‘Scamanda’ Is The Latest Riveting And Malignant Saga Of A Cancer Scammer
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Amanda C. Riley started her blog, “Lymphoma Can Suck It,” in 2012, after she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in her late 20s. On that blog and social media, in public speaking engagements and on the stage of her megachurch, Riley chronicled her cancer battle over more than seven years. The bubbly, charismatic Christian shared her heartbreaks and triumphs against the disease, inspiring thousands of people. They spread the word, and donations poured in — by the tens of thousands of dollars — to help cover her expensive medical treatments. People also helped with babysitting and donated gift cards, concert tickets and travel vouchers. Her fellow churchgoers celebrated her remissions as miracles and then prayed by the thousands for her recovery with each terrible relapse.
Riley had the support of family, friends, church congregants, cancer foundations, cancer patients and compassionate strangers.
What she didn’t have? Cancer.
Below this picture on her blog, Amanda Riley wrote, "This little inch tall bottle with 10mg of "liquid gold" is $12,500!"
In fact, as the new hit podcast “Scamanda” documents, she was faking it the whole time, scamming people for money and gifts to support a lavish lifestyle, basking in their accolades and kindheartedness. She preyed on people whose loved ones were ravaged by the disease, and she co-opted fundraisers for people who were genuinely sick. She even attended cancer patient support groups, learning details about their experiences and treatments to finesse her grift.
The podcast is hosted by British broadcaster Charlie Webster, who shares producing credits with Nancy Moscatiello, the journalist who spent years investigating and documenting the inconsistencies in Riley’s stories after receiving an anonymous tip. Moscatiello, whose sister died of cancer, later said, “It is infuriating to see a perfectly healthy person take on the plight of true warriors of cancer for financial gain and attention.”
“Scamanda” reveals Riley’s preposterous claims by reading from her own blog and interviewing her friends, some who were skeptical enough to cut ties. Her sheer audacity and commitment to the scam is staggering, and it’s almost impossible not to scream in disbelief at Riley’s lies: that her pregnancy was “reversing the cancer,” that she was terminally ill on and off for at least four years, that she had fluid drained from her brain one morning before swimming at her friend’s pool that afternoon; that she self-administered chemotherapy at home. There were so many giant red flags waving that listeners will be hooked as they try to make sense out of how anyone could believe her.
While Moscatiello and millions of others saw their loved ones become weak and frail as cancer ravaged their bodies and endured agonizing pain, Riley seemed to be the picture of health. She once shaved her head, but in the photos she shared of herself on social media and her blog over the seven-plus years of her scheme, she is radiant. When she traveled across the country to receive what she said was lifesaving but outrageously expensive treatment funded by her supporters, she posted sightseeing pictures, seemingly energetic and enjoying what at first glance looked like any other family vacation. According to one of Riley’s blog posts from that trip that is read on “Scamanda,” she saw “Wicked” on Broadway, the Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball and ice skaters circling by the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.
Riley also posted pictures of herself in hospital settings, with oxygen tubing wrapping around her rosy cheeks and catheters in (or attached to) her arm and chest, and with her head bald — while her eyebrows and eyelashes remained intact.
Amanda Riley poses with medical equipment under a blog post titled "Blessed Beyond Belief."
Among her many astounding claims is that she had terminal cancer and was receiving chemotherapy during two pregnancies, but she gave birth to healthy baby boys against the medical odds.
The few people close to her who did have doubts did not raise them publicly and were reluctant to speak to Moscatiello. If they did, Riley and her husband, Cory, retaliated. During the Rileys’ ugly fight for sole custody of his daughter, Jessa, Cory Riley railed against Jessa’s mother, Alita, for her belief that Riley was faking cancer, calling it “unconscionable.”
“It is appalling that she accuses us of engaging in an elaborate scheme to fake the horrible disease out of a selfish desire to rob the people closest to us,” he told the court in a statement read on “Scamanda.” “The accusation is the ultimate example of her completely irrational hostility towards me that clouds her thinking.”
The judge awarded the Rileys full custody of Jessa. The girl later complained that she felt like the couple’s full-time babysitter, feeding and caring for their younger sons while their mother feigned illness and their father was frequently absent.
Then Amanda Riley sued Moscatiello for harassment and requested a restraining order because the journalist was asking questions about whether Riley really had cancer. The intimidation tactic didn’t work: A judge threw out the case. Moscatiello wasn’t alone: The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California would later say that Riley “gave materially false testimony in several legal proceedings [and] attacked anyone who suggested she was malingering.”
Moscatiello had pored over Riley’s past blogs, monitored her social media updates and documented the donations she’d received, in cash and checks, gift cards, meal deliveries and travel for her purported medical treatment. Eventually her efforts, with the help of a local detective, persuaded the Internal Revenue Service to investigate. In July 2020, Riley was charged with wire fraud for using $100,000 in online donations to pay for personal expenses and in 2022 was sentenced to five years in federal prison.
"Feeling over anxious about starting my 7th (and final) go at a new treatment for this stupid disease," Amanda Riley wrote in a November 2015 blog post.
