Woman scams Canadians by faking cancer

TORONTO - A 23-year-old Canadian woman, who faked having cancer and then created a bogus charity to raise thousands of dollars only to blow the money away, says she did it all to settle scores with her parents for her miserable childhood.

“I was trying to get my family back together. I didn’t want to feel like I’m nothing anymore,” Ashley Kirilow who turned herself in Friday and will appear in court Monday to face fraud charges.

A resident of Burlington, not far from Toronto, Ashley had shaved her head and eyebrows, plucked her eyelashes and starve herself to look like a cancer patient.

Her father Mike Kirilow - who divorced her mother when she was two - told ABC Sunday, “She claimed to me that she did it in order to hurt myself and her mother.

“She was pleading for me to be there (in court Monday) because she doesn’t have anybody else…I want no part of this. I gave her every opportunity to do the right thing…Hopefully she will pay.”

In fact, it was because of her father that the woman’s cancer scam was uncovered. The young woman, who has lived away from family since 2005, hit upon the idea after being treated for a benign lump in one of her breasts in late 2008.

After this, she started telling people that she will die soon as she has brain tumour, breast cancer, liver cancer, stomach cancer and ovarian cancer.

In early 2009, Ashley even contacted her father, whom she had spoken in years, to tell him about his condition. When he asked her to give her oncologist’s name and contact, she told him, “Stay the f… out of my life.”

So when her father and stepmother contacted the hospital where she said she was diagnosed with cancer, there was no record of her cancer.

The woman shaved her head and eyebrows, starved herself to look like a cancer patient to spread the story of her ‘impending death.’

Commiserating with Ashley, her friends raised $9,000 in Sept 2009 at a benefit night for her at a city club where bands performed free, staff donated their tips and the club donated night’s profits. After pocketing $9,000, she started a Facebook group and floated a charity called Change for a Cure, promising to send all donations to the University of Alberta for cancer research on her 23rd birthday - April 29.

Volunteers raised thousands of dollars for her by installing collection boxes at all major concerts even as this fraudster was using four credit cards and running a huge debt by living lavishly. Her scam was exposed after she posted an entry on Facebook , saying it is her last post because she is dying. This prompted her father to call her immediately.

“In one of the conversations I said, ‘You don’t have cancer, do you?’ and she said ‘No,’” her father told ABC News Sunday. He said she told him that she shaved her head, shaved her eyebrows and plucked her eyelashes to appear to have the illness. Soon, he said, volunteers at her charity became suspicious and began contacting authorities.

Ashley admitted her fraud and turned herself in Friday.

(Gurmukh Singh can be contacted at gurmukh.s@ians.in)