Where Is "Scamanda" Now? How Amanda Riley's Cancer Hoax Unraveled

Who Is Amanda Riley?

Southern California native Amanda Riley seemed to be your average family-oriented, church-going young woman living in San Jose. She married Cory Riley, who was dad to daughter Jessa from a previous relationship, in 2011 and they welcomed a son together in May 2012.

 "She was a wife, she was a Christian that attended church and was very active in her community,” Charlie Webster, host of the 2023 podcast Scamanda, described Amanda in the ABC News Studio docuseries also called Scamanda. “She was very charming, very well-liked and she got diagnosed with cancer.”

At least, that’s what Amanda told fellow members of Family Community Church, a sprawling mega-church with upward of 5,000 congregants in San Jose.

She started documenting her battle with the blood cancer Hodgkin’s lymphoma in October 2012, explaining on her blog that she had been so moved by her community’s reaction to her plight that she thought it would be good to have a way to keep everyone updated all at once and to support anyone going through a similar experience.

Amanda was described by multiple churchgoers interviewed in the ABC News series as charismatic and charming. FCC member Lindsey Wilder said that she once considered it so miraculous that Amanda “could be so terminal and so alive at the same time,” it led her “to believe she was anointed.”  

Church member Josh Keirstead said in the series, “Amanda was kind of a like a celebrity at FCC. She was good at telling her story…She would captivate us every time.”

How Did Amanda Riley Explain Getting Pregnant While Battling Cancer?

Amanda shared in the fall of 2013 that she was pregnant with her second child, while still undergoing treatment and despite having an IUD.

"After all this chemo and radiation she had, she's pregnant," the Riley family’s babysitter Mahasti Ameli said in the ABC News series. "I said, 'Amanda, what's happening now with you being pregnant?'”

Amanda wrote on her blog at the time that she had consulted “a panel of doctors” who assured her that having this baby was “very doable, safe, and possible.” Her second son with Cory was born in April 2014.

Why Did People Start Giving Amanda Riley Money?

After baby No. 2 came, Amanda shared on her blog that she and Cory were struggling financially, that they had insurance but her treatments and participation in clinical trials was leaving them in a hole.

The donations started pouring in, with people ultimately contributing more than $105,513—online and in checks made out directly to Amanda, according to federal prosecutors—to what they thought was a righteous cause.

Friend Rebecca Cafiero said in ABC’s Scamanda that she initially donated $500, and then turned it into a monthly contribution.

Church member Lindsey, who was unable to contribute much financially, recalled in the series being thrilled to get a mention in Amanda’s blog after maxing out the amount of platelets she was able to donate in a given month.

Meanwhile, Amanda diligently chronicled her health journey with photos and videos, the images showing her in hospital beds, hooked up to IVs, holding vials of medication, close-ups of syringes and more. She wrote in great detail, discussing white blood cell counts, Neupogen shots and clinical trials.

In 2013, she wrote on her blog that she would be undergoing brain surgery. Ahead of giving birth to her second child in April 2014, she wrote, “5 hospital stays and 32 doctors appointments/lab visits in January alone! Thank goodness only 1 more week of chemo until Baby Riley gets here! Next weekend need to celebrate!”

How Did Amanda Riley Get Caught in a Lie?

Former friend Lisa Berry, who met Amanda when her daughter was in the same class as Jessa, said in ABC News’ Scamanda that Amanda told her back in 2010 that she had terminal cancer.

Lisa recalled being devastated, but also curious as to why Amanda’s parents weren’t around more when their daughter was supposedly so sick—Amanda told her they were busy, Lisa said—and on one occasion Amanda asked Lisa to loan her money for a “’life-saving blood test.’”

“It felt awkward,” Lisa said in the series, “but I gave her the money.”

One day, Lisa said, she picked up Jessa from school while Amanda said she was getting treatment, and the child went swimming at the Berrys’ house. When Amanda got there, Lisa continued, she also went in the pool.

