Crime
Indian-origin Woman Jailed in UK for 4 Years for Cancer Lie
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The woman was caught when her ex-husband showed a "scan" of her brain to a doctor friend, who told him it had been lifted from Google.
An Indian-origin woman has been jailed in the UK for four years for faking brain cancer and conning her former husband’s family of over £ 250,000.
According to reports, the woman admitted to lying to her family and friends about suffering from terminal brain cancer and extracting money from them for ‘’treatment.’’
In 2013, Jasmin Mistry told her then-husband, Vijay Katechia, that she had cancer, along with a supporting WhatsApp message what he thought was her doctor, PTI reported.
Investigations later revealed that the message had been sent by her using a different SIM card.
At the end of Dec. 2014, she told her ex-husband that her severe brain cancer meant she had just six months to live, with further messages from another fictitious doctor suggesting that it could be treated in America – at a cost of around £5,00,000, the news agency reported.
Katechia, his family, and members of the public went on to be conned out of money over a two-year period between 2015-2017 in the form of donations they thought she needed for her treatments.
Mistry’s ex-husband became suspicious when a friend of his saw a picture of a brain scan she had said was taken at one of her consultations.
The plot was finally unraveled after her ex-husband showed a “scan” to a doctor friend, who told him it had been lifted from Google, PTI wrote.
Katechia also discovered SIM cards Mistry used to send messages pretending to be other people, and when confronting her she admitted that she had lied.
Mistry,36, was arrested Nov. 2017 and pleaded guilty.
During investigations, she told police officers, that she was not terminally ill and that she did not know why she had lied, according to Met Police reports.
It was found that 20 members of her extended family and eight others were found to have given her money. The total fraud amount was calculated as £2,53,122.
Mistry, a medical secretary from Loughborough town in the Midlands region of England, was convicted of fraud by false representation and jailed for four years at Snaresbrook Crown Court last week, PTI reported.
Mistry, described in court as a “pathological liar,” created a fake online account of a fictitious doctor to message her husband and also posted “Stand up to cancer” messages on social media.
“This is a terrible crime. To tell everybody you have cancer and take money from them… It’s an awful situation,” Judge Judith Hughes told Mistry in court during the hearing.
The investigators found that she had used the money she was handed over for treatment by unsuspecting family members, including her mother-in-law and sister-in-law, and others on fancy designer handbags, according to the news agency.
Quoting from the court hearing, PTI also wrote that Mistry had defrauded a man she met through a dating website out of nearly £7,500, and two members of the public to whom she lied about being a trader who could invest their money, and who gave around £10,000.