It’s finally happening, Scamanda Fans! We have heard your pleas, and we are delivering!!!! In this special episode, Charlie Webster is answering ALL your questions. How did Amanda pull off one of the biggest scams the world has ever seen? Where did all the money go? What happened behind the investigative scenes? AND…. Did Cory know? Yep. We are going there. You WON'T want to miss this! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: What is the purpose of this special episode?
Welcome to this special episode of Scamander. It's me, Charlie Webster. I think you know me by now. I'm your host. Now, whether you've been with us from the start or you're just tuning in after watching the docuseries on ABC and Hulu, I'm really glad. that you're here, I can't wait to dig into things. The show really would not be the success it is without you.
I'm so grateful to all of you, you devoted fans. So I'm doing what you've all begged me to do for so long and I'm so grateful I've got the opportunity to do it. I'm opening up the mailbox, which is huge, and answering all your burning questions. I really hope we can have a great intimate conversation.
So before we jump in though, of course I want to remind you that the Scamander docuseries is now streaming on Hulu. So if you missed an episode or you want to binge it, which I know a lot of you did want to binge the TV show and the podcast, it's ready. You've got it and it's waiting for you. Okay, grab whatever you need, a drink, a snack, and let's settle in.
As you probably know by now, for me, it's a cup of tea. It's always a cup of tea. I know it's super stereotypical and it's English, but it's true. So let's dig in. All right. It will come as no surprise that the most common question I always get is, how did Amanda pull this off for so long? It's the one that kind of baffles all our minds.
Chapter 2: How did Amanda pull off the scam for so long?
And listen, when we first started unraveling Amanda's story, I was really just as shocked as you were. I sat there with all these blog posts that Nancy had handed over to me. And I was like, I can't
The conflict in my head of whether this was real or not, because I could see pictures of Amanda with tubes actually in, lying in hospital beds in her arms, in a wheelchair holding a balloon with a smiley sunflower face. Like, how could this be fake? They weren't
fake pictures they weren't AI they weren't photoshopped they were real pictures and then if you look at all the writing with her blog it was so detailed and well you know what I do for a living I tell stories I'm a journalist I know what a good storyteller is and Amanda's a good storyteller but she was also really explicit in her blog she talked about like
pd1 trial katruda which is immunotherapy drug and i hadn't even heard of katruda before i started reading amanda's blogs and she talked about ct scans she used language that was so specific to illness to cancer i even saw a doctor's appointment which had confirmation of blood transfusions a doctor's letter medical bills How can this be fake? Then there was testimony. I started to speak to people.
People are saying to me, no, no, Amanda fainted. I saw her. I saw her being taken off in an ambulance. This was somebody who was not just lying, but actually lying. acting out as if she actually had. And Amanda's also a great speaker. She spoke on stage in church. She spoke in cancer groups. She's captivating and she was representing hope and trust in her community.
She's a young mother of two with cancer. Like, who questions that? Because even when she did get caught... people still believed her. And it was really interesting because I'm like, well, who's going to be the person that says that this woman doesn't have cancer? And that's when, you know, we now know that Lisa was the anonymous tip to Nancy.
And like, how could you be that person that got this wrong? And when I was looking through everything, to me, the evidence pointed to somebody that did have cancer and not that was faking it. That's how subtle everything was. So to kind of list off how Amanda did it, It was emotional exploitation, using sympathy and compassion, our natural instinct to help and protect people.
And it's really difficult for anyone to doubt that because to doubt that you'd feel really guilty, right? I think also like don't underestimate the power of repetition and public performance because there was constant consistency in her lies. There's so much to get through. I'm just flicking through all these questions. So let's get straight into things with the first question. Here we go.
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Chapter 3: Why didn't anyone catch on to Amanda's lies?
So veil of echo underscore 779. How is it possible that no one caught on? I'm no medical professional, but even the at home clinical trial alone seems like it should have been enough to set off some alarm bells. Like did none of her readers happen to be doctors, nurses or health professionals? Or were they just too scared to call her out? It seems hard to believe.