“She told me that she had just had fluid drained off her brain in the hospital,” Lisa said in the series. “So she was coming from the hospital and she swam underwater after having fluid drained off her brain? I knew that wasn’t right. And I start going through my mind and thinking about all the stories she told me.”

Lisa said she and her husband Steve Berry cut ties with Amanda and Cory soon after. But Amanda kept calling, she said, and the last time she talked to her was when Amanda told her she was pregnant. Lisa recalled saying, “’I thought you were dying,’” to which Amanda allegedly told her that her pregnancy was “’reversing the disease.’”

How Did Police Find Out About Amanda Riley's Cancer Hoax?

Lisa said in Scamanda that she started reading Amanda’s blog in 2015 after receiving an email alerting her to a local Chili’s fundraiser set up to aid her former friend’s cancer battle.

That led to Lisa contacting investigative producer Nancy Moscatiello after seeing on social media that the journalist was looking for tips about potential scams for a show she was working on, Crime Watch Daily.

Nancy recalled in the ABC News

series being intrigued since the tipster—who wanted to remain anonymous at the time, but Lisa proudly identified herself in Scamanda—came with a lot of details, but she said she knew she had to tread lightly since accusing someone of faking cancer was no small thing. But pretty soon, after combing through the entirety of Amanda’s blog to date, Nancy detailed, she was convinced that the mother of two was perpetuating a hoax.

"My thought process was, I want to stop her,” the journalist told ABC 30 Action News’ “On the Red Carpet” in January. “I want people to know who Amanda Riley is.”

Amanda’s blog “was very detailed,” Nancy added. “It was something that I could latch onto and really fact check regularly.”

Nancy said in Scamanda that she started calling the San Jose Police Department and was eventually connected with Financial Fraud Unit Det. Jose Martinez in September 2015.

The now retired detective said in Scamanda that he knew it wasn’t going to be easy proving someone was lying about having cancer, since medical records are private under federal law. And at first, he said, he had to consider the possibility that the tipster was “just an angry family member or somebody who was scorned, just trying to get somebody in trouble.”

A big break came, according to Martinez, when he asked an attorney representing Amanda for a piece of verifiable proof that she did have cancer, with which he could close the case. “Time passed,” he said in the series, and then he received—in an email attachment—a letter purportedly from a doctor at Santa Clara Kaiser Permanente Clinic that referred to Amanda as being a cancer patient.

When he called the hospital to verify the document, Martinez continued, they were “super protective” about patient confidentiality but he was ultimately told that a letter was sent to Amanda, “‘but not for that.’”

“Now I’ve got a fraudulent doctor’s letter,” the retired detective said in Scamanda. “I thought, Wow, we got ourselves a case.”

But needing “bigger reach,” he said, he contacted the IRS’ financial crimes unit.

Former IRS Criminal Division Special Agent Arlette Lee described in Scamanda how her office subpoenaed “every medical facility [Amanda] listed in her blogs” to cross-check whether she’d ever been treated for cancer at any of them. The now-retired agent said she went through thousands of pages trying to incontrovertibly catch Amanda in a lie.

On Sept. 16, 2016, as detailed in the ABC News series, federal agents raided Amanda’s home.

But, as Martinez noted in the series, while investigators carted away documents and medical equipment from the house Amanda shared with her husband and two sons, she wasn’t charged with any crime, nor was she under arrest.

And hours after the agents left the house, Nancy said in the series, Amanda posted a photo of herself with a shaved head on her blog in recognition of Lymphoma Cancer Awareness Month.

How Was Amanda Riley Eventually Prosecuted?

While in the interim Amanda took a job as a principal at a private Christian school in Gilroy, Calif., eventually the law closed in on her.

In 2020, she was charged with wire fraud for scheming to solicit donations to pay for cancer treatments she neither needed nor received, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of California.

