Leicestershire Woman Jailed For Cancer Scam

15 December 2018, 05:24 | Updated: 15 December 2018, 05:28

A woman who pretended to have cancer and claimed over £250,000 from her then husband, his family and the public has been jailed for four years, police said.

Jasmin Mistry, 36, from Loughborough, was sentenced at Snaresbrook Crown Court on Friday December 14, after pleading guilty to one count of fraud by false representation on October 24, according to the Metropolitan Police.

Ms Mistry first told her husband she had cancer in 2013, using a different Sim card to send herself fake WhatsApp messages pretending to be her doctor confirming the diagnosis in order to support her claim.

In December 2014, Ms Mistry told her husband she had six months to live after being diagnosed with brain cancer.

Using further fake messages from her doctor, Ms Mistry said she could be treated in the US but it would cost around £500,000.

Her husband then contacted family and friends to ask for donations for her treatment.

Suspicions were raised about Ms Mistry's story when her husband's friend found her brain scan on Google and said, according to the Met Police, "the tumour was so severe that it would be fatal for the person with it".

Her now ex-husband subsequently found the fake Sim cards his wife had been using to send the fictitious doctors messages and when he confronted her, Ms Mistry admitted she had lied.

She was also found to have defrauded a man she met on a dating website of £7,500, and two members of the public of £10,000 after pretending to be a trader and saying she could invest their money.

Ms Mistry was arrested in November 2017 after police were contacted and, when interviewed, she told officers she was not terminally ill and did not know why she had lied.

The total fraud amount was calculated by the Met Police as £253,122, with 20 members of Ms Mistry's extended family and eight others found to have given her money.

Detective constable Jon Bounds said: "I am glad for the victims of this deceit that they have seen justice.

"Jasmine Mistry went to extreme lengths to manipulate those closest to her emotionally and financially to defraud her now-former husband and his family out of a large sum of money.

"This is a bizarre, shocking case.

"Our investigation revealed the scale of the fraud and the severity of the offending which has resulted in a substantial custodial sentence."