Bride Sentenced To 5 Months In Prison After Faking Cancer To Raise $11K For ‘Dream’ Wedding
Toni Standen, a 29-year-old bride, has been sentenced to 5 months in prison after faking cancer to raise $11,000 for her “dream” wedding.” In addition to her five-month sentence, Standen is required to pay back a local businessman nearly $2,700 that he’d donated.
Things began in July 2017, when Standen launched a GoFundMe, claiming she’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer and had just two months to live; so, she was asking for donations to give her and her “unassuming” 52-year-old husband, James, “a wedding they deserve.” While claiming, “[The cancer’s] gone to my brain, my bones–it’s everywhere,” she posted a photo with a shaved head, and even gave interviews to local newspapers.
On Tuesday, District Judge Nicholas Sanders told the British bride, “Every right-thinking member of society would be appalled by your behavior. Thankfully it’s not often this court has to sentence someone who has shown such a degree of shamelessness, such greed, or such a betrayal of friendship as you did to your friends and the wider community. Such was your lack of shame that you kept taking money from them over many, many months.” Talking with friends after her admission, Standen texted, “I am embarrassed and heartbroken and right now I am struggling. At the minute I don’t know if Jim and I will be getting a divorce, I don’t blame him if he does and I don’t blame you both if this is the end.”
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