Former Hudson Valley Woman Who Faked Cancer Receives Sentence

ARDSLEY, NY — The former Ardsley woman who faked having cancer and defrauded donors who thought they were helping to pay for her treatments will be going to prison. Vedoutie Hoobraj, who was known in Ardsley as Shivonie Deokaran, was sentenced Friday to two years in prison.

Authorities said Hoobraj, 38, engaged in a scheme to defraud donors through falsely saying she had been diagnosed with terminal leukemia and needed money to pay for treatment.

She was arrested in Orlando, FL where she was living in August 2017.

U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said Hoobraj learned the prize of such brazen conduct.

“In a cynical exploitation of people’s generosity, Vedoutie Hoobraj created an elaborate fiction about having cancer to reap charitable contributions from well-meaning donors. Hoobraj even falsified medical records to conceal the fraud,” Berman said.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made during court proceedings, from 2014 through 2016 in Westchester, and elsewhere, Hoobraj, then a resident of Ardsley, solicited donations by falsely stating that she had been diagnosed with terminal stage leukemia, had been given only 18 months left to live, and needed money for medical care and other expenses.

Hoobraj obtained donations through two GoFundMe fundraising websites, direct giving and a fundraising event hosted by parents and students of Ardsley High School, the high school attended by both of her sons. She publicized her fundraisers in press interviews, online postings and emails, among other means.

Hoobraj received in excess of $50,000 in donations from over 400 individuals in Ardsley and elsewhere based her misrepresentations.

When questioned by the Ardsley Police Department on or about January 20, 2016, Hoobraj falsely stated, among other things, that she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer by a specific oncologist who she claimed died in an earthquake in Nepal in April 2015. Subsequently, she checked herself into Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx for an examination.

Hoobraj then provided donors forged lab work from that examination, indicating that her hemoglobin, platelet counts and red blood cell counts were supposedly consistent with a cancer patient’s. In fact, the actual medical record provided by Jacobi to Hoobraj stated, “Your labs turned out to show no abnormalities.”

In addition to the prison, term, Hoobraj was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay forfeiture in the amount of $51,938 and restitution to victims in the amount of $47,741.20.

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