True Crime with Kendall Rae - This Woman “Scamanda” Faked Cancer & Stole Over $400K From People: The Amanda Riley Story

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

Amanda Riley was an ordinary girl living in Northern California until she wasn't. She was a teenager when she was introduced to the Riley family and, within a matter of years, started a relationship with and got married to Cory Riley. Then, a few years into the marriage, Amanda shared that she had cancer. For the next several years, she would use her blog to describe her journey with the disease and garner sympathy from people in her community and beyond. But the truth? Amanda wasn't sick. She never had cancer and never needed the THOUSANDS of dollars that people sent her for treatment. Thanks to Nancy Moscatiello, Amanda was exposed and eventually prosecuted for her crimes. Listen to Scamanda Elizabeth Finch episode Donate to NCMEC through my campaign! https://give.missingkids.org/campaign...  Shop my Merch! https://kendallrae.shop Check out Kendall's other podcasts: The Sesh & Mile Higher Follow Kendall! YouTube Twitter Instagram Facebook Mile Higher Zoo REQUESTS: General case suggestion form: https://bit.ly/32kwPly Form for people directly related/ close to the victim: https://bit.ly/3KqMZLj Discord: https://discord.com/invite/an4stY9BCN CONTACT: For Business Inquiries - [e-mail]

Hello everyone and welcome back to True Crime with Kendall Ray. I am so happy to have you here with me today as we discuss another case. So today we're going to be looking at a case that has been so, so requested by all of you after I covered the case of Elizabeth Finch, the Grey's Anatomy writer who lied about having cancer. It's one of the craziest stories that I had ever heard and so many of you commented, you've got to talk about Scamanda. Scamanda.

Amanda C. Riley. And I had never heard of this case, but when I started looking into this, oh my god, I am shook. I will link my episode below on Elizabeth Finch if you haven't seen that one because there are a lot of similarities between these two cases and these two people as with Finch and Amanda C. Riley. But the biggest difference here is when it came to Elizabeth Finch, she told a bunch of lies and she hurt a lot of people and it went on a long time. But at the end of the day, she didn't do anything illegal. It's not illegal to lie, it's shitty, it's bad morally, but there was nothing that could

be done to hold her accountable. However, today we're going to be talking about Amanda or Skimanda, as she's called, who calmed people out of a lot of money and therefore was able to be held accountable. Again, it is just so fascinating to me when people, grown-ass adults, make up lies like the ones we're gonna talk about today. It is mind-blowing. And there is so much to this story

that is gonna take a long time for us to get through it, so buckle in. So I'll be honest, it is really hard to even know where to start when it comes to the deception and lies and manipulation of Amanda Riley, because there is no clear start date. Prosecutors would say that it all began around October of 2012. That's when Amanda made a blog called lymphoma, Kins can suck it to detail her harrowing journey with stage four Hodgkins lymphoma. But personally, I would argue that Amanda's lies started before that, long before that. Now of course, for the sake of the

investigation, there had to be a point that prosecutors could point to saying this is when it all began. And they definitely were right. October of 2012 is when Amanda officially started her journey to defrauding hundreds of people. But what she really did goes so much deeper than all of that and starts way before October of 2012. So I'm gonna do my best to start the story where I and so many other people believe that it truly starts. And I absolutely cannot do this episode without

giving a huge shout out to the Skamanda podcast. It is fantastic. And I want to give huge credit and thanks to Nancy Muscatello and Charlie Webster, the investigative producers and journalists behind the podcast Skamanda, which first aired in May of 2023. And look, I'm going to be summarizing everything as best as I can in a shorter episode for you all, because that is my style. But if you want a long in depth look at this story, I highly recommend this command a podcast. It's very well done. They poured their hearts and souls into it, especially Nancy, who first uncovered this story in 2015 and sacrificed everything, I mean everything to make sure the truth came to light. Together, she and Charlie produced and

hosted an incredible eight episode podcast series detailing this insane story of Amanda Riley and the lengths that she went to to make people believe she had cancer. Nancy was a huge part of this and without her, it's quite likely that Amanda would still be scamming and manipulating innocent people. And without Charlie's help, an incredible storytelling ability, it's likely people wouldn't even know about it. But like I said, my coverage will be a lot shorter, but I hope to bring some awareness to it the way that they did. And again, I just want to issue the same trigger warning that I did when we talked about Elizabeth Finch that this story could really piss you off. It could be triggering. It could be upsetting, especially if you are someone who has ever experienced cancer in your life, whether that's, you know, you have personally gone through it or a loved one has or you have

lost a loved one to cancer and have seen how absolutely devastating it is on families. I mean, this, it's gonna make you mad. It makes me mad and I've never actually experienced cancer firsthand. So I just wanted to put that out there that if you feel you could be upset by a story like this, proceed with caution, please.

So where does it all begin? Like I said, it's hard to say exactly where. And that's not just because Amanda has a really lifelong history of lying, but it's also hard to figure out the physical timeline of events because it hasn't been made super, super clear. But after doing some simple math, I was able to estimate that the story really starts around 2002. And at that point, Amanda was Amanda Minnary, and she was 17 years old, Amanda was a mandamanary, and she was 17 years old.

She was a college student living in the Bay Area, and it was around this time when she was first introduced to the Riley family. Because the Riley family was looking for someone that they could bring into their lives to help uplift and motivate their daughter, Jamie. They were hoping they could find someone to cheer Jamie up and give her a sense of normalcy because at just eight years old, Jamie had been diagnosed with leukemia.

Leukemia is terrible. It is so hard on the body and those of you who have had experience with it, whether that's yourself or a loved one, you know how awful it can be. And she was so sick that she had to be isolated from society for the most part because if she were to get sick, with any, you know, common cold or illness, it could literally kill her. And as you can imagine, this was absolutely heartbreaking for her mother Alita and her stepfather, Corey. Well, maybe not Corey, I don't know, I'll explain more about him later, and that will make more sense.

