This TikToker Faked Having Cancer for Donations

a lot of people have made speculation as to why I did this I did this in an attempt to try and get my family back together well guys today is going to be a rough one now I have made countless videos about people on the internet who are willing to do Insane things for internet attention and validation but today we're reaching New Heights people earlier this week I learned about what has got to be the most insane Ploy for attention ever pulled on the internet and if the name Madison Russo rings a bell to you you already know what I'm talking about so earlier this year in February I think a Tik tocker named Madison Russo was outed for faking pancreatic cancer leukemia and a spinal tumor yeah no I'm not joking this woman was on Tik Tok for a while talking about how she had all of these horrible horrible things happening to her body when in reality she was perfectly healthy well maybe not mentally but her physical health was fine but that's not what her Tik toks would lead you to believe leave now like I said a lot of this happened almost a year ago at this point so I'm not going to be really talking about what she actually did on Tik Tok there's a ton of videos on YouTube about it if you're interested in kind of getting the full story but I'll give you a quick rundown so you can kind of understand what we're going to be watching today fully so the video you're seeing in the background is sort of what sparked all of this it's what made her go viral essentially apologies for the absolute dumpster quality I don't know if her legal team got all of her videos wiped off the internet or something but they are very hard to find and this is the best one I could find Okay so in February of 2022 she made this video where she's talking about how she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and then later diagnosed with leukemia and they also found a mass wrapped around her spine she goes into this whole dialogue about how she's been going through dozens and dozens of rounds of radiation she feels terrible 24/7 she's vomiting she can't eat she can't sleep and she uses this as sort of a segue to talk about how mental health and invisible disease is not talked about enough saying stuff like she doesn't look sick she still has all of her hair she still still has a four point she's doing great in school she still does all of her activities nobody would ever know she's sick watching this for the first time maybe it's just because I know what actually happened but honestly I'm not sure how anybody bought this she's not exactly a great actor but people ate this up and it kind of shot her into a bout of Internet virality she was doing video updates on her treatment posting videos and pictures of what she had to go through which a lot of the pictures she posted have since been discovered to have been actual pictures of cancer patients off of the internet if that helps to sort of give you an idea of the kind of person this woman is she gave multiple interviews she went on podcast she was a guest speaker for hospitals and cancer organizations she made it GoFundMe she really went all out trying to sell this but eventually like most scammers who can't keep their mouth shut she got caught now not all the pictures she posted were of actual cancer patients some of them were staged photos where she tried to make it look like she was actually undergoing treatment but since you know she wasn't she made a few whoopsies and got herself caught people online who worked in the medical field started to question the legitimacy of these pictures and the information she was giving which led to somebody giving her local sheriff's department an anonymous tip she was arrested they pulled her medical records and uh well there weren't any as we all know every single last thing she said was fake and she was charged with first-degree theft and was facing up to 10 years in prison and over the last few weeks her court case has been going on which is how I learned about all this and she made a little bit of a statement which is what we're going to be watching today we could have just jumped right into the statement because it's a bit of a lengthy one but uh I felt like you really needed to know the full situation to fully appreciate how absurd This Woman's statement is it is honestly the most laughable 10 minutes of a human speaking I've ever heard so let's not waste any more time let's begin and please subscribe and we're simply asking the court for an opportunity for Miss Russo to show how sorry she is to show that she can and will be successful in the community as a citizen and as an indiv indidual as a young woman with a lot of promise and a lot of positive things going for her you know I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the thing she might be talking about which I'm assuming are like you know a good academic record I think she's also good at golf I think those things are a little bit overshadowed by uh you know orchestrating a fake cancer scam but hey that's just me we're asking the court to allow her to avoid the label and the consequences of being a felon because she will avoid that if given the opportunity because she can absolutely be successful okay look I know we want to get to the statement but my goodness this attorney must have went to the wish.com School of Law she will avoid becoming a felon if given the opportunity buddy she was it's called when you get that intrusive thought of hey maybe I should tell everyone I've got cancer so I can scam them on GoFundMe you dismiss that thought and don't do it she had that opportunity she didn't take it your honor first and foremost I want to thank the court for the opportunity to speak today in front of you all I have not spoken this entire time while my case was ongoing for several reasons so this is difficult to talk about but I'm just going to try my best um this experience sorry has been by far one of the most difficult things to navigate in my life this is like when people say subway is not good and you've got to hit him with the buddy you made the sandwich you know when it's an acceptable situation to say this time of my life has been the hardest to navigate ever situations when like you know you have cancer not when you pull an elaborate scam and you're caught for it what a joke it has been very scary and challenging in more ways than one I fully acknowledge that what I did was wrong and I am incredibly sorry if there was anything I could do to take it back I would the reality is that I can't the only thing I can do is correct it learn from it and move forward I beat myself up about it the whole L here in silence because I didn't know how to tell anybody what was going on no no Madison that's not what you were doing you were ashamed of being a bad person and you didn't want to tell anybody that you faked having cancer and you're a scammer I know you're trying to make the judge feel bad for you and unfortunately it's going to work but let's be real my goal now is to make amends in the ways I can try to learn from my mistakes figure out how I got myself here so I don't repeat this terrible mistake and do what I can to turn this lesson into a positive with the hope that I can make amends and hopefully positively influence