A criminal complaint filed July 27, 2020, alleged that she falsely claimed multiple times that she was being treated at a number of hospitals around the country, as well as used her blog and social media accounts to claim she was sick and solicit funds for medical and travel expenses to get treatment and attend fundraisers.

She set up a website, SupportAmanda.com, in September 2013 to further facilitate donations, the complaint contended. And on April 6, 2016, according to the complaint, she altered a doctor’s note to read that she was “in treatment for cancer.”

Federal prosecutors said investigators had identified 349 individuals and entities who collectively donated more than $105,000—not including various gifts—to Amanda.

Facing a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000, Amanda pleaded guilty in October 2021 to one count of wire fraud. She was sentenced in May 2022 to five years in prison—more than the 18 months prosecutors recommended—and ordered to pay $105,513 in restitution.

In court, U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman said she felt Amanda put the public at "significant risk," so with “public safety and the need for deterrence” in mind, she was imposing an “upward variance of the guideline sentence.”

What Has Amanda Riley Said About Her Behavior?

In a statement read during her May 3, 2022, sentencing hearing, per a court transcript, Amanda said, “Your Honor, there aren’t enough words to adequately express how horrific I feel and how sorry I am that this happened. My heart aches every day, thinking that I did something that hurt other people. This is the worst thing I’ve ever done and the worst mistake I could have made."

She wasn't sleeping well and could barely look at herself in the mirror, she said.

"I have been dealing with the repercussions of this for years," Amanda continued. "I threw away my dream career, lost all my friends and family. I went from being a nobody to being negatively covered in dozens of tabloids and news articles.”

Noting that she had become paranoid about being followed and fearful of what people might be saying about her on social media, she said, “I’m here to accept responsibility and humbly accept my consequences as the first step of showing everyone I want to make this right. I will spend the rest of my life working towards the amends for the hurt that I have caused.”

She then apologized to "all the victims in this case," singling out her church and "all of the kind, loving people who helped us," and to her family.

Rebecca Cafiero, the friend who said that at one point she was donating $500 a month to Amanda, said that days before Amanda reported for prison, she texted her messages including, “I’m struggling and I honestly don’t know where to start or what to say,” “There’s a lot of malicious things happening,” “The money did pay for medical needs,” “I don’t know who to trust,” “This was never a pre-mediated fraud or scam,” “Cory’s ex-wife partnered with a reporter,” “I’ll be paying every penny of it back.” (In ABC News’ Scamanda, Cory’s ex-wife Aletta Bernal denied having partnered with Nancy, the reporter in question, in any way.)

“At this point,” Rebecca said in the series, “I can’t believe anything that comes out of…Amanda’s mouth.”

Scamanda podcast host Charlie Webster said in the ABC News series of the same name that she gave Amanda her card after the hearing and so began a text exchange between the two.

Toward the end of the four-part series, Charlie said that Amanda told her in a 25-minute video call from prison (under the condition it not be recorded) that she and Cory were divorcing and that she was still having health problems.

“She said she was sorry and she does want to take accountability,” Charlie said, noting that Amanda also got very emotional when talking about her children “and it seemed very genuine.” (The series noted that Amanda declined to be interviewed.)

Where Is Amanda Riley Now?

Amanda started serving her 60-month sentence at Federal Medical Center Carswell in Ft. Worth, Texas. 

Her current location is listed as Long Beach RRM, a residential reentry  management field office in San Pedro, Calif., according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ online inmate locator. Her release date is listed as Dec. 4, 2025, to be followed, per the U.S. Attorney’s Office, by a three-year period of supervision.

Cory, who did not participate in Scamanda, did file for divorce and was living in Texas, according to court documents obtained by TODAY.com.

In June 2024, Judge Freeman denied Amanda’s petition for a sentence reduction to time served, the prisoner having alleged she was having health problems behind bars.

According to the motion denial order, the judge wrote that the defendant’s “medical providers regularly note a substantial gap between her claimed symptoms and what they can medically observe.”