Alita wanted more for her daughter. It was actually Alita's sister who said that she knew the perfect person to come and cheer Jamie up. And that was Drumroll, please, Amanda. Alita's sister actually knew Amanda from their local gym, and she said that she was always there practicing cheerleading and dancing. She described her as a kind, bubbly, warm person, everything that you would want in a person meant to cheer up your kids. So they decided to bring her into their lives. Amanda was brought in to teach Jamie cheer and dance and to spend time with her, and once she was part of their lives, there was really no turning back.

She really just fit into their family like a glove. They were so comfortable with her and everyone loved her, including their six-month-old daughter, Jessa. And as the years went on and the girls grew up, Amanda stayed in their lives. And eventually, she would be what they described as their cool older sister.

I really can't stress enough how perfect everything seemed. Honestly, she probably could have been called Amanda Riley before she actually became a Riley. Yes, you heard me right now, I will explain that, but that's how much of a part of their family that she was. But unfortunately, all the sunshine and rainbows disappeared as quickly as they came.

The exact year's unclear, but as little as two years after Amanda came into their lives, Corey ended up packing his bags and walked out on his wife, daughter, and stepdaughter. And this all happened very suddenly. It was super shocking for the whole family. One day, Corey just packed a ball of shit, put it in a U-Haul, and said he wanted to leave the marriage without even talking to Alita first. Literally, he's doing all of this while she's at work and her daughter Jamie had to be the one to call her mom and let her know what was going on. I cannot imagine what that would have been like.

But looking back, I can't imagine that Jamie was that surprised. In an interview that she shared on this command a podcast, Jamie shared the sad reality that she faced while living with her stepfather. Before he just up and left, Jamie said it was very clear that he favored his biological daughter, Jessa, over her. She explained that Jessa would always get these extravagant, really thought out Christmas gifts, and she would always get less expensive gifts that he didn't put any effort or thought into. And that's not to say that she wasn't grateful.

I mean, she definitely was, but every child in a family deserves to feel like they are treated equally to the other kids in the family. It's really hard in a child to feel less important and less loved by a parental figure. And this went beyond gifts. It was also just basic human needs. For example, Cory would make meals for him and for Jessa, but he would straight up neglect to feed Jamie, who keep in mind had cancer.

And there's a lot more to all of that, but yeah, for the most part, I don't think it was a huge shock to Jamie that Courage is up and left. I mean, it didn't seem super out of character for him. I'll just say that. But to his wife Alita, she was absolutely stunned. And it was even more shocking to her when she found out that Amanda, the teenager that she had invited into their lives, was going to be marrying her ex-husband Corey. That's right, people. Amanda, who was at the time in her early 20s,

got married to Corey, who was in his mid 30s. I do wanna know that exactly when the relationship between the two of them began is unclear, but whether it was weeks, months, or years later, it certainly doesn't change the strangeness of it all. Now Alita said that even though this was a very painful and shocking time for her, that they were able to maintain somewhat of a sense of normalcy. I mean, even if they didn't necessarily want that,

they had Jessa to consider. And so she really tried to be as kind and civil as she could to both Cory and Amanda for her daughter's sake. And there even was a time when she was barely friendly with her. I mean, she would go to Amanda and complain about Cory and the two of them could kind of joke around about him and have some laughs. So despite it being a very strange situation, they were able to have a semblance of a normal

relationship. But unfortunately, that all changed the day that Alita checked her mailbox and found that Corey had filed paperwork and that he and Amanda wanted to have full custody of their daughter. And at first, she actually thought Amanda would be on her side. She called her up and once she talked to her, it became clear that she was in support of Cory getting full custody. And that was very painful and shocking to her.

And so as you'd probably guess, any type of friendship that the two of them had been able to muster up quickly ended at that point. And from that day forward, the custody battle began, and it went on for a long time. Cori and Amanda were absolutely determined to get full custody of Jessa, so much so that they were willing to just ruin Alita's life and her reputation. And if that was their goal, they certainly succeeded for a long time. The custody dispute went on for literal years, and instead of just explaining all of that right now, it would make more sense if I kind of interweave it into the rest of the story, so you will hear more about that as we continue to go through this. So that brings us to 2012.

Amanda ends up having a son with Corey. And after he was born, she announced that she had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. And with this news, Amanda decides to start a blog. And this is kind of at the dawn of blogging. 2012 was actually the year that I started YouTube, and I remember blogging was a huge deal at that point. And so she starts this blog and she calls it lymphoma kin suck it. And it had a headline that said, my story, our journey. And this blog was meant to serve

as not only a place for Amanda to update her friends and family, but also a resource for others, struggling with a disease. And in her earliest post, she shared sort of her origin story of her diagnosis and how it came on the heels of giving birth to her first son. She shared that when doctors checked some of her platelet levels that they noticed something was wrong and that they eventually came to the conclusion that she had Hodgkin's lymphoma. And interestingly, she even said that her pregnancy had been masking some of the symptoms. And if her intention was to gain traction on the blog, she definitely succeeded. It brought in a lot of people.