the many people touched by my poor choices cancer or people mistakingly thinking about following in a similar mistaken path okay am I stroken out or did she just like throw the word cancer in there for fun maybe she's just been so programmed to think cancer cancer cancer while trying to scam people that she can't get it out of her head I think it's really telling that during this statement we're going to hear her say stuff over and over again about how she wants to make amends she wants to make it better but not a single time is she going to say how she plans to do that she just says she wants to it's almost like she's still lying a lot of people have made speculation as to why I did this and how somebody who looked like the had everything together could have such a mess I didn't do this for money or greed I didn't do this for attention I did this in an attempt to try and get my family back together no you didn't don't lie Madison if you didn't do this for money or greed or attention then you wouldn't have put it on the internet you want a fake cancer to get your family back together go for it that's a fine idea but you don't get your family back together by taking this to the internet going on podcast doing fake interviews with hospitals accepting tens of thousands of dollars from strangers who feel bad for you I honestly can't believe her defense allowed her to say this I mean for the most part all the other meaningless nonsense she's going to say is pretty standard legal apology stuff but saying you did this for your family that's insane I come from an extremely broken and separated family ever since I was 2 years old over the years it has gotten steadily worse and a lot has happened internally to our family a family is supposed to be one that's drawn together not drift further and further apart I was always told that quote I was the only one that could fix it and I have tried for years nothing was working and I kept pulling for everybody to be a normal functioning loving supportive family I thought if I said what I said it would make everybody pull together it didn't work and it only got worse after that happened I didn't know what to do I couldn't tell anybody and too many people knew already from here it all went downhill and it snowballed quickly and hard Madison I'm going to be honest I really do hope for your sake that you flip your life around and you don't ever do anything like this again because you might be like a top 10 luckiest human ever to get a judge as dumb as you did your honor you see I started this scam to get my family back together and when it didn't work my only choice was to keep scamming I couldn't just let the internet move on and forget about it like they would have in 2 days nobody would be able to just forget about me so I had to keep going the gofund me was a necessity don't you see judge it is also a reminder that everybody is silently battling something and you never know what is going on in somebody's life let this be a reminder to give each other more grace and compassion some might say I looked like I had it all together I didn't instead I had a situation I was stuck in in a family that was well about as far from family as it can get I had deep wounds I never learned how to heal from Little La W wamp you had a rough childhood so did everybody else you don't see us scamming people out of cancer money do you this is not a checkup on your friend's situation you didn't have a mental break that led you to committing a crime this was a multi-month scheme to scam people out of their money that's it this has nothing to do with the demons you were fighting or how you have to go to two different thanksgivings trying to paint this as a mental health issue is pretty gross in the future I want to go back to school and get my Master's but most importantly I want to create my own family someday I want to break this cycle of how I grew up and I wanted to make a family that I wish I had one full of love belongingness support cheerful Gatherings at holidays and celebrations in a cohesive unit is anybody else just completely baffled by this she is genuinely trying to convince people here and I mean I guess she kind of did a spoiler alert she did not receive any sort of jail time whatsoever but she is really sitting here trying to convince people that the reason she pulled this scam is because she just wants a family I mean this entire time she's not said a single thing about what she plans to do how she's going to educate herself what she wants to do for people actually battling can what she's going to do for her community outside of the required service hours no not a peep about anything like that no she's created a whole s story about how she doesn't know what scamming is she doesn't know right from wrong she didn't understand what she was doing was hurting people because her mommy and daddy didn't like each other when she was being invited to be a speaker at hospitals and receiving tens of thousands of dollars from people she didn't know that people weren't trying to help her mommy and daddy get back together she still thought this was all about her family this wasn't a scam this was a Valiant effort have you guys not seen The Parent Trap it's the same thing she finishes out her statement by issuing what is barely a half-baked apology and by rattling off the normal things that people say when they're caught for something like this oh give me another chance we're not defined by what we do we're defined by how we respond to it you know stuff like that and then the judge hands out what might be the biggest slap on the wrist in history she just has to pay back the money and do 100 hours of community service I think she also has to pay like a $1,300 fine so you know it's getting pretty serious first-degree theft is a class C felony in Iowa which can be punished by up to 10 years in prison and considering that her punishment was the wages of working 10 days at McDonald's I'd say she got off pretty easy if I was a judge and she read me this statement I think I'd give her the full 10 years I'd say like 6 months to a year is probably good enough for something like this I mean she was young she was just out of high school but that's not an excuse enough to do something like this I'm not saying throw the book at her but she definitely should have had a little bit of time to think think about this she should be thanking every lucky star in the sky for 100 hours of community service well guys what are your thoughts I think this has got to be the worst case of Tik Tok attention seeking like ever I mean for a while there are those people faking disabilities which is a close second but uh I don't think you can beat this I mean maybe if you like I don't know faked the kidnapping of your child that would be a rough one but cancer leukemia in a spinal tumor that's a trifecta that's hard to beat if you enjoyed this video please leave a like and walk on over to that subscribe button and touch it it's free it won't cost you anything but for now that's all I have for you today [Music] bye

Channel: AugustTheDuck

Views: 256,119

Keywords: augusttheduck, august the duck, august theduck, augustthe duck

Id: fgbbhpgYrGU

Length: 13min 56sec (836 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 03 2023