Mum and daughter faked brain tumour to con music stars and fans out of £400,000
Published
| Last updated
An inquest into the death of a 23-year-old charity founder indicates that she and her mother lied about her having a brain tumour to meet celebrities and con people out of money.
Megan and her mother, Jean, set up the Believe in Magic charity in an effort to bring joy to children while Megan struggled with health issues of her own.
Jean told friends her daughter had been diagnosed with a brain tumour when she was just a teen, and over the years the mother and daughter held fancy parties for children with stars on the guest list.
One mum whose daughter attended the parties told BBC News they were 'out of this world', and in 2015 Megan was given an award by former Prime Minister David Cameron for her work.
The charity received backing from the likes of Louis Tomlinson and Taylor Swift, but some parents in the child cancer community began to become suspicious about Megan's health as Jean shared a fundraiser to try and raise money for her treatment, claiming she needed £120,000 for life-saving treatment in the US.
The goal was quickly met, but one of the suspicious parents managed to find out that Jean and Megan weren't at a hospital at all, but staying at a luxury hotel at Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
Over the following weeks, Jean told supporters Megan had suffered infections and sepsis, and that at one point she had just a 10 percent chance of survival. She praised doctors with helping to stabilise Megan and said she could return to the UK, armed with a 'huge oxygen concentrator'.
However, a private investigator hired by one of the parents managed to snap pictures of Megan and Jean disembarking the Queen Mary II ocean liner at Southampton docks with no oxygen tank in sight.
In 2017, the Charity Commission began an investigation into Believe in Magic and found sums of nearly £400,000 missing in its books, as well as money transferred into Jean's own bank account.
In early 2018, as the investigation was ongoing, Jean's world was rocked when Megan passed away. An inquest into her death took place, and last year BBC News was granted access to the coroner's court to listen to the inquest.
There, doctors explained that Megan had suffered several conditions, but there was no mention of a tumour, and the forensic pathologist said her brain had been 'morphologically normal'.
Megan actually died due to an abnormality of the rhythm of the heart due to fatty liver disease.
When questioned about the tumour, Jean told BBC News Megan had a pituitary microadenoma, a type of non-cancerous brain tumour which is not typically life-threatening, but can be harmful.
Meanwhile, Professor Marc Feldman, one of the world's most renowned experts on factitious disorders, has suggested Megan's case 'screams' of Fabricated or Induced Illness (FII); a rare form of child abuse which involves a parent exaggerating symptoms of illness in a child.
Following the investigation by the Charity Commission, Believe in Magic was shut down in 2020.
In November 2022, Kingston Council conducted its own review into Megan's story and stated: "Despite there being no formal diagnosis of FII (Fabricated or Induced Illness) in this case, the presentation and coroner's conclusion lead all involved to think it was likely to have been FII."
Jean has denied the findings, saying: "I loved and cared for my daughter. Suggesting I might have harmed her in any way at all is absolutely sickening."
