Ardsley 'cancer mom' scammer apologizes for 'pain and hurt'; she gets 2 years in prison

Jonathan Bandler | The Journal News

Show Caption Hide Caption Video: Cancer Scam mom donators react to sentencing Donors to Vedoutie Hoobraj react to her sentencing.

The former Ardsley woman who collected $51,000 in donations after duping her family and community into believing she was dying from cancer apologized for the fraud and was sentenced today to two years in federal prison.

Vedoutie Hoobraj, who went by the name Shivonie Deokaran when she lived in Ardsley, apologized to the community and to actual cancer patients but especially to her sons, whom she deceived as well: "Words can't describe the pain and hurt I have caused you. I'll spend the rest of my life becoming the mother you deserve."

Houbraj asked US District Judge Vincent Briccetti for mercy and her lawyers requested just a year and a day in prison.

He said his mercy was to not give her more prison time than even the government had requested. Briccetti called her crime "truly appalling."

"What Ms. Hoobraj is is a thief and she was pretty good at it, I must say" Briccetti said before sentencing Hoobraj in federal court in White Plains. "She concocted a scheme and carried it out with hundreds of lies."

He did allow her to return to Orlando, Fla. to finalize arrangements for her youngest son to live with a caretaker during his senior year of high school. She must surrender to the federal Bureau of Prisons on Aug. 27.

Hoobraj' lawyers argued for community service working with actual cancer patients. That would teach her firsthand how "abhorrent" her behavior was, one of them, Jason Ser, told the judge.

Briccetti said that was the last thing he'd do.

"The notion that I should turn her loose on cancer victims is preposterous," he said.

The length of the prison term was within the sentencing guideline of between 21 and 27 months agreed upon by prosecutors and the defense when Hoobraj pleaded guilty to wire fraud in January.

The defense wanted less than that, citing reports from psychologists who examined Hoobraj that she suffered from dependent personality disorder and had been abused by her father and ex-husband.

Briccetti agreed with the prosecution that there was no link between her history and the deception she wrought in the cancer scam. He called the report "psycho-babble nonsense" and said that Hoobraj made deliberate choices throughout the scam to hurt other people.

"She even used her teenage son to steal for her," the judge said. "That's remarkable. It's unforgivable, really."

THE SCAM: Ardsley mom's elaborate cancer hoax got her $51,000

GUILTY: Hoobraj pleads guilty to cancer scam

REFUNDS: GoFundMe offers refunds for donors in Ardsley cancer scam

Hoobraj convinced her then-boyfriend, Niklesh Parekh, that she had been diagnosed with cancer in August 2014. She created a fake email account posing as a doctor to keep up the guise, detailing how Parekh should feed her, lower her stress and provide more money for the family. When he wondered about whether he could have sex with her, the "doctor" encouraged him to, that would be good for her self esteem.

They got a friend to set up a GoFundMe page and a year later her son set up another one. The two pages brought in $35,000 from more than 400 donors.

In the fall of 2015, after word spread that Hoobraj had just 18 months to live, parents of her younger son's classmates cooked meals and delivered them to the family. Her older son's football team at Ardsley High School helped organize a spaghetti-dinner fundraiser that raised more than $16,000. Five hundred people attended, and Hoobraj stood at the door thanking most of them.

One of the dinner's organizers, Rob Wootten, went to Ardsley police in January 2016 with his suspicions that Hoobraj was exaggerating her condition or, even worse, faking her illness entirely. He had been tipped off by the boyfriend of Parekh's ex-girlfriend.

Within weeks of being confronted, Hoobraj went to the emergency room at Jacobi Medical Center complaining of dizziness and nose bleeds. She claimed she had cancer but they found no abnormalities after conducting blood tests.

She also took her sons out of school and moved to Florida, cutting off some of her followers on social media.

Hoobraj changed the numbers on the results to show she had low blood counts and provided them to Wootten to try and prove she had cancer. He passed them along to Ardsley Detective Ron Perkins. Village police eventually went to the FBI to pursue the case.

At various times, Hoobraj gave conflicting accounts of when and where she was diagnosed. She claimed she had been treated by an oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering who later died in an earthquake in Nepal.

When questioned by the FBI shortly before her arrest in August 2017, Hoobraj even claimed that she had been treated under a friend's name to use that person's insurance. When it was clear they didn't believe her, she admitted to the hoax - but insisted that it had been Parekh's idea to use it to get money.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Vladislav Vainberg said that willingness to lie to lessen her responsibility was why she deserved no leniency. He also cited a video testimonial Hoobraj gave to convince actual cancer patients that a juicing guru who charged $190 an hour had given her a juice cleanse that shrunk her baseball-size tumor to the size of a marble.

"This is completely reprehensible," Vainberg said. "This goes well beyond normal fraud."

Those who wrote to the judge about the betrayal they felt said the money stolen was not the issue. It was the loss of trust, the continuing sensation that they second-guess, even for just a moment, others battling illness who truly need their help.

Wootten, his wife and six other Ardsley residents attended the sentencing. Standing in the hallway beforehand, one woman quipped 'so that's what you look like with hair' as Hoobraj walked in with her sons and lawyers.

Afterwards, Wootten said he was glad Hoobraj was going to prison but it would be even more important for the community to be able to give the money she scammed "to people who actually need it."

He called her tears of two years ago when he confronted her, and her supposed remorse more recently, "an act."

"She's a phony. She's a fraud," he said. "She just put on a great show."

Asked if he had a message for her, he said: "Don't mess with Ardsley and pay the money back".

GoFundMe has refunded many of the donations and was able to recover some funds from Hoobraj's bank account, Vainberg said. She has been ordered to pay back all the rest of the money, $47,741, starting with $300 a month while she is on three years of supervised release when she gets out of prison.

Dawn Byck, an Ardsley parent who took meals to Hoobraj and gave Christmas presents to her kids, said the scam has left her with a range of emotions besides the obvious anger at Hoobraj.

"It's sad that someone could do this not only to the community but to their own children also," she said. "It's heartbreaking."

Twitter: @jonbandler