Lying to your family is one thing, but faking a life-threatening illness to manipulate them is crossing the line for most people.

What would you do if a close relative staged a cancer diagnosis to get financial help, and then refused to come clean once the truth surfaced? Would you protect their secret? Or would you tell the people being lied to, even if it shattered your family?

In the following story, one sister finds herself facing this very dilemma and gives her sister an ultimatum. Here’s what she did.

AITA for exposing my sister’s fake cancer to our parents after she refused to come clean herself?

I (34F) just found out that my sister (31F), who has been telling my whole family she has cancer for the last 8 months, has been lying. She shaved her head, said she was doing chemo, and had our parents move in to “help her through treatment.”

I started to have doubts when, besides also staying out late relatively frequently, she would never let anyone attend appointments with her, and she clearly had way too much energy for someone going through aggressive chemotherapy.

Last week, I ran into the office manager of my sister’s oncologist at a coffee shop (small town). I casually mentioned my sister, and the office manager was confused; she had no idea who I was talking about. I did some digging through doctors and spoke to my sister about what I learned, and she broke down and spilled her guts.

At this point, she was cornered and had no other choice but to be honest.

It turns out she fabricated the whole story because she was in over her head with debt and wasn’t able to afford her apartment anymore. The cancer story got our parents to move in, and she could then stop paying her bills.

I was furious and told her that she had 24 hours to tell our parents the truth or I would. She asked me not to tell them because it would ruin her relationship with them. She did not tell them, so I took everything to our parents yesterday.

Our parents are heartbroken. My sister is acting like I had no right to “out” her and she didn’t even say this to our parents, she was going to stage a “miraculous recovery” next month. She said I ruined her life, and that family should be trying to defend each other rather than expose each other.

AITA?

Yikes! That’s quite a story to create.

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit have to say about it.

The story hits home for this reader.

This person doesn’t belive a word of the story.

Yet another person who thinks the story is fake.

According to this person, HIPAA prevents people from digging around for health-related info.

The sister deserved it! Someone needs to remind her about the little boy who cried wolf.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.