This is Rachael.
Rachael writes a Tumblr blog called Terminal Chronicles. She’s almost 22 and has had an extremely hard life. She’s been diagnosed with MS, Epilepsy and Parkinson’s Disease. Tragically, she lost a baby to SIDS in December of 2011. Her family and friends have more ailments than Web MD. And now, she’s dying of brain cancer.
It’s very sad.
Rachael started out her blog lamenting the loss of her hair. On December 9th, she says her hair loss “hurts so bad” and she only has three small sections of hair on her otherwise bald head.
On December 10th, she posted this video of herself pulling out chunks of hair. That doesn’t look like three small sections of hair with the rest of her head bald.
Also interesting is that many of Rachael’s pictures that seem to depict scenes in a hospital were actually taken at an apartment complex in Missouri.
As you can see, Rachael posts a lot of pictures of herself, some which are supposed to show medical procedures. Much like an earlier hoax we exposed, these pictures are always close cropped so the backgrounds aren’t visible. Very interesting.
Rachael racked up a lot of followers on both Tumblr and at her CarePages blog. Sometimes she begged her followers to just leave her alone.
Other times she asked them to vote for her in a contest sponsored by a hair salon.
It didn’t take her very long, though, to start asking her followers for money. And lots of it.
After sharing pictures of her boyfriend, who shaved his head in support of his beloved, Rachael started lamenting that they were broke and wouldn’t have money for rent.
Soon she began begging her followers to donate to her Gofundme page and to share her story with everyone they could.
The money came rolling in.
One extremely kind reader even donated $1000. And Rachael decided she could raise money for other needs too, thanks to a well-timed anonymous suggestion.
She was grateful for the donations, even offering to have herself cremated with her friends’ Tumblr URLs in her pockets so she could greet them in heaven like a limo driver with a sign at the airport. (No, I’m not kidding)
Soon, though, the donations started dripping, not pouring in. This made Rachael very sad.
Fortunately, her dad just happened to pick that very minute to have a stroke, and Rachael’s boyfriend popped in to let everyone know and to remind readers they could still help in any way they could, whether it was by donating through GoFundMe or by sending Rachael “a card or anything.”
In these dark times, a ray of hope cut through the clouds. Rachael might possibly not be terminal! She had a consult and announced that she could have “this thing where they take a certain kind of stem cell that can fight cancer.” There’s a problem though. Rachael’s insurance won’t pay and she has to raise $7000.
Let the begging begin!
Social workers harassed Tray in waiting rooms for the down payment. Surgery was tentatively scheduled, but wouldn’t be done if no one donated.
The full amount was raised and the social worker loan shark backed off. Rachael had her surgery. All was well… until things took a turn for the worse and, of course, more money was needed.
Then, tragically, on February 6th, Tray let us know Rachael was on a ventilator.
Holy crap this is unreal! I love the pleading for 18 bucks. And since when do social workers come after patients for payments before services are done? This is terrible!
Haha, the part about putting people’s URLs in her pockets… What a loon! Ashamed to say I live in Missouri! Lol, good job once again Taryn
This is one of the most disgusting stories yet. The people that “donated” truly believed in this couple. Not only were they duped emotionally but financially as well. What. The. Fuc-! This makes me so angry! As if like isn’t hard enough, people like this make things a million times harder. Shame on you, fakers!
If this is fake this woman and anyone involved in this should be ashamed of themselves. My 10 year old has been fighting stage IV Neuroblastoma for over 9 months now along with endless others fighting cancer and things like this take away from the help that real fighters desperately need! Some people are seriously in need of mental help. Maybe they can take the contributions and use it for a good old fashion psychiatrist.
Christina, much love and best wishes for your son.
As someone who has legitimately asked for just comments and a little “hang in there, girl!” support on my 13 year old site after being dx’ed with renal metastasized to brain, bone and breast cancer, fakes who get this kind of attention really piss me off. Then they get $7,000 on top of it because they’re “young”? Age doesn’t play a part in whether someone can play God on the internet or not.
Best wishes to your baby.
here she is again…such bad luck! http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Was-Raped/1547274
Great find! Her baby also supposedly died of SIDS at 37 days that December, so that’s another interesting twist.
Did you see the craigslist one I posted with the phone number? might be fun to give her a call.
