A Melbourne woman who scammed more than $40,000 from her family friends after claiming she was dying of cancer has been jailed for three months.
In 2012, then 19-year-old Hanna Dickenson told her parents she had brain cancer and had just weeks to live without overseas medical treatment, the ABC reports.
Her parents were struggling farmers but vowed to help their daughter, turning to friends to help raise funds.
“We are sitting here in the dining room and sue comes over and says Hanna has six weeks to live, she’s in palliative care … We need forty grand desperately,” parents Nathan and Rachel Cue told A Current Affair.
According to court documents, Dickenson scammed $42,000 from her parents’ friends and neighbours, which she said she needed for lifesaving treatment in 2012, and medical assistance in Thailand and New Zealand.
The court heard the young woman lied to doctors about taking part in clinical trials and receiving treatment at the Peter McCallum Institute in Melbourne and Epworth Hospital.
As Nine News reports, Dickenson used the money raised to fund her partying lifestyle and pay for drugs, alcohol and international holidays.
But things unravelled when one of the real estate’s donors saw photos of her lavish lifestyle on Facebook.
Dickenson pleaded guilty to seven charges of obtaining property by deception and was sentenced to three months in jail, handed a 12-month Community Corrections Order and ordered to pay her victims restitution.
In court, defence counsel Bev Lindsay said his client had since turned her life around.
