Mom sentenced for lying about daughter’s illness to get donations
A mother in Ohio was sentenced to prison last week after faking her daughter’s terminal illness to get almost $5,000 in donations.
Lindsey Abbuhl, 35, of Canton, was sentenced to four to six years in prison and ordered to pay over $8,500 in restitution on Nov. 17, FOX8 reported. She previously pleaded guilty to child endangerment and theft.
The charges stemmed from a scam GoFundMe campaign called “Rylee’s Warriors,” which raised over $4,500 before being shut down last year.
Authorities say Abbuhl falsely claimed on the page that her 11-year-old daughter suffered from a central nervous system disease and that her brain was shutting down.
The campaign gained some traction, with Abbuhl and her daughter even appearing on a local news station to share their story in Feb. 2021. At the time, Abbuhl claimed that her daughter, whose identity has since been protected due to her age, was forced to give up her dream of playing softball.
“Her doctors were concerned that the sport was a little bit too physical for her with her medical condition,” she explained. “So we had to make the tough decision last year that she was going to walk away and not be able to play anymore.”
When the Malone University softball team learned about the girl’s story, they shared the campaign with their fanbase. They even invited Abbuhl’s daughter to throw the first pitch in a scrimmage against Walsh University.
Abbuhl’s scheme was shut down in May 2021, when a tipster alerted the Stark County Department of Job and Family Services that the mother was misleading her daughter and the public “to obtain trips, housing, and other expenses over the last several years.”
Court documents obtained by FOX8 read that a “medical professional indicates there is no evidence to support mother’s claim that [the girl] is terminally ill.” In addition, the report stated that Abbuhl’s daughter had been in “counseling” for three years to “process her own death.”
In a press release distributed after the sentencing, county prosecutor Kyle L. Stone explained that Abbuhl’s guilty plea was “the best way to avoid the possibility of further traumatizing a child that has already been through so much.”
Abbuhl is expected to begin serving her sentence at Stark County Jail in January. She will be released in six months if she maintains good behavior.
In a statement to WKYC last Friday, Abbuhl’s attorney, Paul Kelly, argued that Abbuhl’s daughter “did have diagnosed medical maladies including a lesion on her brain.”
“Is this a case of merely an overly paranoid, genuinely concerned mother or someone who genuinely tried to profit from dishonesty?” Kelly said. “Only mother will every truly know the answer to this…this deal was reached as compromise so that mom will be free after serving six months in prison provided she comports with prison behavioral guidelines.”
Kelly also said that Abbuhl’s daughter was “doing well,” and is now living with her father.
Although Abbuhl’s scam defrauded her community, the outcome could have been much worse. Earlier this year, The Post reported on Kelly Turner, a Colorado mother who lied about her own daughter’s health to receive handouts from charities that totaled at least $100,000. The racket came to a tragic end when Turner’s abuse lead to her daughter’s death.
“This truth…has caused such a deep pain that it continues to ravage me every day,” the young girl’s grandfather told the court at sentencing in January.
