Amanda Riley was sentenced to five years in prison for wire fraud after convincing friends for years that she had cancer.
Screenshot via ABC/Youtube
There is an astonishing clip in the first episode of the ABC docuseries “Scamanda” when a 2015 video is played on screen. In it, a young mother, her eyes glinting with the beginnings of tears, says, “I’ll never forget the doctor’s words: Your cancer’s back, and you’re pregnant.”
It’s a jaw-dropping, vulnerable moment — and it was a bald-faced lie.
Article continues below this ad
Based on the viral podcast of the same name, the new four-part docuseries tells the story of Amanda Riley, a Bay Area woman who is currently incarcerated for defrauding more than $100,000 from her community while faking terminal cancer.
“I don’t think it was ever about the money. I think it was about this thing that spiraled,” journalist and “Scamanda” podcast creator Charlie Webster told SFGATE last week. “She got attention — people gave her things — but more than anything it was validation. And I think that became very addictive.”
Amanda Maneri was born in 1985 and raised in San Jose. When she was 17, she was hired as a dance coach for the two young daughters of Aletta and Cory Riley. One of the daughters had cancer — a fact that would become incredibly consequential in the years to come.
Article continues below this ad
By 2007, the Rileys’ marriage had ended, and to the astonishment of family and friends, Cory started a relationship with Amanda. The couple married, and Amanda Riley’s life as a young mother began.
Family Community Church in San Jose, Calif.
Screenshot via Google Street View
Cory and Amanda were a model couple, especially at Family Community Church in San Jose, where they were high-profile congregants. In “Scamanda,” one former friend refers to them as the “poster family for the church.” Their profile only grew in 2012 as news spread that Amanda was facing a grave diagnosis: She’d been told she had Hodgkin lymphoma, and it was likely terminal.
From all outward appearances, Amanda was stricken. She made appearances in front of the megachurch congregation giving testimony about this trial from God. She went to fundraisers and posted photos of herself in hospital beds. She shaved her head. Sometimes she would go into remission, only to tell people months later that her cancer was back and worse than before. One friend recalled on “Scamanda” that when she asked if it was wise to carry a baby to term while battling cancer, Amanda reportedly said, “The pregnancy is reversing the cancer.”
Article continues below this ad
According to federal prosecutors, Amanda ran two scam websites from 2012 to 2019, one called lymphomacansuckitblogspot.com and another called supportamanda.com, which allowed people to donate to her fictitious medical bills. The blogs were filled with dire news about her condition. “The next year will be the battle of her life,” one page read, with another saying, “Her battle for a cure has instead become a battle for time.”
A screenshot from Amanda Riley’s fraudulent blog, shared in court filings by U.S. prosecutors.
U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California/Courtesy
“Amanda has been a ray of sunshine in all our lives, and we all will continue to share our love and emotional support, keeping her always in our prayers,” the donation page, likely written by Amanda herself, said. “… 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.”
The scam also extended to Pacific Point Christian Schools in Gilroy, where Amanda was hired as an elementary school principal. Parents there ran fundraisers to support her, splitting the proceeds between her and another teacher who was actually dying of cancer.
Article continues below this ad
Although 349 individuals and businesses donated $105,513 to Amanda, Webster said her years of research led her to believe money wasn’t Amanda’s primary motivation. “In the grand scheme of what she was doing, she could have really pushed for a lot more and got a lot more,” Webster said. The high Amanda felt when she was the center of attention, when she was showered with love and care, seemed to drive her most of all, according to Webster.
That disturbing need for validation extended even to her loved ones: Webster said Amanda told her own young children that she was dying of cancer.
“If it was just about money, why would you do all that to your children and your family?” Webster said.
Amanda Riley was sentenced to five years in prison for wire fraud after convincing friends for years that she had cancer.
Screenshot via ABC/Youtube
Amanda’s precarious house of cards was always going to collapse, and it eventually did thanks to an ex-friend who tipped off an investigative producer named Nancy Moscatiello. Webster, who knew Moscatiello through a colleague, was also soon poring through Amanda’s blog.
Article continues below this ad
“It was very compelling reading,” she said. “And honestly I said to Nancy, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure this woman doesn’t have cancer?’”
As the pieces came together, they were convinced. San Jose police and Internal Revenue Service investigators were also on the case, discovering Amanda had faked medical records, forged doctors’ letters and even shaved her head to appear as if she was going through chemotherapy. Sometimes she went quiet for long periods on her blog, and Webster wondered if those were moments when Amanda was trying to pull back from her spiraling lies.
Although Amanda accepted cash gifts, sporting event tickets and free meals, the only crime she committed was wire fraud — taking money through her website under the false pretense of using the funds for medical bills. Even if her husband Cory was aware she was faking cancer — the question Webster says she gets most frequently from podcast listeners — his name was not associated with the bank account that accepted those funds. He has never been charged with a crime.
An aerial view of a suburban neighborhood near San Jose, California.
simonkr/Getty Images
In July 2020, Amanda was charged with one count wire fraud. A year later, she pleaded guilty — and in a remarkable display of how convincing she was, one friend admits that she believed in Amanda’s innocence right until the moment she pleaded guilty in court.
Article continues below this ad
“I think it’s really important to get across that this isn’t a bunch of naive people. These are incredible people in the community — smart, clever, some of faith, some not — just really wanting to help and support Amanda,” Webster said. “And Amanda was really clever and good and a good storyteller. Maybe she believed herself.”
Because she had no prior criminal record, Amanda was expected to get a few months of prison time, but at sentencing, the judge shocked the courtroom by handing Amanda five years in jail. Records from the Federal Bureau of Prisons show Riley is currently at a halfway house administered by RRM Long Beach. Her release date is set for Dec. 4, 2025.
Life behind bars didn’t mean an end to Riley’s insistence that she is sick. In a June 2024 court filing, a U.S. district court judge rejected Riley’s attempt to reduce her sentence due to “new medical maladies.” Since being incarcerated, Riley has allegedly claimed health issues ranging from pulmonary embolisms to sleep terrors. In her first 18 months in custody, she was taken to a hospital in an ambulance an astonishing 24 times.
Article continues below this ad
The filing says doctors repeatedly found Riley was faking or creating her own symptoms. She “stressed her body to create tachycardia,” “was observed holding her breath during an oxygen saturation test to affect the test results” and “attempted to manipulate an infusion pump administering potassium to her,” the judge wrote. Doctors who treated her in 2023 believed “with increasing confidence that she may suffer from Munchausen syndrome,” a psychological condition where people obsessively fake illnesses.
Amanda Riley was sentenced to five years in prison for wire fraud after convincing friends for years that she had cancer.
Screenshot via ABC/Youtube
Whether Riley will be reformed when she is released remains to be seen, though the judge who sentenced her to five years in prison was pessimistic about the prospect.
“I do find the public to be at significant risk from you. I do believe that this will happen again,” the judge said at Riley’s sentencing. “Being confronted with your lies seemed to be no deterrent whatsoever, and therefore I find the public to continue to be at risk from your continued fraud.”
Article continues below this ad
As part of her punishment, Riley was ordered to pay $105,513 in restitution to her victims; as of the June 2024 court filing, she had only paid about $800.
“She’s smart enough to be devious — and to another level,” retired San Jose Detective Jose Martinez says in the docuseries. “And she knows that it has an effect on people. How she looks, how she carries herself. Because she’s an actor. She’s in that character 24/7.”