Host Charlie Webster had a front row seat to Amanda Riley’s cancer hoax after speaking with her for the docuseries Scamanda, which premiered on Thursday, January 30. The series takes a closer look into Amanda’s crimes, and Charlie exclusively reveals to In Touch that Amanda regrets her actions that led to her serving time in prison.
While Amanda, 39, isn’t allowed to speak to the media at the moment due to her sentence, Charlie, 42, tells In Touch that Amanda “is sorry” for the cancer hoax and “she wants that message out there.”
“She regrets every single day what she’s done,” Charlie, who was also the host of the popular 2023 podcast “Scamanda,” explains. “People might believe it. People might not, but that’s what she’s told me, and she understands why it caused so much pain.”
In 2012, Amanda started a personal blog called “Lymphoma Can Suck It,” after becoming relatively well-known through her activity in her local church community. Over the next several years, she documented her journey through life as a young mom who had been diagnosed with cancer. She received support and donations from people around the world. However, Amanda’s followers were unaware that she had never been diagnosed with cancer.
“Maybe Amanda was that convincing because she believed it herself,” Charlie says.
Amanda’s story began with her claiming to have been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She shared the news with members of her church, who were understandably saddened by the news. As her blog began to gain followers, more and more donations began to flow in and Amanda reached an almost celebrity-like status in her hometown.
A little over a year after Amanda had supposedly received her diagnosis, she revealed that she was pregnant with baby No. 2. She told her friends and family that doctors were saying the child was a “miracle baby” because she claimed she was still undergoing chemotherapy and radiation for the cancer, as well as having an IUD at the time. Some people in her life were becoming suspicious.
“After all this chemo and radiation she had, she’s pregnant,” Amanda’s former babysitter Mahasti Ameli said, per ABC News. “I said, ‘Amanda, what’s happening now with you being pregnant?’ ‘Oh, my doctor said I could stop the chemo and radiation or anything that is for my cancer till the baby’s born. And then we could start again.’”
After Amanda gave birth to a baby boy in April 2014, she told her followers that her treatments, and the costs that came along with them, were taking a financial toll on her family and confessed that she would be declaring bankruptcy. Donations began flooding in and eventually totaled up to $105,000, but Amanda’s former friend Lisa Berry felt that something was off.
“It’s a family story, too,” Charlie says of the docuseries. “It’s family relationships, friendships, female friendships that I don’t think we talk enough about, and betrayals and manipulation.”
Lisa revealed that Amanda had initially told her that she had only months to live, and throughout the time they were friends, Lisa began noticing details that didn’t add up.
“She told me that she had just had fluid drained off her brain in the hospital. So she was coming from the hospital and she swam underwater (at a backyard pool), after having fluid drained off her brain?” Lisa explained, per ABC News. “I knew that wasn’t right. And I start going through my mind and thinking about all the stories she told me.”
Lisa eventually called an investigative producer for a TV series called Crime Watch Daily. After Lisa explained everything she knew, producer Nancy Moscatiello called a financial crimes detective who turned over the investigation to the IRS.
In July 2020, Amanda was charged with wire fraud and two years later, she pleaded guilty to the charge. She was sentenced to 60 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $105,513. In December 2024, she was released from prison and transferred to a residential reentry center in Southern California where she’ll remain for the rest of her sentence.
