There are good people in the world
.
Empathetic, with a good heart.
We see a lot in the news and in the networks to the other kind of person and we believe that they are the majority, but it is not like that or at least they are not the ones that matter.
All or almost all scams are aimed at these people.
to the good
Especially those hoaxes that appeal to solidarity.
They are the deceptions that are most difficult to understand.
The ones that provoke the most indignation.
One
of those cases occurred in Iowa, in the United States, where a 19-year-old girl
managed to get hundreds of people to donate money
to her fight against cancer.
But it was all a hoax.
And finally they caught her.
The young woman showed her "battle" on social networks.
The woman, who goes by Madison “Maddie” Russo, showed on TikTok her tough “battle” against
pancreatic cancer and a
“football-sized” tumor as cover for her scam.
Almost 40 thousand dollars and up to 10 years in prison
Thus, he got hundreds of people to donate money to him through GoFundMe.
The girl
went on to accumulate more than $37,000
before her facade came down.
Russo was arrested Jan. 23 on one count of first-degree robbery, a felony in Iowa punishable by
up to 10 years in prison
, according to the Eldridge Police Department.
Police said Russo
faked stage 2 pancreatic cancer
, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, "and a football-sized tumor that was wrapping around his spine."
The young woman showed her "battle" on social networks.
The scammer had raised $37,303 from
more than 439 unsuspecting donors.
In addition, Russo
gave talks about his fabricated health struggles
at St. Ambrose University, where he was a student, and at the Chicago-based nonprofit National Pancreatic Foundation.
Russo also
appeared once on the Project Purple podcast
, where they described the situation as "unfortunate" and justified the woman's appearance on the show by saying that at the time there was "no reason not to believe Maddie's story."
The beginning of the end
Russo's story began to unravel on January 11, when anonymous people claiming to be medical professionals reported that they noticed " a
lot of medical discrepancies"
in the teen's social media posts.
At the same time, several TikTok users who viewed Russo's videos documenting his cancer treatments noted that some of
his medical equipment and location didn't look right
.
The young woman was arrested and could receive a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
Investigators said Russo also
stole photos shared online by real cancer patients
and presented them as his own.
When police executed
a search warrant at Russo's
Bettendorf apartment, they seized a brown paper bag containing medical supplies, an IV stand with a feeding pump filled with cotton swabs, a wig, and nausea pills in her name. from a relative.
Investigators also requested Russo's medical records and found that the teen
has never been diagnosed with any type of cancer
or tumor at any of the medical facilities in the area where she has been a patient.
In an October 2022 interview with the North Scott Press, Russo claimed that he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on February 10, and leukemia a few months later.
“I remember hanging up the phone and I
was a mess
,” she told the news.
"I was literally in tears but somehow ended up working up the courage to wipe my tears away and went back to class, which was pretty crazy now when I think about it."
The young woman created a GoFundMe account to collect donations.
Russo said doctors
gave him an 11% survival rate
for five years, before discovering the supposedly inoperable massive tumor in his spine.
Russo stated in the interview that between February and October of last year, he underwent
15 rounds of chemotherapy and 90 rounds of radiation.
“Life has been crazy,” he said.
“It's like a Catch-22.
I can't win by losing.
I feel like I've been shaken to the core
and right now everything is a bit uncertain.
I just want to know my game plan, and right now, I don't know what that is."
The young woman participated in campaigns.
GoFundMe addressed the scam in a statement to McClatchy News, saying the site has "a
zero tolerance policy for
misuse of our platform and cooperates with law enforcement investigations of those accused of wrongdoing."
Everyone who has donated to Russo's fundraiser
has been refunded
and Russo was banned from GoFundMe.
The young woman studied at the university, where she gave talks about her "fight."
One of Russo's campaign donors told station KWQC she
was "shocked
" when she learned of the teen's arrest.
Russo was released from jail on a $10 bond just four hours after her arrest.
She is due back in court on March 2.
Source: New York Post
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