BEING told your child has cancer is the last thing any parent wants to hear.

But when Hanna Dickenson claimed she only had weeks to live without overseas medical treatment, her parents — struggling farmers from Swan Hill in Victoria — vowed to help her at all costs.

The only problem? It was all a lie. In reality, the then-19-year-old party animal just wanted the cash to fund a lifestyle of drugs, booze and overseas trips.

Dickenson blew tens of thousands of dollars in cash raised by her family and friends, after convincing them she only had weeks to live back in 2013.

The Melbourne real estate agent, who is now 24, pleaded guilty in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court to seven charges of obtaining property by deception, The Herald Sun reported.

Dickenson told her parents she was gravely ill with leiomyosarcoma, and not responding to treatment at the Epworth and Peter MacCallum hospitals.

She’d been hoping they would give money, but they were struggling farmers with financial problems, so they turned to their friends for help.

All in all, they managed to raise $41,770 for her daughter, believing she would die otherwise.

One of these donors had just been discharged from Peter MacCallum for cancer treatment, and gave more than $11,000.

The family’s neighbours Nathan and Rachel Cue were also taken in by the scammer’s sad story.

The Swan Hill couple were struggling to fund their own family business at the time, but when the feelings of guilt took over, they took money out of their own mortgage to pay for the girl’s “treatment”.

Describing the moment she asked them for money, they told A Current Affair: “We are sitting here in the dining room and (the mother) comes over and says Hanna has six weeks to live, she’s in palliative care ... we need $40,000 desperately.”

They said she would sometimes visit them and their children at home, occasionally complaining of her ill health.

“It’s terrible to think someone could put a front on as one person, and be totally different.”

They ended up sending Dickenson $20,000 in four separate transfers. She claimed the money was being transferred into the account of a German cancer doctor.

In reality, it was going into Dickenson’s account.

The woman’s social media profiles ended up being the dead giveaway. She publicly documented her drinking and party habits, as well as her trips to Thailand and Europe.

The couple said the moment they realised things weren’t quite right, they went to police.

“I started looking into it, doing my homework. I spent a fair bit of time and sussing things out, and yeah, 100 per cent scammed. So that’s when I took it to the police,” said Mr Cue.

Magistrate David Starvaggi described her offence as “despicable”.

“It smacks of a Walter Mitty kind of lifestyle,” he said.

“Ms Dickenson engaged in conduct that tears at the very heart strings of human nature. People’s conscious desire to assist has been touched ... that’s the social trust.

“I couldn’t think of a worse case to manifest itself needing both specific and general deterrence.”

Defence counsel Bev Lindsay, in calling for her client to be spared jail, argued it was Hanna’s parents who went to the wider community for help, not her.

She said Dickenson — who is a real estate agent — had since turned her life around and that a jail term would send her backwards.

The lawyer also drew a comparison with notorious wellness blogger Belle Gibson, who was last year fined $410,000, but not jailed.

But Mr Starvaggi rejected her arguments, saying her mother only appealed to the wider community because she was unaware of her daughter’s “charade”.

“People’s desire to assist and social trust has been breached. These are people who worked hard and dug into their own pockets,” Mr Starvaggi said.

He also rejected the comparison to Gibson, saying the case was different and was dealt with in a different jurisdiction.

Hanna was jailed for three months, given a 12-month Community Corrections Order, and ordered to pay her victims restitution.

Her lawyer said she intends to appeal the decision.