“Munchausen by Internet,” a term coined by Marc Feldman, the University of Alabama psychiatrist who specializes in facti

A vigorous discussion continued on Cindy’s Facebook page, with former friends sharing news stories and general disgust. After months of rallying in support, they were incredulous about being taken advantage of and her actions had left an understandably bitter taste. One friend noted that her office had given their Christmas donation to Cindy instead of a struggling local family. “I am ashamed of even caring,” wrote another.,The stories of women who fake being sick are sui generis and remarkably similar, rife with specific and theatrical detail, and generally motivated by some combination of attention-seeking and greed.,Wright says that, at first, she “just felt like Scooby-Doo solving a crime.” But, over time, she saw deep wounds in those who had been ripped off online. “There was all of the same genuine betrayal and hurt,” she says.,“If I had a typical person I wrote about, it’s a white woman who is 24, a little bit socially awkward, and has experiences with depression,” says Taryn Harper Wright, who ran the popular scam-busting website Warrior Eli Hoax Group.,Clooney and his friends upped the industry’s game by bringing an authentic, high-quality product to the market, and hopefully, they also use the profits to improve the world in even far more meaningful ways. Just imagine what the Clooney Foundation will do.,In the wake of the revelation, there was a lot of tsk-tsking and a reckoning of sorts. A store manager in the local mall had been so moved by Cindy’s story — which she heard when Cindy (in a motorized wheelchair) and her mother (who was crying) visited her store — that she had donated eight boxes of goods belonging to her deceased mother. Now, she wanted them back.,Cindy’s sentence required her to stay off the internet after the ordeal, but a mutual friend told me that she was back on pretty quickly under a pseudonym — again mostly posting about her nephew, but this time to a much smaller circle of online friends. Cindy’s probation recently ended, and the entire incident was expunged from her record like it never happened.,A publication ban was enforced due to sensitive discussions of Cindy’s mental health history, and it makes it challenging to unpack exactly what happened. It’s also unclear how much money Cindy actually raised, but the police did seize a storage locker full of donated goods and medical equipment.,Adrienne Gonzalez, who runs the site GoFraudMe, is just as committed to weeding out fakers as Wright. A sample headline from GoFraudMe: “Colorado Woman Accused of Faking Bone Cancer, Stealing From Friends, and Generally Being an A*hole.” The GoFraudMe Facebook page recently chronicled the tales of newly bereaved parents who learned that a fraudster was using pictures of their dead son to raise money and an adult dancer trying to crowdfund for her recovery even though, as one commenter noted, “the video I saw of the fall shows her twerking after.” (It’s worth noting that GoFraudMe tends to report on crowdfunding scams that have already been determined to be fraudulent.),She still lives in a tidy but modest high-rise apartment building across the street from Lake Ontario, and old friends who have largely cut ties occasionally still see her out running errands. The enduring consequences in cases like this seem to be personal rather than criminal. “I’ll donate to keep her in jail!” wrote one of Cindy’s former friends after she was busted.,My feelings about Cindy’s fraud were more complicated, though. It took me months before I understood both why I couldn’t stop watching and why, every time I looked at a picture of Cindy or read about her case, I felt a distinct stirring in the pit of my stomach.,Gonzalez says that women overwhelmingly orchestrate the fake medical campaigns she sees — she hasn’t run the numbers but estimates it could be as high as 95%. “I don’t think they wake up in the morning and say, I’m going to scam someone,” she says. “I think it’s more complicated than that. And I think the basis is found in ‘Munchausen by Internet,’ whether it’s the need for attention or something else.”,As part of a plea bargain, Cindy ultimately pled guilty to a charge of theft under $5,000 and, with no prior record, was sentenced to two years probation, including mandatory counseling. One report indicated that she had no supporters in the courtroom. The father of Hilary, Cindy’s biggest champion, read a victim impact statement.,There’s the sorority girl who faked stomach cancer and had her friends push her wheelchair around to nonexistent chemotherapy appointments; the Alabama woman who stole over $260,000 through social media and two GoFundMe accounts, convincing even her young son that she was dying; the woman dubbed “the photogenic queen” of cancer fraudsters for lying about breast cancer to raise $12,000 in her small community.,Cindy is far from the only young-ish woman ripping off friends and family members on the internet, using social media and crowdfunding sites to raise funds with bogus stories of illness and personal tragedy.