(Image source from: mirror.co.uk)
An Indian-origin woman has been sentenced to four years in prison in the United Kingdom for faking terminal brain cancer and conning her family, friends for 250,000 pounds.
In 2013, the 36-year-old Jasmin Mistry told her then-husband, Vijay Katechia, that she had cancer, along with a supporting WhatsApp message from what he thought was her doctor. However, investigations later revealed that the message had been sent by her using a different SIM card.
At the end of December 2014, she told her ex-husband that her severe brain cancer meant she had no more than six months to live, with further messages from another fictitious doctor suggesting that it could be treated in America - at a cost of around 500,000 pounds.
Jasmin's ex-husband became suspicious when a friend of his saw a picture of a brain scan she had said was taken at one of her consultations. The plot was ultimately unearthed after her ex-husband showed a "scan" to a doctor friend, who told him it had been lifted from Google.
Her husband likewise found SIM cards Jasmin had been using send messages posing to be other people, and when confronting her she confessed that she made up a story. She was arrested in 2017.
During interviews, she confirmed to officers that she was not terminally ill and that she did not know why she had lied, Met Police said.
According to the report, it was found that 20 members of her extended family and eight others were found to have lent her money. The total fraud sum of money was calculated as 253,122 pounds.
Jasmin had pleaded guilty to the crime after her arrest earlier this year.
Jasmin, a medical secretary from Loughborough town in the Midlands region of England, was convicted of fraud by mendacious representation and imprisoned for four years at Snaresbrook Crown Court this week.
Described in court as a "pathological liar", she created a fake online account of a counterfeit physician to message her husband and as well posted "Stand up to cancer" messages on social media.
"This is a terrible crime. To tell everybody you have cancer and take money from them... It's an awful situation," Judge Judith Hughes told Jasmin in court.
-Sowmya
