- 5 months ago
Not all inspirational tales are what they seem... Join us as we explore heart-wrenching stories of perseverance and survival that captured public attention—only to be exposed as elaborate frauds. From cancer-faking scammers to fabricated memoirs, these tales of deception show just how far some people will go for fame, money, or simply attention. Which con artist do you think is the most shameless?
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00:00You know, I made a mistake, and at a certain point, it came time to pay for it.
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're discussing our picks for the stories of heroism or
00:09perseverance in the face of adversity that turned out to be either heavily fabricated
00:13or outright false. We'll only be looking at stories that were published, or at least well
00:17documented. I gave her so many opportunities to stop and make it right.
00:24Sarah Delle Schmitt. She went to extraordinary lengths to fake a variety of illnesses and
00:28tragedies. She pretended to have leukemia and breast cancer, buying wigs to hide her real hair.
00:35She claimed to have muscular dystrophy and attended a camp for people with disabilities in a motorized
00:39wheelchair. She faked pregnancies, then told people she'd lost the babies. Della Schmitt apparently did
00:43it all for attention, but she also accepted donations from non-profits and help from volunteers
00:47for her supposed conditions. Eventually, she pled guilty to multiple fraud charges and was
00:55sentenced to federal prison. Ashley Kirillow, a Canadian fraudster with a similar M.O., also
01:00faked a cancer diagnosis, raising thousands of dollars online and even accepting a free
01:05trip to Disney World.
01:10JT Leroy. He was a teenage author who grew up in extreme poverty and suffered childhood abuse.
01:14There's so many things I'd like to do. He shared his story with the world through a
01:18semi-autobiographical novel, a book of short stories, and a novella. Except it was all made
01:23up. JT Leroy wasn't even a teenage boy. He was an adult woman named Laura Albert.
01:27As a very young child, I disassociated, and I told these stories in a male voice, and it was the way I
01:34tell. After the success of JT's novel, Albert went so far as to enlist her young sibling-in-law to pose as
01:40Leroy in public.
01:41It's like you're living a double life. I had my Savannah life, and I had the JT life.
01:47When the film studio that had optioned the novel learned of the deception, it sued Albert
01:50for fraud, since a contract signed by a non-existent person isn't exactly legal. Albert's wild story
01:56has inspired a movie, a couple of documentaries, and even an episode of Law & Order.
02:00You hired him to play Sweetie Ness, didn't you? Based on the book that you wrote, based
02:05on the life story that you stole from Cody Larson.
02:08From pretending to be a teenage boy to pretending to be Native American, Timothy Barris had
02:13a successful career as a writer and editor before he took on the persona of a Navajo man
02:17named Nazdij. He published critically acclaimed memoirs under the name, which tell of Nazdij's
02:22difficult past and his adoption of two children. In early 2006, a journalist uncovered the hoax.
02:27Barris, who had no Native American ancestry, was widely criticized by indigenous authors,
02:31who accused him of appropriating real people's suffering for personal profit. He's not the
02:35only writer who pretended to be indigenous. If you read The Education of Little Tree growing
02:40up, you might be interested to know that it was actually written by a white supremacist.
02:43Forrest Carter doesn't really exist. This is Asa Carter, a man who's one of the most notorious
02:50racists.
02:50The Salt Path
02:51This 2018 memoir by Rainer Wynne became a bestseller in the UK and was even made into a movie starring
02:57Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. It detailed Wynne and her husband's experience of homelessness and
03:06terminal illness and the healing that came from walking hundreds of miles along the English coast.
03:10It gave way to an ability to live in the moment and to not spend each moment worrying about what the
03:19next one would hold, but to seize this moment and to hold it.
03:23Except a lot of it might be false. A reporter from The Observer dug into the Wynne's background
03:28and found plenty of dirt, from embezzlement accusations to unpaid debts to a criminal investigation.
03:33She had been creating invoices. She had been signing checks.
03:37The report even suggests that Wynne's husband is lying about his diagnosis. Wynne has denounced the
03:42accusations, but there seems to be a lot of evidence that the reporter's claims are accurate.
03:46I think we need the truth. Other people could well have been hurt by all of this.
03:51Angel at the Fence
03:52Herman Rosenblatt was a real holocaust survivor who spent nearly a year in concentration camps
03:57as a child. However, his story about meeting his wife during his imprisonment was totally fake.
04:01Rosenblatt claimed that a young girl threw him food over the camp fence every day for months.
04:05And she took out an apple from the tree from the pocket and stepped forward and threw it over the fence.
04:15After he was liberated and moved to the US, he supposedly reunited with that girl and married her.
04:20Every morning, every morning, for years, you wake up, you look at each other,
04:30and you say, I love you.
04:32When holocaust historians noticed holes in Rosenblatt's narrative, they did some research
04:36and discovered that the girl who would become his wife was actually in hiding over 200 miles away
04:40during the war. Rosenblatt managed to secure book and movie deals before the deception was revealed,
04:45but both were canceled after he confessed to fabricating the story.
