Woman fakes stage 4 cancer, stages death when confronted — all for money [details inside]

Fake fundraisers don't just trick the all-trusting and empathetic donors into parting with their money but they do a damage far bigger than that. Of permanently denting the credibility of fundraising appeals and channeling  funds away from those genuinely in need. 

In nth such instance to have come to light, a girl allegedly operating with a pseudo name and fake identity faked a Stage 4 cancer and her own death. 

The incident, brought to light by X user Cow Momma, pertains to a decent looking young adult woman named Sanchayita R Lenin who claimed to be, "an orphan, adivasi, vegan activist from Assam and who reportedly passed away from Stage 4 cancer." 

Only to have the thread later inform the readers that she is anything but that. "Turns out her real name is Sanchayita Bhattacharjee. She used to hold fundraisers for herself and "friends'' and had raised quite a lot of money. But things got weird when some of her real life friends started to expose that her entire SM identity and activism was fake [insta: sleepysoyabean]."

The scam that she pulled 

The thread goes on to inform the readers, citing her friends and various other sources of evidence, that the woman faked her own death, and now all her social media accounts and handles have been disabled. 

In a detailed video, a friend of hers explains how and when she started having doubts about Sanchayita. "It's with a very heavy heart that we inform you that a common friend to all of us, who was a friend and associate at so many levels has turned out to be a complete con. That is our friend Sanch…The realization has happened over the last couple of months but mostly for the last three days. This person has misrepresented themselves, their age, their identity, where they're from and what they do. But most disturbingly, they've fake their cancer and all that evidence is with us," says the friend in the video. 

Any Google search by the name, both fake and staged, doesn't throw up any leads. Her page on the memorial website EverLoved, created only a couple of days ago, also doesn't exist any longer.

She built trust for a year, then swindled

The duped friend Rheea Mukherjee, an author, shares the details on her Instagram profile of how Sanchayita duped her and their common friend Ankur, an animal rights activist.

"Hey guys, This is Ankur. My head is a giant mess right now, I am still trying to process things. I will try and explain things as best as I can. I met Sanch in August 2022. We fell in love, things were great...Fast forward to 2023. Sanch goes back to her home, Silchar. She tells us she has been diagnosed with breast cancer. We decided to face it together. Me and Rheea tell Sanch we will support her throughout this difficult time, as best as we can," she said.

With the alleged fake diagnosis came the opportunity to cash in on it all. Both of them sent financial and economic help as best they could. The lengthy post further informs that since they believed Sanchayita to be an orphan, they presumed that she had little to no family support and also no medical insurance.

"So we decided to raise funds for the initial treatment and take it from there. We put the fundraiser on and the whole community came together, we raised the money quickly. I sent the money to Sanch in chunks. By that time she had sent us two reports, biopsy one and a pet scan. But after those reports we didn;t receive any. We kept waiting for related documents. Her treatment plan became more and more vague,"Mukherjee added.

When she was finally confronted about it, "she got mad at me for asking too many details and told us she doesn't want to keep talking about these things. If she wants any help, she will ask us."

When it became more and more difficult to communicate with her, the pile of lies kept getting bigger, and the friends could sniff lack of transparency about the money or treatment. "On friday night, 6th of Jan when Sanch was finally supposed to go through surgery, she restricted us to only one point of contact, her close friend Urmila, who would give us very vague and incomplete details about Sanch's health through a fake Instagram account. Urmila told us that things weren't good and Sanch's condition kept getting worse and eventually she told us Sanch has passed away....A few minutes later we get a call from Sanch saying she is fine and she just got out of the surgery and there was some miscommunication and her cousin is "crazy."

When a lot of the dots did not connect, they cross-referenced the reports that were originally sent to them. When further investigations made it clear that the reports were not legit, they found a paper trail leading up to Sanch's school. "We found out that Sanch had lied to us about her name, age, and parents." When confronted, she was rattled enough to fake her own death.

Any Google search by the name, both fake and staged, doesn't throw up any leads. Her page on the memorial website EverLoved, created only a couple of days ago, also doesn't exist any more. 

Abuse of the platform, gross injustice to real victims

Fundraising platforms are a blessing for those scraping to make ends meet, those in need of an unaffordable surgery, or terminally ill family members. Ketto, ImpactGuru, Milaap, though some of the prominent crowdfunding platforms, however aren't foolproof in their background checks nor are sufficient evidence of authenticity of the cases listed. Several forged appeals have infamously made their way through the websites.

Charity scams are not just illegal but also attract serious federal charges in he US, while in India, the legal ramifications of such scams are still not fully clear. Most such fundraisers, when flagged by people, are immediately taken off the website. However, the onus for donating and determining the authenticity of a fundraiser largely lie with the donor.