Would you lie about your child's health? A mother of four from Oklahoma did just that just so she could con people out of tens of thousands of dollars.
Jessica Lynn Good, 33, started her lie in 2013 after a "harmless cyst" was found on her daughter's brain, according to The Oklahoman. Good shared several posts on Facebook about her daughter having a tumor removed, and she also said that her daughter was diagnosed with lymphoma and needed stem cell replacements.
In truth, medical records showed that Good's daughter was diagnosed with a mild case of cerebral palsy and is developmentally delayed. Doctors suspect that Good experienced "some form of Munchausen by proxy syndrome," wherein a caregiver makes up an illness or injury in a person under his or her care to gain attention and sympathy from others.
Good started her daughter's GoFundMe campaign in November 2013, and several kindhearted people donated. A gold tournament was even held in Enid back in 2014 to raise funds for Good's daughter, and she received around $12,000.
After that, Good began telling people that her daughter was finally cancer-free. But in late 2015, she once again tugged on people's heartstrings when she claimed that her daughter's cancer was back. She turned to GoFundMe again for her daughter's "ongoing medical care."
People once again donated, until an Enid church pastor grew suspicious and reported to the police about her possible fraud. The church and its members had given the Good family over $5,000 within a span of three years, and they would have continued with the financial support had Pastor Alan Seibel not noticed that Good's daughter was not acting like a child going through chemotherapy.
Good told Seibel that her daughter was having several seizures and undergoing stem cell research, and was on the waiting list to receive a heart transplant. But when detectives checked with the Oklahoma University Medical Center, they discovered that Good was lying.
Seibel's church wasn't the only victim; a local photographer even raised $3,100 for her alleged medical expenses. Thankfully, she hadn't handed Good the check before the lies came to light and instead donated the money to a different charity.
Good was sentenced to three years in prison by a Garfield County judge. When she gets out of prison, she will be placed under probation for two decades. Aside from her prison sentence, Good was ordered to pay $69,565 in restitution.
"My greed had taken over," Good wrote in a statement earlier this year. "I was so greedy and never thought about how my actions were effecting everyone else. I was so caught up in my own wants. I was lying to everyone, including my husband and family. People seemed to want to help with the financial side of things so my lie got bigger and bigger."