But before we talk more about the blog and talk about the rise and fall of the blog, let's get back into the custody battle because Amanda's diagnosis played a huge part in that. When the news of Amanda's cancer got around, Alita, of all people who had plenty of reason to be angry with Amanda and Corey, felt sympathetic. For as much as she disliked Corey and Amanda, of course, and everything that they were doing to her, she felt really bad that this was happening to them

because she had experienced cancer firsthand and she knew what a toll it takes on a family. Not to mention the fact that Amanda herself had just given birth to a baby boy and Alita was devastated at the idea of him possibly losing a parent. But even with the sympathy that she had for Amanda, she just couldn't wrap her mind around how the two of them

having custody full custody of their daughter, Jessa, made any sense. I mean, with all the time that they would need to spend at the hospital for chemo and other treatments, it just, and her mind made sense for them to split custody, right? And maybe that would make sense if she actually did have cancer, but the truth was she did not. And this ploy to get full custody of Jessa was just one of the many hurtful, unnecessary,

and confusing actions that took place in this story. And for Amanda and Cory to put a child in the middle of it is really hard to overlook. That and the fact that she used this fake diagnosis to manipulate the court into believing that they were unable to pay child support. That's right people. Under oath, Cory and Amanda stated that they had to file for bankruptcy due to the financial devastation

of Amanda's cancer treatments. And that because of that, they wanted a deduction in their child support payments. They even went as far as presenting a medical bill, a falsified bill, I should mention, for $280,000 as further proof of this financial devastation. And this specific instance happened after Amanda said she had relapsed and that her treatments were going to become more and more expensive. And that's the thing about Amanda's cancer. It was always cured relapse, cured relapse, or as they put it in Skimanda, terminal, miracle, terminal, miracle. This was just her M.O. I mean, she was always on the brink of death. She was weeks or months away from losing her life,

and then poof, she was better, she was cured. And this is how it always went. But before I explain how all of that continues, let's go back to the custody battle. So like I said, the dispute went on for a long time. And at one point, there was an entire year that Jessa was in fact in full custody of her father, Amanda. And not only could she not live with her mom, but she was only allowed to talk to her on the phone once a week, and it had to be monitored. Four years, Amanda and Corey painted Alita as an unfit mother, a drug addict, and so much more.

They lied to the judge about crazy things, and the judge believed them. She was forced to live with Corey and Amanda, and Alita's reputation was just ruined. It's actually insane how all of it played out, and keep in mind, through all of this, she's still raising her other daughter, Jamie. But even that would be threatened, because one day, a parent whose child went to the same school as Jessa called CPS on Alita, and she told Amanda that she did so. CPS, and why did she do that? Because she had read lies spread by Quarantine Amanda on Amanda's blog.

The blog, the blog, the blog. Where do I even start? It is so insane. Since she started posting on the blog in 2012, it became her one stop shop for all things cancer and all things team Amanda. She blogged about her treatment. She blogged about her treatment, she blogged about her journey and she also blogged about the custody battle. Which is a super intimate and private matter, however, she made the decision to put it all out on her blog to all of

these strangers to gain sympathy. She made it look like, you know, here's this poor, sick woman who on top of it is dealing with her husband's crazy ex-wife who is trying to take away her bonus daughter, Jessa, which she just called Jessa her bonus daughter. It was never just Jessa or my stepdaughter, it was always, always. My lovely bonus daughter or my sweet bonus daughter. And the thing about Amanda is she just, she had a way with words that could make you believe anything. She could really make you believe that she was someone she was not. And like I said earlier,

lying in and of itself isn't illegal, but taking money under false pretenses, absolutely is. And that's exactly what Amanda did. In September of 2013, a little more than a year after her blog went live, a link to supportamanda.com was added to the front page where people could send donations to help with the cost of treatment and just generally with the cost of life. And the support page reads, everyone was so thrilled to learn that Amanda beat Hodgkin's lymphoma in spring of 2013. But unfortunately, it has returned. The next year will be the battle of her life and Amanda needs everyone's help. Her treatment plan will require one to two months of hospitalization

in early 2014 to administer four rounds of beam chemotherapy and several rounds of Lodo's radiation that will kill her cancer cells. These therapies will also kill her stem cells, slash bone marrow, requiring an immediate bone marrow transplant to bring her back to life. She is beginning oral chemotherapy 911 on a new wonder drug which will slow the growth of her cancer cells while she undergoes surgeries for bone marrow harvesting in the next four to five months. How can you help? Amanda has been a ray of sunshine in all our lives and we will continue to share our love and emotional support keeping her always in our prayers.

While we can't control the cancer or the daily toll this battle will have, we can help minimize some of the stress by reducing the financial burden of medical bills and daily living expenses. So open your hearts and help Amanda and her family through this difficult time. No donation is too small. Even $5 a month can make a difference. And it was this support page and the donations that came through it that ultimately caught

the attention of none other than the IRS baby. So between September 13, 2013 and March 15th, 2015 alone, Amanda received 447 donations totaling $60,242, which is only a fraction of what she would end up receiving when all is said and done. Because for a person like Amanda who is sweet and kind on the outside or seems that way, but is deceitful and distrustful on the inside. She had to have more than one avenue of money coming her way, of course. So let's talk about those other avenues, starting with the church. One of the biggest ways that Amanda was able to gain sympathy and steal money from

unsuspecting victims was through her church. And it wasn't just any church, it was a mega church, family community church in San Jose. It's visited by thousands of people each week and Amanda saw this as her meal ticket, almost literally. And she decided to use the young adult church service called encounter as her way in. Encounter is a church group for people aged 13 to 37, led by a man named Pastor Chase. And Pastor Chase played a really big role in all of this and in Amanda's life, honestly at no fault of his own. He is just as much of a victim in all of this as anyone else is. But it was through him that Amanda was really given the platform

Where she was able to preach about her illness and share her journey and to solicit money during the weekly service and this went on for what I believe to be Several years Amanda was able to get up on the stage and speak in front of the entire congregation. And she was so devoted to her faith and spoke so passionately about hope that she was one of the main reasons that people came to the service. She was that inspiring. I can't emphasize this enough, a man to became like a hometown hero. And of course she's inspiring.

I mean, here's this woman who is pretty much at death's door and is still getting up every day, living her best life, being positive, inspiring others, and isn't giving up. She was a vision of hope to so many people. You know, if she could do it, then they could do it. It was that type of vibe. She was just so open about her cancer journey and the struggles that she was facing on an everyday basis and people were just sort of in awe. And whenever her

narrative was shipped more into the finances of it all and how deeply her family was struggling, well, people did not hesitate for one second to give her money. And people were quite literally throwing money at her on stage. And not just that, but tithing baskets were passed around, fun razors would be held. You name it, they did it. And if it wasn't cash that people were giving her, they were giving her other things. I'm talking gift cards, presents, Christmas presents for their kids, even airline miles would be donated to her, which I will be getting into more later. Chili's even held a fundraiser for Amanda at four of their Bay Area locations where they even offered to donate a percentage of people's bills to Amanda and her family.

