A British bride who faked terminal cancer to raise $ 11,000 for her dream wedding was sentenced to five months in prison this week.
“Any orthodox member of society would be shocked by your conduct,” district judge Nicholas Sanders told Toni Standen, 29, when he sentenced her in Chester Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday, according to the Sun.
“Fortunately, this court doesn’t often have to convict someone who has shown as much shamelessness, greed or betrayal of friendship as you did to your friends and the wider community,” the judge told her.
“You were so embarrassed that you kept taking money from them for many, many months,” he told Standen, who was also ordered to pay back a local businessman nearly $ 2,700 that he donated.
As of July 2017, Standen had claimed to have only two months left, saying of her as if she had cancer, “It’s gone to my brain, to my bones – it’s everywhere.”
She shaved her head, told her friends so ‘clearly and in detail’ they didn’t question her, and even gave interviews to two newspapers, according to the Liverpool Echo, one of the papers she fooled.
Friends launched a GoFundMe page to “ give the couple a wedding they deserve, ” with Standen accepting more than $ 11,000 for her big day and a honeymoon in Turkey, Chester Magistrates’ Court was told.
Her “modest” 52-year-old husband, James, was one of the victims when they finally married in a Catholic church in Widnes last summer, according to the Sun.
Pals finally became suspicious this year after Standen inexplicably braved her ‘condition’ to travel across Europe, then claimed to have COVID-19, according to the Sun.
Two friends spoke to her on a three-person phone call – in which Standen admitted it was “all lies,” the reports said.
“I’m ashamed and heartbroken and right now I’m having a hard time,” she texted the friends, according to the Echo.
“At the moment I don’t know if Jim and I are going to divorce, I don’t blame him if he does and I don’t blame you both if this is the end,” she said, seemingly affirming that her husband wasn’t on the height of the scam.
Her husband supported her in court when she finally admitted she was a liar, the Mirror noted.