You know what I would say to that is like hindsight is 20-20. Because when I'm making a story like this, when I was making Scamander, I'm like, I started to gather all the information and you become this person that knows everything. But then at the same time, I've got to make sure that I look at things like, well, was it hard to believe that people didn't know?
Or was Amanda so subtle and so clever in her lies and manipulation that you didn't?
wouldn't know and there actually was somebody that was in Amanda's life who is a nurse and he actually features in the docuseries on TV he's not in the podcast because when I approached him at the podcast him and his family were just so traumatised they just felt like they couldn't get their heads around it and then when they listened to the podcast they realised the extent of everything that happened and then reached out to me and started to share their story post podcast which sometimes happens when you put these stories out and
He didn't read the blog because why would he? Because Amanda was in his life. So for him, he didn't need to read the blog because he saw Amanda. He saw her at church. They saw each other personally. And he was just being there as a friend. He didn't read the blog. And I didn't know that you couldn't give Catruda at home. Like, do you? Like, I'm not a medical professional.
So I had to research that. And then you can actually give some immunotherapy at home. So then I was like, OK, is there a possibility that this is a new trial? Like, we've got it wrong. So it's like being really detailed and making sure. And I question, question, questioned that over again. And to be honest, at first glance, I don't think you'd question anything.
This is someone people knew and they saw it with their own eyes. So why would you question it from a blog post? Because they saw Amanda with a shaved head. They saw Amanda upset, cry, ill, sick, in tears, talk about her situation. It was acted out perfectly. Next question. This is Lark Dunn, 86.
I still cannot wrap my head around how Amanda was able to waltz into hospitals so frequently and gain access to hospital beds, IVs and vials of chemo medicine. Most people can barely get out of the waiting rooms, true. So how was she able to get her hands on those things if there was nothing wrong with her? People don't get IVs if they're healthy.
And isn't it illegal to steal medicine that is not yours? Yeah, absolutely right. You make a really great point, Larkdon86. According to Amanda, there were times where... Those hospital visits were real. They just weren't for cancer. There was other things wrong with her. She said she's got things wrong with her lungs. There was a back problem.
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Chapter 4: How did Amanda gain access to medical resources?
So that's according to Amanda, that she was going into hospitals for other reasons that were true. You know, you said about people don't get IVs if they're healthy. No, but you can get an IV if you go into an emergency room and... you're exhibiting symptoms which I think aren't really hard to fake, right? You can be like, oh, and kind of bend over and also stealing medicine isn't illegal.
Yeah, but again, probably really hard to prove. And I just want to say in terms of the medical equipment that... It's actually really easy sadly or maybe not sadly because maybe it's important you can buy medical equipment online but you can buy medical equipment online. You can buy oxygen tanks, you can buy tubes, you can buy all sorts of things, masks and so that's quite easy to buy online.
Have it delivered on your home so you can set it up to make it look like you're you're ill. So it's really intricate. I don't think it's a case of just like her waltzing in and being like, oh, can I have a bit of chemo and steal this vial to take some photos? I think it was far more intricate than that. Moving on to the next question, Rue underscore Shiro.
I have to say, I feel like you've been way too easy on Amanda. Why does it seem like you're always trying to stay neutral on the situation? I love this question. Is it not sort of undeniable that she's a cool person? Well, you know what? I love your honesty and thank you for asking me that.
And I like challenging questions because I constantly, honestly, you have no idea how much I constantly check myself. So I am glad you asked this because I spent a lot of time mulling this over. It was really important, firstly, for me to stay neutral because that's what I'm supposed to do as a journalist.
We have like a thing about ethics and morals and it's not for me to go in there and judge and be like, hey, everyone. I'm going to tell you about this horrible person. And I also don't think you'd have liked that because isn't it for you to decide what you think? And I also, I'll be really blunt, I honestly don't think it would have been anywhere near as interesting.
