Single mom of two fakes cancer to scam community out of $60k
A single mother in New York has been accused by her friends of scamming the community out of $60,000 by claiming that she had cancer.
A single mother in New York has been accused by her friends of scamming the community out of $60,000 by claiming that she had cancer.
Shivonie Deokaran, the mother of two teenage boys, posted a GoFundMe page online saying that she had leukemia and that she only had 18 months to live. She asked for donations to help pay for her “mounting medical bills,” but the site has since been taken down.
As donations poured in, even Town Supervisor Paul Feiner offered to help, raising $12,000 in addition to the $25,000 raised on the GoFundMe page. Then, in November, Deokaran’s son’s football team held a fundraiser that raked in $16,000.
Hospital worker, wife accused of stealing patient IDs in $300K scam
However, when police asked for medical records in order to prove Deokaran’s diagnosis, they said that she closed down her restaurant and moved away to Florida.
“It’s an open investigation,” Ardsley Police Officer Tony Vacca told Inside Edition on Monday. “That’s all we can elaborate on. We don’t want to jeopardize the case.”
However, Deokaran’s boyfriend, Nikhlesh Parekh, insisted that Deokaran had moved to Florida in order to receive treatment, saying that she was in fact dying but had stopped chemotherapy and had moved to Florida in order to pursue other treatments for her illness.
St. Louis jury awards Alabama woman $72M in Johnson & Johnson cancer suit
