Faking cancer for donations and sympathy

More than a year had passed since Jennifer Dibble announced she had just eight months to live. But despite her dramatic weight loss, she didn’t look like a woman on the verge of death. In fact, her best friend’s husband says, far from it.

FREE VIDEO Hidden cameras expose a healthy woman July 20: Some of Jennifer Dibble's friends are starting to question her story that she's dying of cancer. Hidden cameras exposed a young mother's cancer scam that took in thousands of dollars. Dateline NBC

Michael Burross, Jennifer Dibble's friend: She looked like somebody who’d been working out, who was healthy, and she started wearing a lot of like spaghetti strap shirts. And her arms looked like they were muscular.

Rob Stafford, Dateline correspondent: You’re saying she’s actually looking better than she used to look?

Michael Burross: Yes. Best she’s ever looked.

Stafford: All with terminal cancer?

Michael Burross: Yes.

How could someone so sick look so good? As the months passed, Tamara began to admit to her husband that she, too, had serious questions about Jennifer’s condition. Why wouldn’t she reveal who her doctors were? Why wouldn’t she let anyone go with her to her treatments? And why wasn’t this dying mother of five little boys spending more time at home with her children?

Michael Burross: The kids were constantly in the care of relatives, they were not with her. And even the way she talked about them changed. It was very disturbing to me. At that point, I couldn’t make excuses for that. And that is when I thought something is wrong and I got serious about finding out what was going on.

After all, Tamara had a special relationship with Jennifer’s two oldest sons. And here’s why: Tamara’s brother is the father of those children. He was Jennifer’s first husband.

Now with the children’s welfare at stake, Tamara felt she had to act. And just as doggedly as she had taken up Jennifer’s cause, Tamara investigated her suspicions. She called a dialysis clinic and a hospital and quizzed a nurse, asking her to describe how chemo and dialysis affect patients.

Tamara Burross: Often their skin is ashy, that they wouldn’t look tan or vibrant.

Stafford: People going through dialysis don’t look like Jennifer Dibble.

Tamara Burross: No, no.

And she found out something that really rocked her belief in her friend: the hospital where Jennifer said she was getting some of her treatments didn’t offer them to outpatients like Jennifer. It seemed like she’d caught Jennifer in a big lie.

Tamara Burross: I asked her how her chemotherapy and dialysis had been and she said, “Oh, fine. It was hard.”  I said, “Do you get it right there together or do you have to go somewhere else?”  And she says, “No, I get both at Harris Methodist downtown.” And I said, “They don’t do outpatient dialysis at Harris Downtown.”

Stafford: What did she say?

Tamara Burross: She was quiet and she said, “Yes, they do.”  And I said, “No they don’t. I spoke with them today.”  And I told her what I had found out.  And she says, “So, what are you saying?”  And I said, “I’m saying that I don’t believe you anymore.”  And the words just came out. I didn’t even know that they were gonna come out—but they just did. 

I was shaking. Yes, I was devastated. But I needed to know the truth.

Tamara pressed for answers.

Tamara Burross: At one point in the conversation, I just said, “Jennifer, why?  Why would you do this?  Why lie?” And at that point she said to me, “Because the truth never got me anywhere.” 

But what was the truth? And what exactly was Jennifer lying about? Tamara had strong suspicions she’d been had, but no real proof. So she took her concerns to other relatives who admitted they, too, had serious doubts about Jennifer’s story. They all agreed they needed to know the truth: was Jennifer sick and dying or was she pulling an incredible scam? And if so, why?

Stafford: You look at Jennifer and what do you see?

Ozzie Allsbrooks, private detective: A blonde with a great tan.

Allsbrooks: You’re suspicious right away?

Allsbrooks:Very.

Jennifer’s doubting friends and family took a bold step and hired private detective Ozzie Allsbrooks, a former cop and seasoned investigator who was painfully familiar with cancer. His own brother was dying from it.

Allsbrooks: I know how weak and tiring it was for my brother just to take light doses of chemo. She claimed to have taken chemo, dialysis and physical therapy five days a week. There’s no way. It’s impossible.

Jennifer Dibble didn’t seem anything like the cancer patients he’d seen.

Allsbrooks: Did you hear from anybody yet?

So Ozzie began checking the long list of hospitals Jennifer said she’d visited for treatment.

Stafford: Duke University, any record of Jennifer Dibble?

Allsbrooks: No.

Stafford: MD Anderson?

Allsbrooks: No.

Stafford: Harris Methodist Hospital?

Allsbrooks: No.

Stafford: No record of Jennifer Dibble being treated for cancer at any of those three places?