04:48My belief was in me that I was telling the truth, but in reality, I wasn't telling the truth.
04:59Lymphoma can suck it
05:00Amanda Riley was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma shortly after her first child was born. At least
05:05that's what she claimed on her blog, Lymphoma Can Suck It.
05:07Everything about being sick brought me closer to God instead of pushing me away.
05:12She told people she had a terminal diagnosis, and when support came pouring in,
05:15she started asking for donations to cover supposed medical expenses. Over the course of eight years,
05:20she collected more than $100,000 from well-meaning people. But you guessed it, it was all a scam.
05:26She showed herself in hospitals with IV drips, she showed bruises under her eyes,
05:32she showed a shaved head, fundraisers, trials that she was going on.
05:39Riley was eventually convicted on wire fraud charges and sentenced to prison.
05:42Australian Belle Gibson also lied about a severe cancer diagnosis,
05:46but she claimed to have cured herself using whole foods and naturopathy.
05:49She made her money promoting her fake cures to actual cancer patients.
05:53You have a responsibility to make sure your story is right.
05:58I'm not trying to get away with anything.
06:01Michael Orr and the Toohey Family
06:032009's The Blind Side tells the story of homeless teen Michael Orr's adoption into a rich family,
06:08and his transformation into a star football player.
06:28When the movie came out, Orr was annoyed that it portrayed him as unintelligent and implied he had
06:32to learn the basics of football from this tiny white leaf. In reality, Orr was already a successful
06:37high school player when he started living with the Toohey's.
06:39You don't have to come have someone save you and rescue you to go out and be successful. You got every tool
06:48in you.
06:48But it gets so much worse. It wasn't until decades later that Orr discovered the Toohey's didn't
06:53actually adopt him. Instead, he says they tricked him into signing a conservatorship that gave them the
06:58rights to cash in on his name. He filed a lawsuit to end the conservatorship in 2023.
07:03Michael sees it all as sort of wrong from the start.
07:08The Malarkey Family
07:09These people certainly earned their last name.
07:11With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey.
07:14When Alex Malarkey was just six, he and his dad, Kevin, were in a serious car accident.
07:18It left Alex paralyzed and with brain trauma.
07:20I really like being around people, but it's so much work.
07:27Six years later, Alex and Kevin published a book called The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven.
07:31It supposedly tells the story about Alex's visits to heaven during his near-death experience
07:36and subsequent recovery.
07:37I don't think it's so far-reaching that a loving God,
07:42a graceful Lord Jesus Christ, would touch a young man's life, show him things.
07:49Just a couple of years later, Alex came clean, admitting that it was all made up.
07:52He has since apologized and asked bookstores to pull the book from their shelves.
07:55Kevin, on the other hand, has stood by his story.
07:58The book sold over a million copies before it was pulled.
08:00Right, so retailers are no longer selling the book.
08:03They're taking it off the shelves, which they should.
08:05I mean, if you want any credibility as a retailer.
08:07Tonya Head
08:08From The Boy Who Didn't Really Go to Heaven to The Woman Who Wasn't Really in the Twin Towers.
08:12Tonya Head, real name Alicia Esteva Head, is a Spanish woman who claimed to be a 9-11 survivor.
08:18She joined a major survivor support group and even became its president.
08:24She did tours at Ground Zero, gave speeches, and met with the mayor.
08:28Her story kind of fit into that kind of all-encompassing,
08:32a survivor and a hero and, you know, a widow and everything that kind of 9-11 came to represent.
08:39In reality, she was still living in Spain in 2001. She didn't come to the US until 2003.
08:44Unlike most of our scammers, she apparently didn't do this for money.
08:47Head doesn't seem to have profited from her deception at all.
08:50In fact, she donated her own money to the support group.
08:52Her true motivations still remain a mystery.
08:54I just hope that she really does get the help she needs and that she can live a full life.
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09:14A Million Little Pieces
09:17James Fry's memoir tells of his struggles with substance use disorder and his time in rehab.
09:21After Oprah Winfrey selected it for her book club, it's shot to the top of the bestseller list.
09:26It's a gut-wrenching memoir that is raw and it's so real.
09:31Just a few months later, investigators discovered the story was a lie. Initially,
09:35Fry doubled down, claiming that the book was the essential truth of his life. Eventually,
09:39he was forced to admit that he made most of it up.
09:41It was a mistake. It was a bad mistake.
09:44This wasn't the first time Oprah was fooled by a fake memoir. Misha, a memoir of the Holocaust of
09:49years, was a book club pick before it was proven false. More than a decade after Fry's confession,
09:53a film adaptation of the book was released starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson. It was not well received.
09:58Which of these con artists do you think is the most shameless? Let us know in the comments.
10:09The responsibility for that situation all has to come back to me.
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