A 19-year-old TikToker has been arrested for receiving donations after falsely claiming that she had been diagnosed with cancer.
Madison “Maddie” Russo was arrested on January 23 on a first-degree theft charge which is a felony that can gain 10 years in prison in her home state of Iowa, as per the New York Post.
The 19-year-old stands accused of scamming hundreds of donors out of $37,000 after claiming she had pancreatic cancer and a tumor “the size of a football."
Russo documented her fake journey throughout much of 2022, often posing with medical equipment that Eldridge Police Department is now claiming were all props.
The TikToker also made a series of media appearances, where she claimed she was suffering from pancreatic cancer and leukemia, and that doctors had given her an 11% chance of survival.
Despite this, she managed to attend university while painting a 4.0 GPA, hold down her part-time job, and also enjoyed golfing in her free time.
Police also claim the alleged con artist also gave talks at St. Ambrose University where she was a student, where she explained her alleged battles with the disease as well as giving talks at the National Pancreatic Foundation - the non-profit organization disputes this, however.
A spokesperson for the charity told Fox News: "We can confirm the person in question has had no contact with the National Pancreatic Cancer Foundation and has never spoken at any of our events."
Russo got caught out on January 11, when medical professionals stumbled across her content and alerted authorities to discrepancies in what she was saying about her illness.
Police reports obtained by KWQC reveal that Russo often lied about being in the hospital and was actually in her apartment and that she had taken images from cancer patients' social media pages and uploaded them to her own.
Medical records from Genesis, Trinity, and Iowa City’s Stead Family Children’s Hospital also state that while Russo was a patient there, she was never diagnosed with cancer, nor did she receive any treatment as she claimed.
When searching her apartment, police obtained nausea pills prescribed to another name, an IV drip with cotton balls used to block the pump, and bank records, amongst other things.
A woman who donated to Russo's crowdfunding page received an email from the site revealing that she would be getting her money back in "three to seven working days."
Russo was released from jail on a $10,000 dollar bond and is due in court on March 2.
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