TikToker Madison Russo fined $39,000 but avoids jail for fake cancer scam Facebook: Madison Russo \/ GoFundMeTikToker Madison Russo has been fined $39,000, but avoided jail time following an elaborate scam where she faked having cancer as a way to get money from viewers. Back in February 2023, Madison Russo was arrested and charged with first-degree theft after allegedly scamming $37,000 in donations from viewers on TikTok. To do so, she told users that she had Stage 2 pancreatic cancer and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She used GoFundMe to collect the donations. Russo was sentenced on October 20, 2023, and was fined $39,000 \u2013 but was able to avoid jail time. TikToker who faked cancer in donation scam fined $39K WQAD News 8 uploaded the judge\u2019s entire sentencing to their YouTube channel just a day after the trial ended for all to watch. In the video, Scott County Judge John Telleen detailed that Madison Russo had admitted to using other patients\u2019 stories as her own, slamming her for engaging in the \u201clengthy course of deceit.\u201d The judge said: \u201cThrough this scheme, you deceived your friends, your family, your community, other cancer victims, charities and strangers who were motivated by your supposedly tragic story to donate to help support you.\u201d Madison Russo also made a comment during the sentencing, explaining why she decided to do the year-long scam in the first place. \u201cA lot of people have made speculation as to why I did this and how somebody who looked like they had everything together could have such a mess,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t do this for money or greed. I didn\u2019t do this for attention. I did this as an attempt to get my family back together.\u201d \u201cI fully acknowledge what I did was wrong. And I\u2019m incredibly sorry,\u201d Russo added. \u201cIf there was anything I could do to take it back, I would. The reality is, I can\u2019t.\u201d The TikToker\u2019s sentence includes 100 hours of community service, and her $39,000 fine has been paid. For more news and other viral stories, head over to check out our coverage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TikToker Madison Russo fined $39,000 but avoids jail for fake cancer scam Facebook: Madison Russo \/ GoFundMeTikToker Madison Russo has been fined $39,000, but avoided jail time following an elaborate scam where she faked having cancer as a way to get money from viewers. Back in February 2023, Madison Russo was arrested and charged with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}