Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - She Faked Having Cancer - The Jenny Cataldo Story

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Jenny Cataldo spun a long, emotional hoax by pretending she had terminal cancer, complete with shaved-head photos, fake medical stories, and tearful updates that pulled friends, coworkers, and strangers into her invented struggle. Over several years she accepted money, gifts, and donations from people who genuinely believed they were helping her survive, until inconsistencies in her claims triggered suspicion and investigators discovered there was no cancer diagnosis at all.

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Some people are just disgusting human beings. Specifically, I'm talking about this woman, Jenny. And Jenny, she's around 34 years old when this story starts, and she's living in Alabama, and Jenny has a problem. She's addicted to prescription pills, specifically painkillers, like she takes 30 to 40 percocet a day. And I'm assuming she gets all of them illegally. The problem with that is that a habit like this is expensive,

and she needs to find a way to come. come up with some money. And so one day, around 2014, she comes up with an insane idea. She'll just tell people she has cancer. And maybe they'll feel bad for her and they'll donate money to her. And that's what she does. She starts telling people around her this crazy story about how one day she went to the doctor for a biopsy and either the doctor or the nurse used instruments on her that weren't properly sterilized. And because of that, she got sepsis, which is your body having a bad reaction to an infection. And then she says that sepsis somehow turned into cancer.

I'm not even sure if that's how sepsis even works, but this is what she's telling people. So she's posting about this stuff on her Facebook and just blasting it out to everyone. But here's the craziest part. She doesn't just tell her friends and acquaintances. She tells her own husband that she has cancer and her kid. Like she legit goes to her six-year-old son and is like, By the way, mommy's dying. But anyway, this actually works, and it works well.

People believe her, and they give her all kinds of sympathy. And now that she has their attention, it's time for her to start collecting money from them. So she goes and she launches some fundraisers. Jenny sets up a go-fund me to help pay for her medical bills she claims she has. And of course, everyone just feels bad for her and they start donating. And they're sharing the go-fund-me on their social media and local churches get involved. And of course they fall for it, and they're encouraging everyone in the congregation to donate, and so the money starts coming in.

And she also starts another GoFundMe called Mom Has Terminal Cancer Disney Trip, where on it, she literally states, I would like to experience Disney World with my six-year-old son before I die within the year. And people feel bad, and they donate to that as well. So these two GoFundMe's alone raise 38,000. And that's a lot of money, but $38,000 is not enough for Jenny. She wants more. So she starts hitting up close friends and family members and she practically begs them for private donations.

And I guess the churches she works with have online prayer groups. So she'll message the prayer groups with prayers, but the prayers are like, Dear Jesus, I need money for my cancer treatment, which is hinting to the rest of the group that she needs money. And so a lot of them read her prayers and they start giving money to her. And to these people's credit, they really do pull through for her. They donate, they pay her utility bills for her, they pay her phone for her, they pay her mortgage for her, they pay for her and her family to take a trip to Chattanooga, they cover the hotel, they even pay for a scooter rental because she claims she can't walk far. Also, yes, Ginny does end up getting that trip to Disney World. And like one very generous friend ends up sending her $23,000.

Damn. Now, of course, a ton of this money goes to fund Jenny's painkiller habit, 30 to 40 percocets a day or whatever. But a lot of it goes to pay for mundane everyday stuff. Like, she's not buying herself watches and a new BMW. She's ordering stuff off of Amazon, and she's using some of it to pay her bills, and she'll often go out to dinner at a nice restaurant,

but nothing too crazy. Now, Jenny goes to great lengths to make sure her lives are believable. Like she tells people that she has multiple tumors in her brain and abdomen. She says that she's on dialysis. She even gets her mom, her own mom, to give her a ride to the hospital sometimes for made-up medical appointments. And mom never goes into the hospital with her. I guess she just drops her off outside.

Now, what Jenny actually does with her time while she's supposed to be at a medical appointment? I have no idea. Oh, but it gets even worse. As if lying about having cancer isn't bad enough, Jenny starts lying about her son too. She tells her friends that her son has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and that he needs a bone marrow transplant really bad. And so, of course, people start donating money to that. But here's the thing. Even with all this new money coming in, Jenny still wants more. And with her husband now out of work, she needs a new way to get it. So she starts really hitting up her elderly parents, telling them that she needs money for medical bills and whatnot.

And Ginny's parents, they're not going to let their daughter and grandsons suffer. So they start taking money out of their savings for their retirement. Like each month, they drive Jenny to their bank and they withdraw enough cash to cover her expenses for that month. And they also help to pay for what she tells them are some experimental treatment. Like at one point, Ginny tells them that she needs to go to Australia to get some experimental treatment for cancer, so they give her $13,000 for this trip to Australia, which there was no experimental treatment. So this probably just ended up being a free vacation to the outback for Jenny.

I mean, this woman is just diabolical. Now, here's where the story gets even more weird. At some point, Jenny starts telling another really big lie. She tells her parents that she filed a lawsuit against the hospital and that this lawsuit has been going on for a while and that it had gone all the way to the Supreme Court and that she had recently won a settlement from this suit and now she's due $17 million. But for some strange reason, she says, the court has had an issue with the court system's collection of the payment and that's why she doesn't actually have the money in her possession. And of course, Jenny's parents are like, $17 million, holy shit! Now, one would assume that because she had all these supposed millions coming her way, that she would stop asking her parents to help her with all the medical bills and stuff.

But that's not what Jenny actually does. She still hits up her parents and everyone around her asking for money. So then Jenny has to like keep making excuses as to why she doesn't have the $17 million yet. And she comes up with this whole conspiracy theory, about how the Attorney General and the Governor of Alabama are secretly collaborating and withholding the money from her and that they're just waiting for Jenny to die from her cancers, that they'll never have to give her that money and they can keep it for themselves. And if that isn't crazy enough, she also claims that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg personally traveled to Alabama

to try and figure out why Jenny hasn't received her settlement money yet. And she also says that the news media refuses to report on the court case because of pressure from these high-powered politicians. It's this whole conspiracy. So Ginny's parents hear all of this and they become fully convinced that there's this huge political conspiracy going on to withhold millions of dollars from their dying daughter. So what do they do in response? Well, one day, Jenny's dad gets completely fed up with this crooked government and he emails a local journalist to see if that journalist can help expose all of this political corruption going on against his daughter. And that journalist actually looks into it. And he's like, sir, that $17 million court case

isn't real. Like, there's no record of it. And he also finds that the doctor, Jenny claims to see, has no record of her. Meaning, she doesn't really have cancer. So this journalist passes this info onto the police and so, bam, they arrest Jenny. Here's her mugshot. And ultimately, she takes a plea deal and she gets sentenced to 25 months in prison.