Allsbrooks: None.

And that midnight ambulance ride to the emergency room for a heart attack?

Allsbrooks: No record of any emergency room appearance by Jennifer Dibble.

Stafford: What about the heart attack?

Allsbrooks: She didn’t have one.

CLIP OF THE DAY So many victims Ozzie Allsbrooks, the private investigator who helped expose a woman who faked cancer, explains why this case and deceptions such as these are personal to him. Dateline NBC

But what about all those hours she spent away from her children?

Stafford: Was she getting dialysis?

Allsbrooks: No.

Stafford: Chemotherapy?

Allsbrooks: No.

Stafford: Radiation?

Allsbrooks: No.

Which begged the question: If Jennifer wasn’t at the hospital during that time, when friends and family were watching her kids… where was she?

To find out, Ozzie and his video surveillance team went to work tracking Jennifer for four days. While she was telling relatives how tired the treatments made her, she had no idea hidden cameras were capturing her every move.

Stafford: She says she was exhausted and when you did surveillance, what did you find she was doing during that time?

Allsbrooks: Shopping. She was followed into Wal-Mart, followed into Walgreens and some of the people that worked there made statements indicating that the blonde was back. 

And Ozzie found the source of Jennifer’s great tan and buff biceps.

Stafford: You saw her going into the tanning salon?

Allsbrooks: My investigators did, yes.

Stafford: On tape?

Allsbrooks: On tape.

And that’s not all they got on tape: Jennifer is even carrying her own bottle of suntan lotion as she leaves the tanning salon. 

And when Jennifer said she was getting therapy?  She was getting a work-out alright, at a private membership club called 24-Hour Fitness.

Stafford: 24-Hour Fitness? Shopping, tanning, working out...

Allsbrooks: And going to a movie.

Stafford: Any doctors appointments in there?

Allsbrooks: None at all. All she was doing was killing time.

Killing time while her friends and family worried cancer was killing her. All the while, they were cooking meals, taking care of her children and taking her on last-wish trips.

She put together a cold-blooded, willful, and intentional scam and it worked so well she kept playing it for everything it was worth for 16 to 18 months.

Ozzie said Jennifer’s performance was worthy of an Oscar.

Allsbrooks: She was faking it the whole time.

Stafford: What do you think the motive was here?

Allsbrooks: Greed. Money.

Ozzie estimates Jennifer took in at least a quarter of a million dollars—and maybe double that—from relatives, friends and strangers who responded to her plight. 

Allsbrooks: It’s like everybody said, “Well, she’s got five kids, why wouldn’t we give money to her?”

Stafford: And you’re saying she used those five kids as bait?

Allsbrooks: Absolutely.

Jennifer’s friends agree that money was a big motive, but not the only one.

Tamara, Jennifer's best friend: Looking back over our friendship, it was the most exhausting friendship I’ve ever had—lots of crises, unbelievable odds this girl faced constantly and I have to believe that maybe some of that was fabricated as well. So, I think her need for attention is great.

But even for a drama queen like Jennifer, her performance as terminal cancer victim was the cruelest of cons.

Tamara Burross: How dare she? How dare she spend time at the movies by herself? People were sitting around losing sleep thinking that on these days she was suffering, she was going through chemotherapy, throwing up, and meanwhile she was at the tanning salon.  At the tanning salon!

Michael Burross: Now we know why she looked better than she ever looked before—she took advantage of everybody that surrounds her—not just financially but emotionally.  She robbed from a lot of people.

In the fall of 2004, Jennifer’s current in-laws and her first husband took her to court to get custody of the five boys saying they thought Jennifer was mentally unstable.

After 18 months of holding her friends and family emotionally and financially hostage, Jennifer’s scam finally collapsed around her when she couldn’t produce her medical records during the custody hearing.

Jennifer Dibble never had cancer.

As the judge noted in the file, Jennifer “admitted she has not received chemotherapy, radiation or dialysis.” The judge then removed the five boys from Jennifer’s custody.

Meanwhile, Ozzie turned over his evidence to the FBI and federal prosecutors, who say they’re still investigating.

And what about Jennifer’s husband, Brian? Did he know what was going on? Was he in on it? Ozzie thinks yes...

Allsbrooks: It’s easy to hoodwink five children that are minors but for a husband, no. I have a wife that has cancer? She’s not walking out that front door without me to go to any treatment.

Stafford: You’re saying, how could he not know?

Allsbrooks: Absolutely.

That’s just one of the questions we put directly to Brian Dibble himself when he sat down and talked to Dateline.

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