2 Investigators: Indiana Mother Lies About Cancer, Solicits Donations
(CBS) -- If someone announces they have cancer, it's typical for their friends to rush to help them, both financially and emotionally.
But as CBS 2 Investigator Pam Zekman learned, for one group of friends, things were not as they first appeared.
Evelyn Jerkins Borst -- married mother of four -- put a message online that no one wants to read: She had terminal cancer.
"The doctors are telling her she doesn't have very much time to live," her friend, Lisa Ablin, recalls.
Borst was also asking for financial assistance through sites like Go Fund Me, where she was begging for money to pay both medical bills and household utilities.
From her home in Indiana she used the Internet to solicit thousands of dollars from former friends and others across the country. Ablin indicated her family handed over $6,000 in cash.
"Please I'm begging for help we have been without power for two weeks," one of Borst's posts reads.
Childhood friend Zenaida Desiderio read the pleas and donated $2,000 by selling off part of her sports memorabilia collection.
"I figured she needed it more than I did. I can always replace those things," Desiderio says.
Then, Lisa Ablin saw a picture Borst posted claiming she was getting a treatment that day and recognized it as the same picture Borst used months prior to solicit donations.
And then it dawned on Ablin: "That she was lying."
That was later confirmed by Borst in a text message exchange with Ablin who asked, "So how's the cancer? You still have it or never did?"
Borst responded: "Never did."
Borst declined to speak with Zekman.
Her neighbors and friends are still stunned by the revelation. Borst hasn't spoken to many of them, but when Ablin asked why she did it, Borst texted back that she is "a liar and sick mentally."
"I just want to know why, why did you do this, why would you hurt everybody like this?" neighbor Kassie Godfrey says.
She said the injured parties include Borst's own children.
"She told those little kids that that she was dying. How do you tell your kids you're dying when it's all for money, all a scam for attention?" Godfrey says.
Lisa Ablin's husband says the matter goes beyond hurt feelings.
"I don't believe she's sick, I believe she's a criminal and belongs behind bars, " Jim Ablin says.
Police reports have been filed in Crown Point and with the Indiana State Police. Donations amounted to as much as $10,000 as well as toys, clothes and money to fix up the house.