(RepublicanJournal.org) – An Ohio woman has been arrested after running a scam based on collecting donations for her sick daughter. The only problem with her years-long appeals for help was that her daughter wasn’t actually suffering from cancer. Now, she faces charges of theft by deception.
Exploiting Compassion
In October 2017, Pamela Reid started a web page about her 20-month-old daughter, AR, whose full name is being protected because of her age. According to Reid, AR suffered from Severe Aplastic Anemia, a bone marrow disease that causes a shortage of blood cells. As the girl grew, her health deteriorated alarmingly. AR turned out to be blind in one eye and started suffering from seizures. Then she developed acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive and almost inevitably fatal cancer of the blood cells. Concerned friends and well-wishers contributed tens of thousands of dollars to help with her medical care. Reid posted pictures of herself holding her bald daughter, and after AR started elementary school, her concerned mother regularly spoke to the school nurse about the girl’s treatments.
Then, the school nurse gave AR an eye test.
To the nurse’s shock, it turned out that, despite what Reid had told her, AR wasn’t blind in her right eye at all. Concerned, the nurse called the Reids’ healthcare provider to discuss the girl’s health condition. She found that AR didn’t have leukemia or any other kind of cancer, either, and never had. The nurse challenged that, pointing out that Reid had given the school plenty of documentation about AR’s cancer. The doctor told her it was all fake –- and so it was.
The Scam Unwinds
On January 4, the Noble County Sheriff’s Office launched an investigation into Reid, probing whether she had stolen money by deception. They quickly confirmed that Reid had received thousands of dollars in donations to help care for her daughter –- one local charity alone had given her $8,000. Four days later, Reid was arrested and charged with theft by deception. Under questioning, he quickly abandoned her attempts to lie and admitted she’d fabricated the whole thing.
Reid confessed to forging the medical paperwork she’d given the school, as well as repackaging medications to make them look like cancer drugs. She even admitted that she’d shaved AR’s head to make it look like she was receiving chemotherapy. She’s now been released on a $50,000 bond, but many are in shock at just how deep the deception went. Even Reid’s other daughter was convinced AR had cancer. Now she knows her seven-year-old sister isn’t terminally ill –- but instead, she’s discovered her mother is an outrageous liar.
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