Since bingeing “Scamanda,” I’ve listened to other cancer scammer podcasts, read news articles and watched interviews. What’s surprising is how similar their cons are. Riley went to Disneyland and sashayed around New York City; Megan Bhari, who faked a brain tumor, spent months at a Disney World resort in Orlando, Florida. Riley met celebrities such as singer LeAnn Rimes and had guitars signed by Journey and Tower of Power for a fundraising auction; Bhari posed for photos with pop group One Direction. A friend of Coco Berthmann, a well-known human rights advocate who has said she was sex trafficked by her own mother, told the “Believable” podcast that Berthmann had claimed Celine Dion offered her a record contract years before she was charged in May 2022with felony communications fraud for pocketing thousands of dollars in donations after faking cancer. Belle Gibson faked cancer and became a “wellness guru” after falsely claiming that a healthy lifestyle had cured her, a Taiwanese fitness influencer accrued sponsorships as a dedicated weightlifter during the three years she falsely claimed she had cancer and college student Maddie Russoregularly golfed despite falsely telling her TikTok followers she had two forms of cancer and a tumor on her spine.
In fact, there’s psychology behind the phenomenon of people faking cancer or other diseases. People with Munchausen’s syndrome, or factitious disorder, pretend to have symptoms in order to receive medical treatment and often deliberately make themselves ill. In HuffPost interviews, a psychiatrist and a psychologist noted that there is a difference between the mental disorder and malingering, which involves fabricating or exaggerating illnesses for practical gains — money from crowdfunding or to escape punishment, for example.
A picture from Amanda Riley's blog in which she thanks her supporters for donating gift cards.
As compelling as “Scamanda” is, it is also frustrating. The timeline is confusing, jumping around from past to recent, and it’s often not clear what period in Riley’s life is being discussed. Adding to the confusion are segments that are repetitive and inadequate introductions (and reintroductions) of people being interviewed and their relationship to Riley and one another. It doesn’t help that most of the contributors are white women with similar voices and that some have chosen to remain anonymous for various reasons. Riley and her husband and relatives declined to participate, and the podcasters’ lack of access and a thorough investigation resulted in huge gaps in the storytelling. It is a stark contrast to, for example, the rigorous yearslong investigation by journalist Jamie Bartlett and producer Ruth Mayer for their podcast “Believe in Magic,” which carefully unpacks the story of teenage cancer scammer Bhari and the charity she set up. What’s more, Moscatiello and Webster failed to examine Riley’s motives, how she pulled off the scam for so long and what effect her actions had on so many people.
Newer “bonus” episodes, which include interviews with Riley’s college classmates, a co-worker at the school where she was later hired as a principal (without any credentials) and Moscatiello, offer more detail but also demonstrate how much is still missing from the story.
Nor does “Scamanda” examine the phenomenon of “cancer scammers” and the role internet sleuths — like Moscatiello herself — have played in exposing them in multiple cases. Up until a bonus episode with Moscatiello, Webster is embarrassingly oblivious about how easy it is to purchase medical equipment, obscure the names on bottles of medication, fabricate medical documents and receive medical treatment by lying to doctors. To persuade a friend who was questioning her illness after Riley’s legal problems became public a few years ago, Riley FaceTimed them while receiving an IV infusion that she claimed was chemotherapy. Webster seemed utterly mystified how she could pull this off, despite the fact that medical spas have offered IV vitamin and hydration infusions for years.
A screenshot of Amanda Riley's fundraising page is included in the criminal complaint against her.
But Webster wasn’t alone in her disbelief. Even after authorities raided the Rileys’ home and later charged Riley with felony wire fraud for soliciting money for a nonexistent disease, many of her supporters refused to believe that she had been lying. A friend told “Scamanda” that Riley admitted she was wrong — not for faking cancer but for not realizing she had to pay taxes on the donations she had received. She said it would soon be resolved.
“I think I went directly back into the mindset of ‘Can’t this girl get a break? Can’t people leave her alone?’ Isn’t she dealing with enough already?” a friend of Riley’s told “Scamanda.” “The whole thing was so elaborate, so intricate, that I couldn’t fathom that this was a scheme, because who can put that much devotion and time and effort into such a huge, successful lie. Mind-boggling.”
In a bonus episode of “Scamanda,” Webster said that people who attended Riley’s sentencing “believed her right down to the last minute.”
“It was so confusing” to her victims, Webster said. “Not just why somebody would do this, but the Amanda that they knew would never do this.”
Perhaps that’s why cancer scams are so successful. People want to believe in the goodness of others. In a twisted way, the successful scammers’ behavior is altruistic: They comfort people with cancer and raise awareness by supporting and publicizing cancer charities and other organizations. At age 16 and supposedly ill herself, Megan Bhari created her Believe in Magic charity to grant “wishes” — like meeting One Direction — to terminally ill children. The scammers’ “miraculous” recoveries offer hope to people with terrible diseases and those who are caring for them. The hoaxers’ joyful enthusiasm is inspiring, and they are applauded for their courage and positivity even when they “relapse” or receive poor prognoses. They never fail to express their gratitude — in speeches, on social media and in their blogs — for the gifts they’ve been given.
But, of course, these are gifts that could be helping people who are actually ill.
“You preyed on the kindness and goodwill of innocent, loving people for over seven years,” Judge Beth Labson Freeman said before handing down her sentence. “You invaded the sanctity of communities and grieving members of support groups. … You defrauded people of their money, of their goodwill, of their beliefs. You sought goodwill and assistance from your neighbors, from the church, from cancer, support groups, all as a ruse to support your own lifestyle. This included deception and theft, forged medical records, preying on the goodwill of strangers, friends and family and the significant impact on victims.”
