Mandy Mclennan: New Zealand woman pretended she had cancer to avoid business payments

A coffee cart owner preyed on the kind-heartedness of her community by pretending she had cancer to avoid business payments.

Mandy Mclennan raised thousands of dollars from well-wishers under false pretences, including members of her own family.

Ms Mclennan, who operated a coffee business in Timaru on New Zealand’s south island, even pretended to have undergone a stem cell transplant and featured in local media as her fake story spread.

South Island’s Dunedin District Court on Thursday heard the 42-year-old had been leasing a cart for her business in March 2022 when she began blaming her missed payments on having life-threatening cancer. 

Between April 11, 2023, and July 24, 2023, she missed multiple lease payments totalling $1,210 but the owner excused them because of her claimed struggle against the disease.

In May that year, a friend set up a page on fundraising website Givealittle for Mclennan to aid the ‘fight’ against her bogus illness, reports Stuff. 

For that campaign Mclennan spun a tale that she’d been diagnosed with cancer in September 2020 after thinking it was just ‘glandular fever’ and was ‘shocked’ to learn it was chronic myeloid leukemia.

‘It affects everyone differently,’ Mclennan wrote under the campaign title of ‘Hope for Mandy’.

Mclennan went on to say she needed to raise money for a stem cell transplant ‘to help me finally beat this disease’.

‘This is very hard for me to ask for any help, but I need enough that when my business isn’t running [because] I can’t be there through treatment,’ she wrote.

In June 2023, she ‘reported’ having undergone the transplant on the Givealittle page.

‘I’m not going to lie, it’s been a rocky, scary path but I am determined I’m stronger,’ she wrote.

The fraudster even featured in the Love Your Local Awards, which celebrated small businesses in Timaru.

‘The support has been amazing, and I feel like I have a big community behind me. I feel like all of Timaru is behind me as I get through this,’ Ms Mclennan told the Timaru Herald in an interview.

‘I didn’t realise how much people have such kind hearts.’ 

As Mclennan’s (left) fake story spread, it led to donations pouring in from well-wishers

On June 19, 2023 Mclennan was paid $2,739 by Givealittle, according to police evidence. 

The friend who set up the page also held a garage sale for Ms Mclennan, raising $400. Mclennan’s mother held a fundraiser for her daughter in the town of Waitahuna, which raised $3,101.

‘Due to her claims of having cancer, the defendant made significant financial gain from these initiatives totalling $7,450.20,’ the police summary of facts said.

The money was used to pay Mclennan’s debts and other expenses.

However, the ruse was unravelling and by late June of 2023 police began to suspect the cancer story was false.

In an interview with police in August 2023, Mclennan admitted she had found herself in financial dire straits and had invented the cancer story to give her some breathing space.

She said no one else knew it was a lie.  

Mclennan will be sentenced at a later date in the Timaru District Court.