U.S Prosecutors have charged a 38-year -old Orlando woman who used her falsified cancer status to raise donations when she lived in the New York’s Westchester County several years ago.

Vedoutie Hoobraj used a different name, Shivonie Deokaran when she was receiving donations between October, 2014 and March, 2016.

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Prosecutors said she raised more than $50,000 from at least 300 people in Westchester County towns. Spaghetti dinners were organized to help raise money for Hoobraj, who claimed she had 18 months to live and was suffering from both leukaemia and cancer of the liver.

“Hoobraj allegedly concocted an elaborate story about having cancer when she did not, using GoFundMe pages and accepting money raised by a local high school, all supposedly to fund her medical care,” Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim said in the prosecutors’ statement.

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Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York FBI office, William Sweeney, bemoaned how the alleged crime will negatively affect those who genuinely need supports for their predicaments.

“to those who do truly need the support of their communities and may now be met with suspicion,” he cried.

A similar fate befell Ghana’s one-time HIV and AIDS ambassador, Joyce Dzidzor Mensah Joyce Dzidzor Mensah, who made Ghanaians believe that she was HIV positive and identified for 5 years as an official HIV/AIDS Ambassador for Ghana AIDS Commission.

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She however came out public five years later to say her HIV status was a sham. She said she did what she did to help the AIDS Commission create awareness for the dreaded HIV/AIDS virus.

Joyce Dzidzor Mensah’s case was a matter of heated controversy at the time, but typical of the Ghanaian jurisdiction, the matter has almost died a natural death eventually.