There was even a woman that grew so close to Amanda and was so inspired by her that she decided to donate her platelets, not to Amanda directly but to someone else. She was just so inspired by her courageous fight. Support was just coming in left and right and Amanda was very specific about the type of support that was coming in and thanking people on her blog. One of her post reads, I have to give thanks to some incredible human beings. In my last post, I mentioned that Angie reached out through a mutual friend and donated her entire $730 commissions check for the month. Through her, Betty Ann's bag reached out to her, wanting to help, and they sent us a wonderful card with dozens of gift cards people donated. People we have never met in our life.

It still blows my mind, the generosity of our family and friends, especially through the church. But when complete strangers wanna help, I can't even explain the emotions. What joy! Another reads, After sharing testimony with three other inspiring speakers, the same amazing group that came caroling and brought Christmas to our door last year,

approached me with cards, gift cards, and money. We are so grateful for all of it. This year they went a step further. Amber asked me what we needed, and I mentioned the only thing we needed was each other. We don't need stuff. We just want more time together, so anything that we can take the kids to do or experience together is the best kind of happiness. They really listen to that and gives it a so many fun new adventures to embark on. We got movie passes, a spa day, golfing, Billy B's, date nights, ice skating, lasana lights. The list goes on and on. The opportunity to have memories

and experiences with each other, friends and family is the most special thing to us right now and we are truly so grateful and humbled once again by God's goodness and your generosity. So as you can tell, there were no shortage of people that wanted the best for Amanda, wanted to help in any way they could, wanted to see her get to experience her children growing up to prolong her life as much as possible and make every second that she had beautiful. And whatever sacrificed these people had to make for her, they were going to do it. And eventually, Amanda and Corey had a second baby, which they called their miracle baby.

In a blog post, Amanda shared with the world that she had become pregnant with their miracle baby and that they were so excited and shocked. She said that doctors told her after eight rounds of chemotherapy, it was virtually impossible for her to become pregnant. Not to mention the fact that she had claimed on her blog that she had an IUD because she knew the dangers of getting pregnant while undergoing chemotherapy. And the good news didn't end there because eight weeks after announcing her surprise miracle pregnancy, Amanda told everyone that she was now cancer-free in her own words She said the pregnancy reversed the cancer

Yeah, you heard me right you guys. I literally can't make this up. She said the pregnancy reversed the cancer Girl what and I hate to break it to you guys and I know I just said she was cancer-free But unfortunately for Amanda the cancer came back when she was 38 weeks pregnant. And this time, the cancer had metastasized to her lungs and was reclassified as stage 4. But don't worry, her son was not affected by any of the chemo and was born completely healthy.

A miracle. Now, if you remember, when we talked about Elizabeth Finch one of the ways that people started catching on to the lies was because She had lost her hair. She shaved her head but she still had her eyelashes and eyebrows Which doesn't make any sense and Amanda said in her blog that she decided to shave her head before she lost her hair naturally from chemotherapy Which is something very common that people going through chemo will do, and it can be very empowering in a way for people to shave their heads when they know they're going to lose it to chemotherapy anyway.

But when she did start going through chemo, she didn't appear to have any actual symptoms of it. But just like Elizabeth Finch, she also had all of her other body hair. Her weight stayed exactly the same, her skin was healthy and clear, Amanda really never looked like she was actually sick. The only way that you would really know that Amanda had cancer is if you knew her personally, or heard her speak somewhere, or read her blog. But people were so blinded by her strength and courage that they didn't look at what was

right in front of their eyes, which was a totally healthy individual, maybe not mentally, but definitely physically. And really it all goes back to the blog. If she didn't look sick, how, you know, besides preaching at her church, was she going to convince people wholeheartedly that she was sick? And the answer is that God damn blog because you need to understand Amanda had so many pictures of herself that made her look like she had cancer that she was in the hospital and not just vague waiting room photos. No, these photos that she took were at least

at first glance pretty convincing. They were photos of her hooked up to machines, photos of her with an oxygen tube, photos of her in different oncology centers, the list goes on and on. And every photo was accompanied by a detailed blog post where she would specifically give details about her treatment. She would talk about what drug she was on, what hospital she was at. Everything was very specific. However, one thing that Amanda never did was share the name of her so-called doctors, which also reminds me of Elizabeth Finch. But what's so crazy about all of this and what honestly kind of makes me laugh is the fact that Amanda had to go into such detail to really sell this story to people, but it was all that detail that made unraveling her story that much easier.

So I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that Nancy Muscatello was the investigative reporter and producer responsible for ultimately bringing Amanda down. And without her, Amanda would likely still be out there scamming people. And Nancy's story goes back to 2015, so three years after Amanda created the blog. That year Nancy received an anonymous email tip from a person who was saying that there was someone in their hometown who was faking cancer. They said that this woman was claiming to have stage four

blood cancer, had somehow worked their way into a leadership role in the church and was using that to solicit money, flights, gifts, you name it from people within the church and also people through her blog. And of course, this peaked Nancy's interest. So she began her investigation by looking at Amanda's blog, which was sent to her by the anonymous tipster. Now, of course, and Nancy has said this herself, that accusing someone of faking cancer is a major accusation. If you get that wrong about someone,

that is absolutely career ending. So she knew from day one that she had to be very, very confident and thorough if she was going to take this story on. But despite the fact that proving this would be very hard and time consuming, she wanted to pursue it anyway because she had been directly affected by cancer in her own life. It was something very close to her heart because Nancy's sister sadly lost her battle to cancer, so the thought of someone lying about having it, not to mention profiting off of it, was absolutely worth the risk. Now, because at this point, the blog had been going for three years, she had three years worth of post images