No! It must have somehow been marked as spam. I won’t post her number, but I’ll check it out. Thanks!
Funny, in that May 2011 post she said she was a virgin. Immaculate conception?
So she gets raped and her first thought isn’t to call the cops or even to tell her boyfriend or another friend but to post about it online?
This new generation…
That’s also not the first time:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ag5ZMk9jyFBiw7yufpP8jEzty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20091116083057AAmRsL5
Bad luck indeed!
Rachael, there are real people who are trying to raise money online for desperately needed medical treatment. Personally, I’m happy I don’t need to do that. How about you?
…so if they demanded they needed a down payment before surgery could even happen, why on earth would they have her prepped for it in the hospital before all the money was collected?
“She’s been diagnosed with MS, Epilepsy and Parkinson’s Disease.”
Rachael has quite the imagination.
The blog has been shut down. “Tray” posted a nasty little sneer and the blog re-directed to a little page that said something about how people should “be ashamed of themselves”. A few minutes later the blog was shut down. I didn’t catch a shot of the redirect site, but I do have a screen shot of the little post that was made, if it would be at all helpful.
Evan, I would love to see it. Could you email me at warriorelihoax@gmail.com?
If you click on his name, it’s there on his tumblr blog.
Facebook is gone too.
The person pictured looks well-nourished, as they’d say in the medical trade, for someone afflicted with so many diseases.
I was trying to figure out a kind way to say that. Nicely worded 🙂
* bows *
It’s curious, but the person pictured looks a great deal like a hoaxer I exposed back in 2005 – a girl (no need to name her now) from New Hampshire. She supposedly had all this terrible cancer, had the close-up/cropped pictures (and ability to log on from a hospital room using “wifi” in 2005 – yet was also pink-cheeked and well-nourished. It was a pretty spectacular takedown – the news made it to her school and she was made to apologize to me and so on. As of 2008, she was still writing to people offering cancer advice and doing the Lance Armstrong thing – not sure if she was still faking anywhere.
So that came to mind.
She also seems to be wearing lipgloss — Not a lot of people with cancer really beautify themselves for candid photos. Come to think of it, does anyone really, every single time?
Notice how the pics always have a very limited number of people in them – not oodles of friends rallying around? Also the fakers are always radically isolated – no (or dying) families, etc.
Even their twin siblings abandon them at the hour of death 😉
Michael — Perhaps that is because the typical liar lives in a world of loneliness? No matter what you type up on the web, photos speak louder than your written words. Hence the reason when I got my digital camera, I stopped bragging about how when I was seven-ten years of age, I cleaned my bedroom every weekend and kept it spotless. The mounds of laundry, dog hair, empty food containers, general landfill that used to be my computer desk, told otherwise! 😀
Taryn — Rachael had a twin?!! This is new to me. It’s you, right? 🙂
Jay — Comparing Rachael’s photos with that of actual terminally ill people, she doesn’t seem to have the physical features of someone who has been going through surgeries, multiple hospital stays, vigorous rounds of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, medications, and general fatigue and stress. Her make up is perfectly applied, she has no open sores (needle pricks from blood drawings), bandages, or anything else that is usually evident of someone who has been fighting cancer “for years.” Being malnourished is just one of the *many* possible physical features of someone who has been going through an extended illness. Most young people after their first round of chemotherapy or radiotherapy look fairly normal, healthy looking. But for Rachael’s story, she had been fighting this for years.
It’s true. I spent 24-hours in the hospital and if you would have snapped a photo of me when I left I would have looked RADICALLY worse than she does after all of her “illness”…
Well, to be fair, illness like cancer doesn’t necessarily mean skin and bones. My cousin passed from cancer a few years ago and gained weight due to the fact she could no longer properly filter fluids out of her body. I don’t think Rachael has cancer, mind you, just throwing that out there. If anything, she appears very healthy-skin tone is good, she doesn’t seem to have bloat, etc.
What’s with “I need to raise money for a service, asap”. Is he implying she’s dead/on the edge? http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AiqELBOP6uoMWNnVWIbRyqDsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20130209132738AAE1HMp 5 days ago she was asking people about tax forms for disability rent rebates, and she set the question to end in a week, so presumably she thought she’d be around in a week and be dealing with taxes.
