Nicole Elkabbas Wiki
Nicole Elkabbas Biography
Who is Nicole Elkabbas ?
A mother who tricked hundreds of people into donating more than £40,000 by pretending she had cancer will only have to pay back five pounds.
Nicole Elkabbas spent thousands of dollars on holidays, gambling, shopping, dining and even £3,592 on a luxury box to watch a single Tottenham Hotspur match.
GoFundMe
The 44-year-old from Broadstairs, Kent falsely claimed on her GoFundMe that she raised £45,350 that she needed to pay for private ovarian cancer treatment in Spain.
Her GoFundMe page, titled ‘Nicole Needs Our Help - Treatment’, featured a fragile photo taken after gallbladder surgery months earlier.
She struck a chord with the public by describing her as a “beautiful daughter” and a “loving mother to her beloved 11-year-old son.”
She described the trauma of undergoing three operations and six rounds of chemotherapy that left her desperately needing money to pay for an innovative drug in Spain as the “only way she could save herself”.
The picture of her on the GoFundMe website showing Elkabbas “apparently affected and in her hospital bed looking very ill” was, in fact, from a previous operation to remove her gallbladder.
However, doctors had cleared him of cancer days before the fundraiser was organized.
As she has no financial assets or ability to pay her nearly 700 victims, she was ordered to pay just £5 over the next 28 days.
Investigation
Investigators have since looked into his accounts and calculated he earned a total of £360,000 due to criminal exploits, Canterbury Crown Court heard.
His spending habits included betting more than £60,000 in 2018 alone, which he described as “excessive, erratic and extreme”.
The former Harrods fashion consultant pleaded not guilty at her trial in November 2020, claiming that she genuinely believed she had cancer.
Elkabbas was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison last year, Judge Mark Weekes said her scheme was “pure wild fantasy and deliberate deception” used to finance her gambling habit.
He said: ‘You produced detailed and sometimes graphic accounts of the treatment you were receiving with a view to keeping those you had caught in your web of lies paying you money.’
Her lies included stories about major surgery, six cycles of chemotherapy, and a wonder drug.
The surgery at Spencer Private Hospital in Margate, Kent, was paid for by private health insurance and has nothing to do with cancer.
In the end, the image only sped up her capture after a former friend and prominent London gynecologist stumbled upon the GoFundMe page.
General counsel George Tsavellas, who told the trial last year that she found “no malignancy” and said both ovaries “appeared normal” after minimally invasive surgery in January 2018.
Nicole Elkabbas Quick and Facts
- Nicole Elkabbas set up a fundraiser and claimed she needed to pay for treatment
- But was never diagnosed and instead used huge sums of cash to fund lifestyle
- She has been ordered to pay back just £5 of the £45,000 she raised and spent
- Last year she was jailed for two years and nine months, found guilty of fraud