and facts to kick off her investigation. And understandably, this was all going to take a lot of time. But one thing that she had on her side through all of this was her experience with cancer through her sister's battle. While of course she didn't know everything, she did know a lot. And one by one, there were things in the blog

that didn't make sense. But like I said, she was in an expert, so to be absolutely sure, she reached out to another friend who had experience working with cancer patients to help her kinda sort through what she thought was bullshit. And when they looked through the blog together, everything that Nancy feared was confirmed. This when they looked through the blog together, everything that Nancy feared

was confirmed. This was 100% a fraud. For one, they realized that Amanda was claiming to be on several different medications that doctors would have never prescribed in conjunction with each other. And also, Amanda was claiming to be part of clinical trials that didn't exist or trials that weren't currently being conducted at that time. And all of that just really skims the surface. So knowing this, Nancy was like a dog with a bone. She wanted to know more, she wanted to get to the bottom of it all, but she knew she had to be very cautious when doing this.

So to start, she began looking at Amanda Riley's history beyond what was posted to the blog. And that's when she stumbled across the custody case, which believe it or not, was still going on. Nancy saw that alongside Amanda's cancer battle, she was also dealing with a custody battle, which did also dealing with a custody battle, which did not look pretty. So at that point, she decides to reach out to Alita and try to get some more information about Amanda.

So Nancy got in touch with her on Etsy of all places, and very shortly after she reached out, Alita called her. And obviously, Nancy had to be very vague and careful with her question. She couldn't just come right out the gate and say, did you know that your ex-husband's wife is faking cancer? I mean, for all she knew at the time, Alita and Amanda could still be friends. And she certainly didn't want to alert her of what exactly she was doing

if that was going to mess up her entire investigation. But as you know, Alita and Amanda are not friends, and she had quite a bit to say about her. She told Nancy that all Amanda and Cory do is lie. And once she knew all of this, it was game on. So for weeks, months and eventually years, Nancy followed Amanda's cancer journey through her blog, Peace by Peace, and fact checked everything she

posted, and you guys, some of the stuff that Nancy learned, will make you literally speechless. Let's start with the fact that Amanda faked having cancer two years before she faked having cancer. Through Nancy's research, she began speaking with some of Amanda's friends, both new and old. And well, it turns out in 2010, two years before Amanda even started the blog, she and Corey told a friend and her husband that she, Amanda, had stage 4 cancer and had only about 6 months left to live.

And obviously her friend was shocked and devastated to hear this news, but as time went on, she also became sus of Amanda. There was one specific time that Amanda came over to her house and they were swimming. And she realized that Amanda had a small bandage behind her ear. And so she asks her what the bandaid is for. And Amanda then tells her that earlier that morning, she had some fluid drained from her brain.

Yet here she was swimming without a care in the world, dunking her head underwater with just a tiny little bandaid over the spot that they had just trained fluid from her brain. I mean you cannot make it up and this friend of hers was so skeptical that she ended up reaching out to another friend of hers who was in oncology and Asked her if someone had just had fluid drained from their brain that morning her. If someone had just had fluid drained from their brain that morning, would they be allowed to go swimming? And she said absolutely fucking not. And then when 2012 rolled around and Amanda

tells this friend that she is pregnant, Amanda's friend was so sick of her lies at this point that she said, I thought you were dying. And I'm sure you can just guess how Amanda responded to that one. She tells her friend that the pregnancy was reversing the disease. That's right, reversing it. Tell me you don't know science without telling me you don't know science. And Amanda's claims over the years only continued to get crazier. And one of the wildest claims that Amanda made through all of this was that she was part of a clinical trial for the drug, Ketruda.

Ketruda is an immunotherapy drug used to treat several types of cancer, including Hodgkin's lymphoma. Well, according to her blog, doctors tell her that this is her last hope. After relapsing so many times, it was this drug or nothing that would save her. And Amanda being Amanda, she continued blogging about all of this, she blogged about maintaining hope and how she wasn't going to stop her fight. But the one problem, Key Trudeau was going to cost $12,500 a month and she was going to have to be on the drug for several months. And not just that, but the clinical trial was located at a hospital in New York.

So on top of the cost of the treatment, Amanda also had to find the funds to fly out to New York and find places to stay. And I'm sure you've already detected a pattern. So you know exactly where this goes next. Amanda used her blog and involvement in the church to solicit money and other acts of kindness from people to, quote, make it happen. Not only did thousands of dollars pour in,

but people were also giving her their airline points to buy flights, setting her up with places to stay in New York. People were just willing to do anything they could to help save Amanda. This became a group mentality, and team Amanda was a movement that people wanted to be a part of. People would take photos of themselves, holding signs that said team Amanda and post them.

I mean, they wanted to see her get better. and like I've said, they were willing to help her because she was a mother, a friend, a member of the church, exactly the type of person who deserved a second, third, or fourth chance at life. And to be clear, she was really going to New York. One thing Amanda wasn't was Lacey. She wasn't just a keyboard warrior as they put it in Skamanda. She went out and did the leg work. She was really going from hospital to hospital, taking pictures and collecting whatever she needed to make it look like she had cancer. And I know this all might be really confusing.