Ha! and three weeks ago she wrote she hardly ever gets sick!! Wasn’t she supposed to be in the hospital at that time?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AhENevaRo9bDFr8AHE_nWkXsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20130125204636AAqDzKt
I enjoyed the Yahoo! Answers account very much, I’ll admit that.
Are we sure her name is Rachael? There’s a Linda Wright with the same online name… her mother maybe? http://www.mylife.com/rwright1023
Yeah, Linda is Rachael’s mother. We sent her a Facebook message. She read it but didn’t reply.
Damning Yahoo account aside, there’s no doubt this fake. Experience project post, fake SIDS and AYE RIGHT Parkinson’s, seemingly with no symptoms. I think this is the worst one yet.
Pisses me off so much. I’ve cared for people with Parkinson’s.
I have a lot less sympathy when people are scamming for money and putting the hard press on their “friends” for donations to save a life.
The Yahoo Answers is a freaking goldmine. She is on the pill. She is trying to get pregnant but Tray’s penis is too small. Her insurance won’t cover cancer treatment, but on Yahoo, she doesn’t have insurance. Then, on Craigslist, she says she is a caretaker for the same person for 3.5 years, but is so sick on her Tumblr that she can’t pay rent. She has had three miscarriages (or is that four?) and she was a virgin in 2011, but they have been trying for five years. (Since she is 21, that would mean she was trying to get pregnant at 16. Possible, as I have seen Teen Moms, but…)
Is it possible that the Tray pictured is her charge and not her boyfriend? She could well be pretending to be Tray as well.
I was kind of thinking the same thing about “Tray.” I mean, she knows this guy somehow, but I doubt he ever updated her blog for her-I think that was all her. So who is he, really? Is he actually her fiancé that’s going along with all this? Is he a charge? I was thinking maybe he was the one actually sick and she’s borrowing his stuff to appear ill, maybe? I’d really like to know more about him.
On her blog she talks about how she was 15 and working at Walmart as a greeter to support living with her fiancé who beat her, and Tray worked there pushing carts. She mentions he is significantly older. If you do the math, if Tray IS real, he tried impregnating a 15 or 16 year old when he was in his early to mid twenties.
Funny how this comes out and her blog is deleted. A few months ago, after my fiancée was diagnosed with brain cancer, She and I began talking. My little brother also passed from brain cancer a few years prior. The things she said, the begging… It was very unlike anyone I’ve ever dealt with who was terminally ill. Suspicions were raised, so I never donated. I’m glad I didn’t. If I ever get ahold of this person, wrath will ensue. Thank you for blowing the whistle on this one.
“Funny how this comes out and her blog is deleted.”
Most fakes delete their blog/website when it comes into the light that they are faking their illness, life, etc. It used to be the number one way to tell that someone was lying.
I noticed on one of tumblr comments, where “Anonymous” suggested she raise her Go-fund-me goal, and both Anonymous and Rachel made the SAME major grammar error! What are the chances?? She was posting on her own posts as have the other hoaxers!
(It’s the one about “You should SAT your goal higher” then she responds that she “SAT it at 2000” — she’s stupid enough to think it is SAT, not SET.)
Not sure how reliable this is, but I googled her URL and supposedly her web server is located in new york…. http://i47.tinypic.com/wkrdht.png Unless that meant the tumblr server? But isn’t that in California?
My name is Judy by the way.
Chances are, Tumblr has many servers, virtual servers, probably on opposite ends of the country in case of power failures.
I do believe Tumblr headquarters are(is?) in NYC.
There headquarters, yes. They probably use virtual private servers somewhere else. My webhosting is located in Maryland, but the virtual servers he rents out to us are physically located in California
Ok… I have Asthma & have used a nebulizer (the thing that she has in her mouth with the tube) more times in my life than I care to count. You can totally tell that it isn’t even turned on because there isn’t any medicine in the reservoir for it & there isn’t any mist billowing out of the tube!! These hoaxers make me SICK!!!! Get a life people and STOP wasting your time telling lies & screwing with everyone’s emotions by faking having life threatening illnesses!!
Thank you Taryn for all of the hard work that you & your team do to reveal these stories!!
I guess she needed one of these to keep track of her donations:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AgPChArZproYNZNyE0MRwerty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20130110072631AAiTBMJ