Scamanda: The Insane Fake Cancer Con That Shook the World with Nancy Moscatiello

Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield

True Crime

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of Drop Dead Serious, Ashleigh Banfield sits down with Nancy Moscatiello, creator and executive producer the hit podcast Scamanda and the explosive ABC docuseries. Nancy takes us inside the mind-blowing true story of Amanda C. Riley, the so-called cancer warrior who pulled off one of the most brazen scams in modern history—raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars while faking a terminal illness.

How did Amanda spin her web of deception so convincingly? What was the moment that shattered the lie? And what shocking details didn’t make it into the series? Nancy pulls back the curtain on the investigation, the drama, and new revelations about Scamanda. Get ready—this episode is packed with deception, betrayal, and behind-the-scenes bombshells you won’t hear anywhere else!

Nancy Moscatiello:
https://www.instagram.com/nancymoscatiello/

Scamanda is available on all podcast platforms. You can watch Scamanda streaming online on Hulu, Disney+, Sling, Fubo, YouTubeTV, Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, and Fandango at Home.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everybody. I'm Ashley Bannfield. Welcome to Drop Dead Serious, and we're doing something a little crazy to kick off our weekly series.
0:13.8	We are dropping a bonus episode. If you checked out our episode about Scamanda with the host of the incredible podcast and Hulu and ABC docu-series.
0:25.3	Charlie Webster was one of my initial guests to kick off this interview portion of Drop Dead
0:30.6	Serious. It was a fantastic far-reaching conversation on everything. That host, that dogged host
0:36.5	and creator of Scamanda has sort of gone through,
0:39.2	been through, and all this new information that she had in a jailhouse phone call with Amanda C.
0:45.9	Riley. If you have not yet seen or heard about Scamanda, run, don't walk. It is one of the most
0:53.7	popular podcasts of all time, and it is a fantastic
0:56.2	four-part ABC and Hulu docu series. It's the story of a woman who is just the most exquisite liar
1:02.3	in the world and stole so much. Money, time, effort, and people's souls. She's just a soul crusher.
1:10.7	Anyway, it's great, great story. You've got to do it. If you have seen Skamanda, then you're going to absolutely love the guest I have today. So without further ado, I bring to you now the executive producer and creator of the podcast, Scamanda, and producer of the Hulu ABC Documentaries, Scamanda, Nancy Moskatello. Nancy Oh, I already told you this a million times, but I'm a big, big fan.
1:31.5	It's so rare to find someone who's so incredibly dogged as an investigator and so persistent for so long.
1:41.8	I want to start even before that, though. How did you end up getting a cancer scam
1:48.4	story in the first place? Yeah, it's one of those types of stories that I think I've always
1:53.9	been intrigued by, and I think a lot of folks working in television production and producing.
1:59.3	It's like one of those, like, you want to find and you want to be able to out someone,
2:03.3	but you just have to really have the time and the patience.
2:07.4	And a lot of times production don't really afford the time to take what you need to do
2:13.1	in order to get to that end result.
2:15.5	So, you know, when I started at the show at the time I was working on,
2:19.5	that was one of the things we were like, we want to go after scammers, cancer scammers in
2:24.4	particular. I think a lot of us had been touched by cancer in our life and we just found it so egregious
	...

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