How do you do this? But you can be obviously admitted to the hospital for other reasons. And even if it's just like hydration or you're sick or, you know, you could just go to the hospital sometimes. And she was taking pictures of things that weren't actually the treatment she was claiming to get. They were other things that were happening, other experiences in the hospital,

but making it look like she was being treated for cancer. But getting back to the clinical trial, the money wasn't even the craziest part of this ordeal. It was the fact that Amanda said that out of the kindness of their hearts, her doctors were going to start allowing her to start administering the treatment to herself at home. That's right. Instead of having to fly back and forth to New York every couple of weeks, she was going to be able to stay home for the holidays and inject

herself with the keytrue to treatment at home. And when Nancy saw this, she was like, oh hell no, that is not how clinical trials work at all. But to be absolutely sure, she called up the hospital herself and asked them if that's something they would do. Now something that I haven't explained yet, but I'm sure a lot of you already know this. But to be absolutely sure, she called up the hospital herself and asked them if that's something they would do. Now, something that I haven't explained yet, but I'm sure a lot of you already know this. Hippilas played a big part in this investigation because there are some things that you just can't request information on. If you aren't familiar, Hippilas were created to protect a patient's personal health information

from being disclosed without their consent or knowledge. It's a very important law, but it obviously made Nancy's investigation harder. So obviously Nancy can just call up a hospital and say, hey, does Amanda Riley actually have cancer? I mean, even law enforcement, which I will get more into, can't call up a hospital and get information like that without a warrant from a judge. It's a complicated situation. So obviously Nancy was forced to get creative.

What she could do was ask if there was a key true to trial happening at that time, or if they would allow a patient to self-administer key true to at home during a trial. And of course, all the answers to these questions were no. Absolutely not. No, we don't have a key treat or trial happening right now. No, no, no, we absolutely would not allow someone to self-administer or key truda. And Nancy did this not only related to the clinical trial, but she ended up calling all the hospitals

that Amanda claimed to have been treated at, which is City of Hope, John Hopkins, Columbia, UCSF, Kaiser Permanente, and so on. She was able to fact check even the smallest of details. Let's say, for example, Amanda posted herself in a pink hospital gown while getting treatment, and that she also mentioned she was a UCSF, Nancy would call UCSF and ask what color their gowns are. And there were just so many instances, so many times, where Amanda's claims were

just easily disproven with a few questions that didn't violate Hippilas. And the sheer outrageousness of it all just made Nancy so confident that she could easily go to police with this because clearly she was doing something illegal here. And so she did. Nancy reached out to the Financial Fraud Division of the San Jose Police Department and got a hold of one person who worked in this unit, Detective Jose Martinez. After sending him tons of messages via phone and email, he finally got back to Nancy and said he'd take a look at what she was telling him.

And once he did, he went all in, just like Nancy did when she first found out about Amanda's story. I mean, the whole thing was mind blowing to everyone who found out about it. It was like a train wreck that you couldn't look away from. But just like Nancy, Detective Martinez knew that because of Hippilaw's, it would be hard to straight up get an answer on if Amanda actually had cancer or not. So here's what he did. He started by looking at the blog, of course, and he found discrepancies and compiled every shady thing she appeared to be doing. And what did they do with that information?

They went to the IRS. Because like I've already said, lying isn't illegal, but taking money under false pretenses absolutely is. All those donations that came in through her supportamanda.com page were 100% without a doubt wire fraud. That is, if they could prove that Amanda didn't have cancer. And if you're thinking, well, obviously she didn't have cancer and they've pretty much proved that by now, but it isn't as straightforward as you would think.

The IRS had to conduct their own investigation to prove her claims or false, to then prove the solicitation of money was acquired under false pretenses. And they can't just take Nancy's word for it, although I wish it were that easy. But nothing about this was easy. I mean, even just getting in touch with someone in the IRS took months.

But once they did, it was full steam ahead. Our Let Lee was the IRS special agent who got involved in the case, and you guys, this woman is a badass. After sitting down and talking with Detective Martinez, she decided that this was definitely a case she wanted to pursue. However, once she did start pursuing it, everything about the investigation was put behind a locked door. This was now a federal investigation, so Nancy couldn't be clued in on what was going

on, and she could only hope that they were coming to the same conclusions that she was. Weeks, months, and then years went by, and Nancy just had to hope that Amanda's scam would eventually be made public. Now, of course, there were a handful of people who did know what was going on, including Alita and Jessa, and you have to keep in mind that she was still fighting in this damn custody battle.

And now knowing that Amanda was being investigated, Alita finally had the opportunity to show the judge that Amanda wasn't the person that she claimed to be. And Nancy was the one who gave Alita the permission to tell the judge about what was going on in the first place. And she knew that this would mean that Amanda would find out what she was doing,

but at this point, what did she have to lose? And guess how Amanda reacted when she found out that people were looking into her? She dug deeper. She started blogging about the enemy. How on top of battling stage 4 cancer and being in the middle of a messy custody battle, she has this enemy now who is trying to ruin her life. And this worked well for her because she garnered more sympathy than she had ever before. And of course, who did Amanda blame for it all? Alita.

She started telling people that Nancy was a friend of Alita's and that Alita had brought her in to start spreading these lies and ruin her reputation. And that Alita was behind this entire slander campaign, which is flat out just not true and only further ruined Paul Alita's reputation. And so Nancy even wrote a letter to the family court judge explaining that they weren't friends and that she was just investigating this case. And Charlie too, she learned about this story and came into the whole thing as an independent journalist, and she wasn't on anyone's side, Nancy or Amanda's. But that didn't stop Amanda from believing that Charlie was just another person hired to spread false allegations about her.

But it really didn't matter if they tried to defend themselves because to team Amanda, Amanda was the one telling the truth, and they believed everything that she was saying, and the lies just went on and on. However, all hope wasn't lost because there eventually was a break in the case around 2016 or 2017, when Nancy got a tip that a search warrant was going to be executed at the Riley's home. One morning, before the sun even rose, SWAT teams and IRS special agents stormed their home and left with boxes of what I can only assume was evidence. And Nancy herself was outside watching the entire thing go down. And one of the most interesting parts about this raid is Amanda.

Could not have been more chill during it. I mean, she was calm as a cucumber. She seemed to be just completely unbothered. And as you can imagine, the house raid became public information. And word started to spread that Amanda Riley was under investigation. And do you know what her response to all of this was? She said that the whole thing was a case of mistaken identity. She actually tried to say that there was another Amanda Riley with cancer who was being investigated

by the IRS, but don't worry, it wasn't her. And what's crazy is there actually was another Amanda Riley with cancer, but she was not the one being looked at by the IRS. And Amanda did just about everything she could to weasel her way out of being exposed, including slapping Nancy with a lawsuit. In the height of the investigation, Amanda filed a civil harassment lawsuit and restraining order against Nancy.

