Mother uses Facebook to con thousands of dollars by pretending to be dying

Published: February 2, 2010, 4:32 pm

Updated: February 2, 2010, 4:35 pm

Plea for help with terminal cancer was a scam, friends say

Woman out on bail after she was given support, money

Nick Madigan |

January 27, 2010

Last Updated February 1, 2010

When Dina Perouty Leone spread the word a couple of years ago that she was dying of cancer, her friends from the Dundalk High School class of 1990 rallied to help.

The 37-year-old former real estate agent had reconnected with her classmates on Facebook, told them she had been diagnosed with Stage IV stomach cancer and asked for help paying for chemotherapy, some of the women recalled this week. Leone told them she did not want to leave this world without completing her "bucket list" - a summary of things she wanted to do before she died.

"She cried about how much her daughter and son were hurting because of her illness," said Wendy Vargo Burr, a former classmate. "She would disappear for days and then re-emerge saying she had been gone for a round of chemo treatments."

Leone sent out pictures of herself with a bald head, saying she had lost her hair to chemotherapy. Some of the women said she collected thousands of dollars from them, and that she was even treated to a trip to California for a "final" visit to Disneyland.

It was all a scam, according to a Baltimore County grand jury, which indicted her in November for theft and conspiracy. Leone appeared last week in circuit court, where a judge set bail at $25,000, enabling her to leave the county detention center.

"There was no physical evidence of her being treated for cancer, and no medical evidence," said Assistant State's Attorney Adam Lippe, referring to the findings of a police search in September of the home she shares with her husband, Patrick Leone, on Glen Arbor Drive in Rosedale.

The prosecutor said Leone claimed to have been treated at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, but "that was not accurate." Checks with other hospitals in the area were similarly fruitless, he said.

Neither Leone nor her husband could be reached for comment. The attorney who represented her at last week's hearing, Gary Maslan, did not return a call.

The charges against Leone involve just two of the women who gave her money - more than $12,000. One of those two victims is Jennifer Lasek, a former classmate in Dundalk and wife of the nationally ranked skateboarder Bucky Lasek. Moved by her plight, the Laseks, who live near San Diego, flew Leone to the West Coast last summer and treated her to a visit to Disneyland, one of her "dying wishes," Lippe said.

In an e-mail message, Jennifer Lasek said that because she is a witness in the case unfolding against Leone she would decline to comment for now, but conceded that there were "many people throughout the communities in Baltimore" who have been affected by Leone's actions.

Leone's friends and others said they began to suspect her story when, among other things, she suddenly turned up bald at the end of May, instead of losing her hair over time, or when she could not respond to basic medical questions. In addition, Lippe said, she had a so-called port-a-cath - a small appliance that ostensibly transferred medications from a catheter to a vein in her upper body - that seemed to switch locations on her chest, indicating that it was not hooked up to a vein at all.

"Several times I'd ask her what chemo drugs she was taking, and she would blow off the question," said Vicky Squires, a 38-year-old Abingdon resident who is in remission for breast cancer and whom Leone found through Facebook. Squires now suspects Leone contacted her so that she could gain some knowledge about a true cancer survivor's experience.

When pressed about her medications, Leone mentioned taking Tamoxifen - a drug Squires knew all too well, since it is used to treat breast cancer, not the stomach cancer Leone claimed to have.

Squires recalled thinking it odd that Leone claimed to be receiving chemo treatments at home, and that she'd had breast cancer a decade ago but that it "went away."

"She said she was in a lot of pain," said Squires, who ultimately confronted Leone over the discrepancies. "I never could imagine in my worse nightmare that someone would lie about such a horrible disease. I was very upset because I felt like I'd been helping a fellow cancer survivor in need. I went through hell because of cancer."

Leone has a criminal history, mostly involving passing bad checks and in one case running a mortgage scam. In 2004, she faced 24 charges of theft in Carroll County; she was found guilty of a single theft-scheme count and sentenced to 18 months, suspended. Three years later, she was again found guilty of theft in Carroll County and served two months in jail.