Bucks Woman Admits To Half-Million Dollar Cancer Scam

A Falls Township woman who pretended to have cancer and filed more than a half-million dollars in medical claims for treatments pleaded guilty to several fraud-related felonies Tuesday, the Bucks County District Attorney’s office announced.

Authorities say Cynthia Clarey, 60, defrauded her insurance company by filing the phony medical claims between February 2013 and December 2014 and receiving $135,000 in payments.

Clarey, who does not have cancer, submitted the claims as well as fraudulent supporting documents, the District Attorney’s office said.

Clarey pleaded guilty to insurance fraud, theft by deception, attempted theft by deception and five counts of identity theft – all felonies.

“I’m a terrible person for doing that,” she told Bucks County Judge Wallace H. Bateman Jr., who accepted the plea, according to a press release from the Bucks County District Attorney’s office.

Clarey will be sentenced after a mental health assessment is completed.

The District Attorney’s office said county detectives began investigating Clarey last summer after receiving information from Allstate.

According to information from the District Attorney’s office, Clarey had obtained a cancer treatment policy in 2011, when a doctor had suspected that her husband might be suffering from cancer. That suspicion proved false, but in February 2013, Clarey nonetheless began submitting claims for reimbursement of prostate cancer treatment for her husband, primarily chemotherapy and radiation, detectives found.