What happened to girl who faked brain tumour to fool celebrities and friends into donating £400k for Disney trips

Megan Bhari, the subject of a new BBC documentary, played a pivotal role in of one of the most shocking cons in UK history.

Together with her mother Jean O'Brien, the 16-year-old had the world believe that she'd been diagnosed with a life-threatening brain tumour that demanded £120,000's worth of proton beam radiotherapy across the pond.

In 2015, the charity 'Believe in Magic' was set up by the pair in Bhari's honour and managed to emotionally imprint itself on the likes of Michael Bublé, One Direction, Little Mix, Olly Murs, David Cameron and the royal family.

Donations were supposed to fund once-in-a-lifetime activities for terminally ill children, including holidays at Disneyland and parties inside iconic toy store Hamleys.

But something about Bhari's condition didn't smell right, leading to Facebook sleuthing and even the involvement of a private investigator.

Were this mother and daughter really capable of falsifying such a story? Quite unbelievably, yes.

One Direction were one of the many celebrity groups to be duped by Megan Bhari's condition (Kevin Mazur/WireImage)

Even when their twisted plot seemed to be unravelling, O'Brien disputed any public claim that the money wasn't being used for its apparent purpose. They'd welcomed £400,000 in total.

Throughout all the noise, she insisted that the family were still travelling to the US for medical treatment, even though the private eye's photographs caught them exiting a cruise without the prerequisite oxygen tanks.

When it eventually transpired that the brain tumour was a lie, O'Brien and Bhari retreated from the public's glare, but what happened to them after the cat was out of the bag?

It's all rather sad, to be honest.

In March 2018, the teenager at the centre of this shocker passed away, aged just 23.

Per The Times, Bhari's cause of death was down to 'acute cardiac arrhythmia due to fatty liver disease, linked to her high body mass index'.

Though she'd never had a brain tumour, she had in fact been diagnosed with idiopathic intracranial hypertension after constant headache complaints.

An inquest revealed that Bhari had been taking large doses of liquid morphine at the time of her death.

Speaking to the aforementioned publication, Bhari's half-sister, Nina, claimed that the teen had been the victim of the mental health condition Munchausen syndrome by proxy - known officially as Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another (FDIA).

"Meg didn't really have a voice," she said of her sibling, who was believed to have spoken and acted like a person much younger than her years. "She can't speak for herself."

As for the mother, her whereabouts are currently unknown after briefly moving to France and then returning to her homeland.

O'Brien last addressed the story three years ago during an interview with the BBC, where she suggested her late daughter suffered from a non-cancerous brain tumour (pituitary microadenoma).