a way to fake spontaneous combustion, it doesn’t look like she’s getting out anytime soon.
The post Cancer-Faker ‘Scamanda’ Is Still Scamming From Prison—After Defrauding $100,000 in Donations appeared first on VICE.
The post Cancer-Faker ‘Scamanda’ Is Still Scamming From Prison—After Defrauding $100,000 in Donations appeared first on VICE.
