When a young, churchgoing mom announced in 2012 that she had Stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma, family and friends in San Jose, California, lovingly stepped up to help her weather the devastating diagnosis.
Amanda C. Riley’s brother began raising money online for her, calling his sister “a ray of sunshine in all our lives.”
“While we can’t control the cancer, or the daily toll this battle will have on Amanda… we can help minimize some of [her] stress by reducing the financial burden of medical bills and daily living expenses,” he wrote on the donation site he set up, SupportAmanda.com. “Open your hearts and help Amanda and her family through this difficult time. No donation is too small; even $5 a month can make a difference.”
Amanda also took to the internet to help process her diagnosis, sharing news and updates about her battle to live on a blog titled, Lymphoma Can Suck It.
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“When I ride on planes I tend to freak people out with wearing a mask or looking half dead, so I try to break the ice with whom ever [sic] sits with me,” she said in one post. “I immediately bonded with the nice lady next to me who I quickly found out was in the last 6 months of her medical school residency… Upon leaving the plane, she gave me a little folded piece of paper and wished me a Merry Christmas. As I exited the plane, I opened it (curious what this perfect stranger just gave me… a phone number? Facebook link?). It was a blank check for $1300. WHAT!?”
Over the next several years, Amanda’s plight brought in more than $100,000 in donations from hundreds of people, and inspired thousands more, including country music star LeeAnn Rimes, who invited the brave cancer patient for a meet-and-greet and gifted her an autographed guitar.
But what none of them knew at the time, was that Amanda didn’t actually have cancer.
The bizarre tale is the subject of Scamanda, a new four-part docuseries airing Thursdays on ABC, and streaming Fridays on Hulu. The first episode, which aired January 30, featured an ex-friend of Amanda’s whose initial suspicions directly led to her eventual downfall – and a five-year sentence in federal prison.
The whistleblower revealed her identity for the first time in the premiere episode, after appearing, without being named, on the podcast that inspired the TV production, telling viewers, “My name is Lisa Berry, and I am the anonymous source. It’s time. I’m proud of it. I’m proud I’m the anonymous source.”
In June 2015, some three years into Amanda’s bogus cancer journey, Berry contacted investigative journalist Nancy Moscatiello with a mysterious tip. Something didn’t seem right about Amanda’s story, she told Moscatiello, who began to uncover various details that didn’t seem to add up. She brought those clues to a local police detective, fraud investigator Jose Martinez, who then launched a probe of his own.
Martinez connected some important dots, like calling certain hospitals where Amanda said her doctors worked, and finding out there was no one there by that name. Since Amanda’s alleged activities spanned multiple states, bringing in cash and gifts from across the U.S., Martinez called in the feds, and IRS Special Agent Arlette Lyons joined the probe. All the while, Amanda continued posting, desperate to keep the lie alive.
The entire house of cards finally came crashing down in 2019, and Amanda was arrested on federal wire fraud charges. In court, it emerged that her deceptions went beyond what anyone previously knew: falsified medical records, forged physicians’ letters, and threats of lawsuits lobbed at anyone who doubted her story.
“[S]he posted photos of medications, photos of herself at hospitals, and photos of herself allegedly suffering the side effects of chemotherapy,” prosecutors said in a statement upon Amanda’s October 2021 guilty plea. “Riley added captions to the photos with false statements claiming that she was taking cancer drugs and receiving cancer treatment. She even shaved her head to make it appear as if she had lost her hair as a result of chemotherapy.”
Now 39, Amanda is more than halfway through her 60-month sentence. In her first 18 months behind bars, according to court filings, Amanda has been rushed to the hospital by ambulance at least two dozen times. But, doctors said the symptoms she claimed to be suffering continued to be products of her own creation, holding her breath to affect the results of an oxygen saturation test, “stress[ing] her body to create tachycardia,” and interfering with a medical infusion device he was hooked up to, in an attempt to manipulate the readings.
In Episode 1 of Scamanda, Martinez, who is now retired, calls Amanda “devious,” and “smart enough… to [take it] to another level.”
“Because she’s an actor,” Martinez says in the show. “She’s in that character 24/7.”
Of the $105,513 in restitution Amanda was ordered to reimburse those she scammed, she has so far paid out less than $1,000, court records show. She is presently at a so-called residential reentry center in Long Beach, California, according to the Bureau of Prisons, with an expected release date of December 4, 2025.