She attempted to prevent Nancy an investigative reporter from contacting her, her family, her friends, her co-workers, basically anyone who knew her. Um, hello! Ever heard of the Freedom of Press? Well, clearly not, because the entire lawsuit saga lasted two years, and it cost Nancy more than $200,000 when all was said and done. And Amanda had so many different arguments to try and win this dispute, including that Nancy got her and Corey both fired from their jobs.

And they also claimed that Nancy was leaving them all these voicemails and stalking them, but all of it wasn't true, and luckily, a judge saw right through that. And I mean, all Amanda had to do to win this lawsuit was prove that she had cancer, and obviously she couldn't do that. Not once did she present any type of document that said, here, look, I have cancer. But get this though, a letter was presented to the judge from a hospital that Amanda claimed to have gotten treatment at, but it wasn't proof that Amanda had cancer. It was the opposite. It was actually a cease and desist telling Amanda to stop lying on her blog that she was getting treatment for cancer at their hospital because she wasn't. And what did the judge also see? An apology letter from Amanda to this hospital,

which she tenized writing this, of course, but it was an apology letter to the hospital saying how sorry she was that she had said she was treated there when she knew that she wasn't. But what was her reasoning for lying on her blog? She explained that she just didn't want people to think she was a loser who had given up. Which sorry Amanda, people think much worse things about you now.

So in the end, when it comes to that lawsuit, Nancy ended up winning and that is that. So it goes without saying that the walls were closing in on Amanda. And she was freaking shit. For a while, she tried taking down her blog and becoming more private on social media. But it doesn't stop there because this privacy and lying about cancer continued on outside of social media and blogging. During the lawsuit saga, she quit her job as a teacher and she became a principal for a private Christian Academy, and she claimed to have been in remission again, but then she shared the sad news that she had relapsed again. So the school ends up

putting on a fundraiser for her and another teacher who actually had cancer and they ended up raising thousands of dollars for the two of them. So as you can see, the cycle just would not stop. It's insane. You would think with this investigation going on, knowing the walls are closing in that she would stop and pull back from the whole story. But she didn't. And in fact, at one point, she even marched herself down to the San Jose Police Department with a large stack of papers for Detective Martinez. And this stack of papers was her proof that she did have cancer. But all it was was a list of her medications and treatment plans from a website that is self-populated, meaning she could have written anything in there and printed it out. So it proved absolutely nothing. Then, at some point, everyone who had made a donation through Amanda's support page

received a letter saying that they were a victim of a fraud scheme, which as you can imagine made people confused and questioned what was really going on. Even friends of Amanda were contacting her asking what was going on and she still could not be honest. The first thing she tells her friends is that this was all part of a leadus plot to destroy her. And the second thing she told them that the whole victim thing was a complete mixup. Sure, she was being investigated by the IRS, but it was only because she didn't know she had to pay taxes

on the donations that she was getting. She explained to them that once she paid those taxes, everything would be fine. This would all go away. And some people took her word for this, but a lot of her friends began to genuinely question her. And for those who did question her, Amanda gave some strong reassurances that she was

telling the truth. One friend even facetimed her while she was in the hospital, hooked up to all these machines so that she could say, here, look, I really am sick, I really am in the hospital, I really do have cancer. And it looked believable so much so that people felt bad for even questioning her in the first place. And there were many victims of Amanda's scheme that didn't end up getting letters and had no idea that Amanda was actually a criminal. And that's because the IRS could only send letters to people who had sent Amanda money over the wires.

Hence, wire fraud. If you gave her cash, gift cards, airline miles, meals, presents, anything of that nature, you were legally speaking not considered a victim. And that matters because when I tell you the criminal complaint outlined 349 victims whose donations totaled $105,513, that just isn't the full picture. It's much worse than that. Nancy and Charlie say that they at one point tried to calculate exactly how much Amanda scammed from people by looking at all the cash donations and gifts and things like that. And they weren't even able to figure it out completely, and they lost track around $80,000.

And so I think it's likely safe to say that Amanda had closer to 400 victims and con people out of closer to $200,000. And it could be more, could be less, but it's much more than what they were able to actually hold her accountable for. Iris Special Agent Arlet Li filed the complaint officially in 2020 and in July of that year, four years after the raid took place, Amanda was finally arrested and indicted for wire fraud. And the thinking at the time was that she was probably still going to keep up the ruse

and plead not guilty. But to the shock of many, Amanda did end up pleading guilty in a zoom hearing in October of 2021. But despite pleading guilty, Amanda has never admitted that she faked having cancer. To this day, but 36 year old Amanda Riley was ultimately sentenced to five years in prison, three years of supervised released in order that she pay restitution to her victims. And sadly, this restitution does not legally include anyone who gave her cash or other goods and services.

Yeah, Amanda Rylee will be forced to spend the next five years in prison. This is all due to wire fraud charges. She's convicted of actually swindling hundreds of people into contributing to this bogus campaign all the while raking in there money more than $100,000 of worth. This is all according to the U.S. attorney's office here in Northern California, which says Riley convinced 349 different

organizations and people into believing this story that she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. That's a type of cancer. Riley went to great lengths to maintain this deception that she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. That's a type of cancer. Riley went to great lengths to maintain this deception for seven years. When so far as to shave her head, falsify medical records, forged doctor, signatures, and even sue one person who suggested that she was faking it.

It wasn't until the IRS began investigating in 2019 that this lie was ultimately uncovered. After her five years in prison, she'll have to have another three years as supervision and then ask for that 105 $1,000 that she took from these unsuspecting people. She'll be forced to pay that back as well. But her prison sentence began in September of 2022 and she is serving her time at a federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas. But a man is charges were the first of their kind for the IRS, and they will set it precedent for other cancer-based frauds in the future.

