A 19-year-old Iowa lady named Madison Marie Russo has been arrested and charged after lying about having pancreatic cancer and scamming 439 well-wishers of $37K in donations.
Wow! People can really go this extreme to make some easy money off innocent folks? This is quite shocking! According to the Daily Mail;
An Iowa woman was charged after allegedly scamming $37,000 from donors by lying that she has cancer and a tumor the size of a football on her spine. Madison Marie Russo, 19, was arrested on January 23 after medical professionals reported she was faking a stage 2 cancer diagnosis by pointing out the irregularities of cords and tubes in her ‘chemo’ TikTok videos.
Russo claimed she had pancreatic cancer and acute lymphoblastic leukemia – along with a ‘football-sized’ tumor on her lower back and spine.
Police obtained medical records from centers where she was a patient that all revealed she was never treated for cancer or tumors, according to KWQC. Authorities also discovered that Russo was stealing photos from cancer patients’ social media and using them as her own. She posted her bail for $10,000 on the same day she was arrested.
Police obtained a search warrant for Russo’s Bettendorf apartment where they found a brown paper bag with medical supplies, an IV pole with a cotton ball filled pump, boxes of transparent dressing, wigs and a prescription for nausea made out to her relative, according to KWQC.
Authorities uncovered Russo accepted money from 439 donors, including from cancer foundations and school districts. A GoFundMe account showed another $37,303 was raised by January 19. Russo’s claimed her alleged medical journey started in February 2022 when she got a call about her diagnosis while attending class at St. Ambrose University, she told The North Scott Press in October.
When she got the diagnosis, she said doctors had given her an 11 percent survival rate for five years. At the time, Russo claimed doctors insisted surgery wasn’t a possibility to remove her ‘football-sized’ tumor. They called it ‘more risk than reward,’ Russo said. Between February and October 2022, Russo alleged she received about 15 rounds of chemotherapy and 90 rounds of radiation, the news outlet reported. She also insisted she had a consultation with Mayo Clinic doctors.
Russo’s ‘medical journey’ was regularly posted on social media where she talked about her alleged chemo process and day-to-day symptoms. Police revealed Russo’s footage of her treatment ‘inside’ a medical office was also taken in her apartment.
GoFundMe administrators sent out a notice to Russo’s donors claiming they would get there money back in up to seven business days.
This is bad! Now, people will feel reluctant helping people genuinely battling cancer and other ailments.
I am going to be honest that bail should be a lot more than $10k. To deter scamming it needed to be at least $100k and she should go to jail for at minimum a year.
Flip to the next page for videos and photos of Madison Marie Russo making people believe she was battling pancreatic cancer…