Beauty Queen Fakes Cancer Diagnosis
Courtesy of The Washington Post:
Brandi Lee Weaver-Gates does not have cancer.
The 24-year-old former beauty queen never has, nor has she ever undergone the agonizing trials of chemotherapy. She has never shivered in a hospital room, awaiting her prognosis. She has never been forced to wonder if she would live another year.
With that in mind, anyone performing a Google search for her name might be surprised to run across this 2015 article in the Centre County Gazette, which stated:
The Centre Region has done it once again, this time uniting to help Brandi Weaver-Gates, who was diagnosed in March of 2013 with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. Since being diagnosed, she has undergone a series of medical treatments.
It’s not entirely the paper’s fault — Weaver-Gates had fooled nearly everyone, from her classmates at Penn State to her own family members, into thinking she had cancer. In doing so, she raised $30,000 from kind people trying to help her afford treatment.
She pleaded guilty in Centre County Court to four counts of theft by deception and four counts of receiving stolen property in June, telling the judge she faked the disease to get attention, according to the Associated Press.
On Tuesday, a judge sentenced her to two to four years in prison, WJAC reported. She was also ordered to repay the $30,000.
Weaver-Gates is a former Miss Pennsylvania U.S. International pageant winner.
