Cancer-faking mom swindled strangers into giving her $100k — now her victims are speaking out: ‘This isn’t right’
Amanda Christine Riley defrauded kind-hearted strangers by faking cancer — now, her elaborate hoax is the subject of a new docuseries.
Riley, 39, was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to soliciting more than $100,000 in donations for medical treatments she never received nor required, a scam that began more than a decade ago.
The four-part ABC News Studio docuseries titled “Scamanda,” based on the podcast of the same name, will follow the story of Riley, a Christian blogger who launched a blog titled “Lymphoma Can Suck It,” where she falsely claimed she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
In 2012, the mom-of-two conjured up the story of a cancer journey and solicited funds from more than 300 people totaling $105,513.
She also received free gifts, babysitting services, trips and more.
At the time, Riley, a new mom, was an active member of her church, and the news of her cancer diagnosis was devastating.
“This came on suddenly, it came on hard,” church member Lindsey Wilder told ABC News. “And she didn’t deserve to be going through something so hard.”
She wrote about her cancer treatment on her blog, which became wildly popular and yielded support from her community, and eventually revealed she was pregnant with her second child — a miracle for someone with an IUD and undergoing chemotherapy.
“After all this chemo and radiation she had, she’s pregnant,” Mahasti Ameli, Riley’s babysitter, told ABC News. “I said, ‘Amanda, what’s happening now with you being pregnant?’ Oh, my doctor said I could stop the chemo and radiation or anything that is for my cancer till the baby’s born. And then we could start again.”
Riley claimed her doctors would allow her to pause her treatment while pregnant until after she gave birth, at which time, the expenses from her medical treatment and other financial burdens forced the family to declare bankruptcy.
That’s when donations poured in.
“At some point, I started reading her blog. She’s posting pictures and I just was surprised seeing all the attention that she’s getting for it,” Lisa Berry, a former friend of Riley’s, told ABC News. “There was just something inside of me just saying this isn’t right.”
Berry grew increasingly suspicious when Riley went swimming immediately after she allegedly “had fluid drained off her brain.”
“I knew that wasn’t right,” Berry said. “And I start going through my mind and thinking about all the stories she told me.”
In 2015, Berry anonymously contacted investigative producer Nancy Moscatiello, who was looking for scam stories to bring to light as part of a new TV show. She took Riley’s accounts to multiple hospitals that highlighted inconsistencies in her story, prompting Moscatiello to present the case to the Internal Revenue Service.
In 2020, Riley was charged with wire fraud, and two years later, she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison.
While Riley was convicted of swindling 349 people and entities out of $105,513.43, Moscatiello claimed on Reddit that she traced an additional $80,000 that was not received through cash donations.
“I know some of her friends in the medical field have beaten themselves up after hearing the podcast and feel terrible they didn’t suspect anything,” Moscatiello explained in a Reddit forum dedicated to answering queries about Riley.
“Some weren’t reading the blog because they were seeing her all the time and getting direct updates — so they didn’t see some of the more ridiculous claims she was making about treatment to the public.”
In her first 18 months in lock-up, Riley visited the emergency room two dozen times for various ailments such as chest pains, rapid heartbeat and a cut on her head, The Guardian reported. Her attorneys said her frequent hospital visits were reasons to end or reduce her sentence, arguing that her health issues could be better handled out of prison.
At the time, assistant US attorney Michael Pitman said that multiple medical professionals claimed Riley would attempt to manipulate test results to seem sicker than she was, the outlet reported. The healthcare workers caught her “holding her breath during an oxygen saturation test” or purposefully stressing out her body to increase her heart rate, per The Guardian.
“Perhaps not surprisingly, however, defendant’s medical records make clear that she does not actually suffer from any acute health problems at all,” Pitman wrote in court documents.
He also noted that a myriad of healthcare experts suspected that Riley “exhibited symptoms of Münchausen syndrome,” also known as “fictitious disorder.”
Riley was released from a Texas prison in December 2024 and was transferred to a Southern California reentry center to complete her sentence. She is scheduled to be released on Dec. 4, 2025.
“Scamanda” premiered on Jan. 30 at 9 p.m. ET and will air on ABC every Thursday with next-day streaming on Hulu.
