Cancer survivor speaks out after Melissa Quinn was exposed a fake

It’s been one month since, Melissa Quinn was exposed a fake for conning her friends and family into believing she had just months to live. 

It is alleged, the mother-of-four first started to tell her friends and family she had tumours in her legs and brain in 2014 and began raising money for an all-expenses paid trip to the United States for life-saving surgery. 

Cricket Australia and high profile players, including former Test captain Michael Clarke, were involved in fundraising efforts.

Cancer survivor Lorraine Webber didn’t hesitate to donate from her business when she heard about Quinn’s struggle.

Speaking on A Current Affair on Monday night Webber said, “I still can’t believe it, I can’t believe someone would lie like that about something so serious. Cancer is such a serious painful thing, I just can’t believe it.”

All up, the local community raised more than $45,000 for Quinn to travel for treatment, but it was all a lie. 

Quinn was finally caught out, after presenting a doctor’s certificate to her work which was sent from a Gmail account. Her colleagues became suspicious of the certificate’s authenticity and when they contacted the doctor to check, the doctor confirmed he did not write the email. 

In March, the mother-of-four was arrested and charged with dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception, making a false document to obtain financial advantage and using false documents to obtain financial advantage.

When she was arrested, Quinn confessed she’d made the whole thing up. When A Current Affair caught up with her, she couldn’t give any reason why she lied to everyone, including her own kids.

Read more: Voice from Belle Gibson’s past speaks out: ‘I created a monster’

It’s been three years since Belle Gibson was exposed as a fraud, and two months since she was fined $410,000 for conning publishers, the media, and her public admirers into believing her claims of having discovered a natural way to beat cancer.

Gibson amassed a huge social media following with her claims that she was diagnosed with brain cancer and given just months to live, but caused her cancer to miraculously disappear after taking up a healthy diet and alternative therapies. Her fame won her a book contract with Penguin, but the book The Whole Pantry was pulped and an accompanying app scrapped after it emerged that her claims were false. 

What do you think? Do you remember this scandal?