In fact, you probably wouldn't even know about this show or be asking me that question because if I said that, it would have been over in like 30 minutes. And, you know, I do remember some people being like, oh, you could have told this story in like two episodes. No, you couldn't because you would never have understood how this played out.
And the only way you can really understand the depth of someone is show the patterns of behavior and how this happens. And I feel like it was really important for me to sit there and get the facts, right? I know it sounds boring, but facts are really important because what if... What if Amanda was telling the truth and everybody else had got this wrong or Nancy got this wrong or I got this wrong?
What if there was like an underlying reason that doesn't justify, but it was important to tell? What about if there was like...
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Chapter 5: Was money the main motivation behind Amanda's scam?
Thanks for that question. Firstly, I strongly don't believe that money was a motivating factor. I feel like the motivating factor, and I would say I'm 99% sure about this, was Attention, validation, and this addiction of being adored and being somebody and having purpose. And I think the money was secondary to Amanda.
I do know, according to Amanda and some other testimony, that some of the money went on the custody battle between Corey and his ex-wife, Alita. for their daughter, Jessa.
And if you think about it, like roughly $105,000 in wire fraud in terms of that was given to her website and say there was like maybe another $60,000, which I think is what Nancy believes on top of that and around cash and in-kind services. And then maybe there was another 60 on top of that.
it's a lot of money right if somebody gave me a load of cash like that in this room right now where I'm recording I'd be like thank you so much that's a huge amount of money but if you think about it over time like Amanda started the blog in 2012 and she didn't get sentenced until 2022 and this went over a long period of time and
And Nancy didn't even start looking at her blog until 2015 and it carried on and it carried on after that. So if you spread that out over time, it's actually probably less than the average yearly wage. So it's actually not a huge amount of money. If it had been millions, and I think there would have been suspicion because, you know,
there wasn't anything where it was overtly materialistic so I actually don't think money played a huge part in it and the evidence shows that too because there wasn't millions and if it had been money then maybe there would have been like a more overt push for money and I know that
Part of Amanda's story of faking cancer and the reason actually why she got prosecuted and convicted in the first place was because of money. But it wasn't the predominant thing of the case. It was the only way that the law could get her for lying about cancer. Now, one thing I know many of you are curious about is how we brought Amanda's story to life in both the podcast and the docuseries.
And it's not something I've talked much about, actually. So with the podcast, the challenge was how do I bring the visuals to life? Because this isn't just a blog post. This is blog posts with pictures. So I tried to describe some of the pictures, remind people that there's pictures going alongside this, remind people that people saw Amanda in hospital. They're the visual aspects which
harder to bring to life in a podcast, right? But then if you switch it the other way around, when we started making the TV show, it's like, oh, amazing. I can bring those visuals to life, but I still want to get the intricacies of the manipulation and how this was done from the podcast. And so hopefully they just work together.
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Chapter 6: How was Amanda's story brought to life in the podcast and docuseries?
So in 2015, when Lisa sent in this anonymous tip to Nancy, Nancy started to look through the blog posts and started to investigate. And she found discrepancies and she spoke to Lisa and listened to Lisa. Then Nancy started to actually speak to people. And then what happened with some of these people is they then sent it to Amanda. So Amanda found out very quickly about Nancy, almost immediately.
So it's interesting that you said, were there any close calls? And I'm glad you asked that question because maybe I didn't get that across that actually Amanda didn't know about this. And she did know that Nancy was looking into her. And then... When I came in, I started to look at this and Amanda didn't know about what I was thinking of doing. And at the time I was like, OK, is this a podcast?
Is this a documentary? What even is this? And then when I went to Amanda's sentencing, I'd read everything.
