U.S. : A 19-year-old woman in Iowa is being sued for lying about having pancreatic cancer and defrauding 439 supporters out of $37,000

An Iowa woman has been charged with defraud­ing her donors of $37,000 by lying that she had can­cer, a tumor the size of a soc­cer ball in her spine.

Madi­son Marie Rus­so, 19, point­ed out irreg­u­lar cords and tubes in a Tik­Tok “chemother­a­py” video that led her to fake a Stage 2 can­cer diag­no­sis, after med­ical offi­cials report­ed she died in Jan­u­ary. Arrest­ed on the 23rd.

Rus­so said she had pan­cre­at­ic can­cer and acute lym­phoblas­tic leukemia, as well as tumors “about the size of a soc­cer ball” on her hips and spine.

Accord­ing to KWQC, police obtained med­ical records from the facil­i­ty where he was a patient, reveal­ing he was not being treat­ed for can­cer or tumors. Author­i­ties also found that Rus­so had stolen pho­tos from can­cer patients’ social media accounts and used them as his own.

He post­ed $10,000 bail the day he was arrested.

Police obtained med­ical records from the insti­tu­tions where she was a patient, all of which revealed that she had nev­er been treat­ed for can­cer or tumors.

Accord­ing to KWQC, police obtained a search war­rant at Rus­so’s Bet­ten­dorf apart­ment and found a brown paper bag con­tain­ing med­ical sup­plies, a fluff-filled IV tube with a pump, a box of clear dress­ing, a wig, and nau­sea with a rel­a­tive’s name on it. It seems that he found a pre­scrip­tion for

An offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tion found that Rus­so received mon­ey from 439 donors, includ­ing can­cer foun­da­tions and school dis­tricts. A GoFundMe account found an addi­tion­al $37,303 raised as of Jan. 19.

Rus­so told The North Scott Press in Octo­ber that his so-called med­ical jour­ney began when he received a call about his diag­no­sis in Feb­ru­ary 2022 while attend­ing class­es at St. Ambrose College.

I’ve been wait­ing for this test result since ear­ly in the morn­ing,” Rus­so said. “The phone rang and it said ‘Iowa City Oncol­o­gy.’ I left the class­room and got the call.

I was scared and I am still scared. It was a shock. I could­n’t believe it hap­pened. I was so young, how could this hap­pen? I went through all the emo­tions and was pret­ty stunned. ”

An alleged can­cer patient, she claims, was test­ed before her diag­no­sis because of bloody stools, nose­bleeds and fever.

When she was diag­nosed, doc­tors told her she had an 11% sur­vival rate after five years.

I remem­ber she hung up and she was a mess.” She was lit­er­al­ly cry­ing, but she man­aged to work up the courage to wipe her tears and go back to her class. Now that I think about it, it was unbelievable.

At the time, Rus­so said doc­tors were argu­ing that surgery to remove a tumor the size of a soc­cer ball was impos­si­ble. “The risk is greater than the reward,” they said.

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