Woman Faked Cancer, Conned Husband's Family Out Of $300,000

A court in the United Kingdom sentenced a woman to four years of imprisonment Friday after she was found guilty of defrauding her husband and family members out of over £250,000 ($314, 621) by pretending to have terminal brain cancer.

In 2013, Jasmin Mistry, 36, told her then-husband, Vijay Katechia, that she was suffering from cancer. In order to add credibility to the false diagnosis, she used a different SIM to message him pretending to be a doctor.

The following year, she told her husband she was serious and had just six months to live. She sent him further messages posing as another doctor who said she could be treated in the United States and that it would cost around £500,000 ($629,572).

Katechia then began to raise money for her treatment and asked his family and friends for donations. However, he became suspicious when a friend of his saw the photograph of one of Mistry’s brain scans and found the same photo on google that explained "the tumor was so severe that it would be fatal for the person with it,” Telegraph reported.

Katechia also discovered the SIM cards she used to send him messages pretending to be the doctors. When confronted, Mistry admitted to having lied about the disease. However, by then she had collected over $314, 621 from the man and other family members. Post this, the couple got divorced

She was arrested in November 2017 and charged of fraud by false representation. When interviewed by investigators, Mistry said she did not know why she lied. Her medical records were reviewed which confirmed she never suffered the illness.

"I am glad for the victims of this deceit that they have seen justice. Jasmine Mistry went to extreme lengths to manipulate those closest to her emotionally and financially to defraud her now-former husband and his family out of a large sum of money. This is a bizarre, shocking case. Our investigation revealed the scale of the fraud and the severity of the offending which has resulted in a substantial custodial sentence,” detective constable Jon Bounds said.

Mistry and Katechia met through a dating site and got married in 2013. During their honeymoon, she pretended to be suffering from severe headaches and later claimed that doctors had found a cancerous tumor.

“She displayed to her husband the apparent symptoms – trips to the toilet to vomit, describing blood in her stools, requiring help walking up and down stairs. The defendant has plainly done some research,” prosecutor James Benson said.

While summarizing the victim’s statement, he added, “He says he was deeply in love with the defendant and being told she was alive after being told she had died came as a ‘total shock’.”

Reading his victim impact ­statement in court, Katechia said, “This has totally ruined my faith in humanity. Psychologically and emotionally, it’s something I will never recover from. She’s a real risk to the public and I would not wish for any individual to suffer what we have,” Mirror reported.