And as for her response to all of this, Amanda's public defender says that she recognizes the seriousness of her offense, and that she is extremely remorseful and determined to do everything possible to both make restitution and earn the forgiveness of the people she has hurt. And personally, I believe the only way she can truly start to make a mens in this situation is by admitting the truth, and she is just not willing to do that. Hell, even after Amanda pleaded guilty,

there was some time between that hearing and the sendencing where she quarried and the boys moved to Texas. And they figured out that even after pleading guilty to wire fraud, Amanda continued to keep up her cancer ruse in another state. Luckily for everyone though, Texas hospitals have an internal database that allows them to communicate amongst themselves. So when she went to a handful of different hospitals claiming to be sick, a red flag was thrown in the system and she was eventually stopped. And a huge reason why Amanda was able to get away with what she did for so long was because at least at the time, California didn't have that same type of database.

And this just allowed Amanda to hop from hospital to hospital without detection. So that brings me to the final chapter of this case, the how, the why, the who. Why did Amanda do this? How was she able to do it for so long and who else knew? So let's start with how. We know from Amanda's blog that she was posting pictures of herself in the hospital on many occasions over the years, and if she actually wasn't being treated for cancer,

how did she get these photos? Like I explained earlier, you don't actually need to be sick to be admitted to the hospital. If Amanda went in and said she had cancer and was feeling dehydrated, they're not going to run all these tests to prove you have cancer, they're just going to treat you for dehydration. Honestly, she probably didn't even have to mention she had cancer. She could just go in and say she had symptoms and be given the medical attention regardless. And once she was in the hospital, what's stopping her from taking several different photos, changing up the location so that it can look like she was in the hospital for a lot longer than she was. And nothing and no one was stopping her. Not even when

she went to cancer support groups. That's right, you guys. She would go into cancer support groups. That's right you guys. She would go into cancer support groups and try to gain sympathy from other people who were actually sick. God it just discussed me. All of that to gain sympathy from others probably to get inspiration from their stories as well. To me, that is just one of the nastiest behaviors that she had, which I don't even know why I'm so shocked with it considering everything she did was despicable, but God going to the support groups, just that's next level. And when it came to things like oxygen tanks and equipment, that just legitimized her story. A lot of that stuff can be purchased online

with no proof of illness necessary. Her scheme was so complex, yet so easy for her to pull off at the same time. So now let's talk about why, why did Amanda do all of this? Was it for the money? Was it for the attention? A little bit of both?

I genuinely don't have the answer for this, and I think she and maybe Cory as well would be the only people who really know. But what I can guess is it probably all started as attention seeking. Probably motivated by some type of mental illness, which I definitely will not be diagnosing on her behalf and it turned into much more as her story grew and the money started to come in. She saw the opportunity and just went with it. But I want to know your

opinions, what do you think it started with? Do you think it was more the attention in the beginning and then grew into more of a money scheme or do you think it was money all along? I want to hear your thoughts. Now lastly, let's talk about who. Who else could have known about the scheme other than Amanda? First and the most obvious person here that I'm sure you all have opinions on is Kory. Did Kory not know that his wife wasn't really sick? I don't know. Seems hard to believe that. And many people strongly agree with me that

he did know, and that's because on many, many occasions, Cory told people that he sat with her during rounds of chemotherapy. Okay, that did not happen. To me, and this is just my opinion, it's not proved 100%, but it seems pretty damn obvious that he had to have known. He had to have known, right? To say that he had seen these treatments happening and they weren't happening, I mean, come on. Not to mention the fact that Cory himself wasn't always the most honest person over the years. One time, and this is so weird, Cory told the woman who babysat his sons that he had a daughter from a one night stand.

And he was talking about Jessa and Alita, which makes no sense because that certainly wasn't a one night stand. And why? Why would you even say that? Like, what is the point of that lie? Also, if we go back to the custody case, Cory testified under oath that he was forced to file bankruptcy due to the financial devastation of Amanda's cancer treatment. And we all know that that's just not true. So does that open him up to any legal repercussions?

So I'm very curious to see if there will be any legal action taken against him in the future. And then there's another person that some people believe could be complicit in all of this. And that's Amanda's mom Peggy. I haven't mentioned her yet, but she also claimed to sit with her daughter during her chemotherapy and that and that is not true.

And what's interesting is she was also technically one of those people who got letters from the IRS saying that they had been a victim of fraud for donating to a man to support page, but she only donated $10 after all of those years. And maybe she helped in other ways, and she just truly didn't know. But it's really the chemo thing. It's her claiming to have sat with her and seen her getting chemo therapy that makes people very wary of her. But on the other side of things, just like Corey,

she hasn't been found guilty of anything and it could have all been a shock to her as well. We just don't know. But I do have some good news as we wrap up here that Alita and Jessa are closer than ever before, which is amazing to hear after all they have been through. They have fully repaired their relationship after the years long custody battle. They say they're, of course, sad for the time that they lost, but they look forward to the future together. And I thought that was really nice to hear. Now, since her arrest, Amanda hasn't reached out to her bonus daughter, Jessa, at all,

which I think says a lot. Jamie, Jessa's older half-sister, has had a baby since all of this happened and I guess is doing pretty well from what has been reported. A lot of Amanda's other victims in all of this have explained that they're not really that upset about the money they lost, but it's more the manipulation and feeling lied to. It's painful. It's the fact that she preyed on people who only wanted to help save her life when they

thought she had a life worth saving. But now all these people are just happy that she's behind bars. And that will be the case until approximately 2027, which is quickly coming. And all I can hope is that moving forward, maybe Amanda will get to the point where she decides for everyone's sake, for her sake, to just admit that she lied, admit that it was wrong, but I don't know if we'll ever see that day. I really don't. That is going to be it for me today, guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode.

And make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple Podcast. It really does help me out. If you want to watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendal Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then, stay safe out there.