Nancy had done and I'd read all of Amanda's blogs and I'd spoken to a few different people that Nancy hadn't spoken to and just kind of tried to bring my own perspective and keep it in my own head and at my own more neutral point of view and then at the sentencing I did actually approach Amanda and
afterwards and you'll see it in episode 4 of the TV docuseries and it's in the very end of the podcast as well and I told Amanda that I was looking to make a story about what had happened and I introduced myself and I gave Amanda my contact details and I said I'm not here to
judge you I'm not going after you but I'm looking to tell this story and so Amanda knew and that was really important for me it's not about like you know I know you might all think oh maybe I'm being too soft but and we did have that question about me being too neutral but how could I bring you
Amanda's perspective or the Amanda's why or how or was she sorry is she a complete monster or is she a very complicated person so all these things that it was important for me to tell Amanda what I was doing um so she also had an opportunity to talk to me um so actually Amanda knew about Nancy and then she knew about me from pretty much the off really good question and
Moving on to the next question, user 73768. I was really disappointed that we didn't get to hear more from Jessa in the podcast and then again in the docuseries. She was such an integral part of the story and it seemed like she was kind of pushed to the side in the greater retelling of it. Oh, yes. And I'm not being yes about Jessa, I'm being yes. Thank you, user 73768.
Because now I can explain why. Jessa was not pushed to the side. This was Jessa's choice. So she's not in the docuseries because Jessa didn't want to be. And it's really important that we, I, I'll say I because I can only speak for myself, honour that. Jessa is somebody that went through huge trauma. She was lied to. She was betrayed. But don't forget she was a kid. She was a child.
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Chapter 7: Did Amanda know about the investigation during its process?
free tennis lessons or she had free sports activities or free free tickets for things and Jessa thought that that was obviously because Amanda had cancer and people were just trying to give and be supportive and help as people should um and Jessa felt guilty about that and obviously she absolutely shouldn't but she felt like well I was part of that so if you think about
what this has been like for jessa and the impact on her mental health and how can she trust adults she was a child that had adults around her lie to her and so she felt like it was really important for her to share her story and to share her perspective to share the impact it's had on her but once. So I don't want anybody to think that she was pushed to the side.
It was what she felt she could give. And that was absolutely enough. Next question, Ophelia underscore quest. Were you ever able to get more backstory on Amanda's relationship with her mother, Peggy? Where was she the whole time? Are they close now? I would imagine that the relationship helped mold Amanda into the kind of person who could so easily lie and steal from the people closest to her.
You know, that's one of the early questions I had as well. I can't 100% answer that. I'm really sorry, but I'm not going to lie and, like, everything I say is the truth and what I know. And I did try and contact Amanda's family, but they didn't want to be part of the podcast or the TV show. I have had a little bit of contact, and I do know that...
Peggy, Amanda's mom, is supporting Amanda now through her prison journey and serving her time. And I also do know that when Amanda was younger, there was a pattern of behavior of seeking approval of adults and not really peers. This was from several people's testimony. She was less interested in like her friends liking her. But wanting the adults to like her.
I really did dig into the family and there was nothing that I could find. People just said that they were just the normal middle class family. And there was nothing irregular about the father or the mother. And so I really did try and dig into that to see if that was a perspective.
And according to Amanda, I've asked Amanda, and she wanted it explicitly said that her family were not involved in this. And it's actually at the end of the documentary in episode four, at the very, very end, that was actually something that Amanda told me. And so we made that decision to put that out there on the TV show because Amanda wanted to make that clear that her family were not involved.
So... It's up to you all to decide what you all think. How about we zoom out a bit now? A lot of you have asked, what does Amanda's story say about our society? Or how can we protect ourselves from scams like this? It's a hard one, right? Because I feel like, sadly, there are a lot of people that do manipulate people. And there's manipulation in social media now, families, friendships, and...
people's personal life. But I think one takeaway for me is how crucial it is to ask questions and to dig deeper when something doesn't feel right. And it's not about being cynical. It's just about being informed and listening to your instinct. And I think there's so many times, I mean, I've I've done it in my life where I'm like, you know what? I just knew and I felt it and I just didn't listen.
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