Cancer scammer conned husband and family out of $438K in elaborate con

A woman has been jailed after lying about having terminal brain cancer and using the £250,000 (AU $438K) she received as donations from her family to buy herself luxury goods, it has been claimed.

According to the Daily Mirror, Jasmin Mistry, 36, convinced her loved ones, including her husband Vijay Katechia, 40, that she needed the money to fund treatment in the US – and her deception went on for a staggering four years.

Now her devastated husband has reportedly told a court he will “never recover” from the heartbreak.

The news outlet reports that Mistry, from Leicester, UK, fooled 28 people into believing she would be having expensive proton beam therapy. Her husband only found out the truth when he later showed a ‘scan’ to a doctor he knew, who apparently realised it had been lifted from Google, a court heard.

Mistry went as far as to post a photo on Facebook with a Stand Up To Cancer logo on. She was finally jailed on Friday for four years after admitting fraud by false representation.

Her husband reportedly said in his victim impact statement: “This has totally ruined my faith in humanity. Psychologically and emotionally, it’s something I will never recover from.”

The couple first met on an Indian dating site in 2012, before marrying just six months later. However, it’s claimed she began her con on their honeymoon and started to complain of severe headaches.

Mistry allegedly later told her husband that a doctor had ‘found tumours in her spine’. From there, she is said to have created a web of lies including creating a fake online account of a supposed ‘doctor’ to message her husband.

While she pretended to go into remission, she then continued the scam by telling her spouse she’d been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

Her mother and siblings donated money to her and she shockingly also tried to draw single men in on dating sites too, with one even handing over £66,000. She reportedly later messaged him as someone else from another account, claiming she’d died.

Police are said to have later found out she spent the money on Prada and Chanel handbags.

Judge Judith Hughes reportedly told her in court: “This is a terrible crime. To tell everybody you have cancer and take money from them… It’s an awful situation.”

Sadly she’s not the first to try scamming loved ones out of their money by pretending to have cancer.

Aussie Belle Gibson made a huge name for herself after claiming to the world in a series of inspirational blogs that she was battling brain cancer – before going on to say she had found a natural cure for it.

But it was all a lie, and it was later revealed the disgraced lifestyle blogger, 26, had duped thousands of Aussies – as she never had cancer at all.

She was fined $410,000 in September 2017 for five contraventions of Australian Consumer Law.

Read more: Cancer faker Belle Gibson ‘still hasn’t paid $410k fine’ for duping Aussies

Gibson previously claimed natural therapists had duped her into believing she had inoperable brain cancer. While she is said to have received $440,500 from her media sales, she only donated about $10,000 of that to charity.

What do you think of this story? Have you ever fallen victim to a scam?