Authorities in Suffolk County arrested 21-year-old Brittany Ozarowski for grand larceny Wednesday, alleging she methodically raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for unnecessary "cancer treatments" and used the proceeds to buy heroin.
While planning $50-per-person dinner-and-dance fundraisers and accepting donations on BrittanyOzarowski.com—where she claimed to have suffered nerve damage, "severe muscle abnormalities," and cancer of the ovaries, stomach, spine, and brain—the woman reportedly scammed her family, too: Her father cleaned out an IRA to give her $25,000, and a grandmother sold her house to give Ozarowski $100,000 for nonexistent treatments at Sloan-Kettering.
But Ozarowski's real affliction was an addiction to opiates, says Suffolk County district attorney Thomas Spota: "There was no cancer, no chemotherapy, no radiation, and no medical bills. There was just heroin." [NY Post]