From The Guardian:

“Anyone following her updates online could see that Mandy Wilson had been having a terrible few years. She was diagnosed with leukaemia at 37, shortly after her husband abandoned her to bring up their five-year-old daughter and baby son on her own. Chemotherapy damaged her immune system, liver and heart so badly she eventually had a stroke and went into a coma. She spent weeks recovering in intensive care where nurses treated her roughly, leaving her covered in bruises.

“Mandy was frightened and vulnerable, but she wasn’t alone. As she suffered at home in Australia, women offered their support throughout America, Britain, New Zealand and Canada. She’d been posting on a website called Connected Moms, a paid online community for mothers, and its members were following every detail of her progress – through updates posted by Mandy herself, and also by Gemma, Sophie, Pete and Janet, Mandy’s real-life friends, who’d pass on news whenever she was too weak. The virtual community rallied round through three painful years of surgeries, seizures and life-threatening infections. Until March this year, when one of them discovered Mandy wasn’t sick at all. Gemma, Sophie, Pete and Janet had never existed. Mandy had made up the whole story.”

Apparently Mandy is a strange, but not so uncommon, variety of internet scam artist, one who uses the anonymity of the online community to steal, not money, not identities, but sympathy, compassion, and time from the most generous and trusting of people across the globe by pretending to be sick. Continue reading →