Why would some one fake a serious illness online? Is online fraud growing?
Since this OP will involve opinions rather than serious factual answers, let’s move this from General Questions to IMHO.
samclem, Moderator
Has someone done this? How? In what circumstances?
Without more details the question is too vague to be meaningfully answered?
As for the first question, people fake illness because they want attention. Sometimes they want attention to get money, or for some other understandable reason, but sometimes they simply want attention because they crave it and don’t use very good behavior patterns to get it. The key words here are Münchausen Syndrome, where the person fakes their own illness, and Münchausen by proxy, where the person, over 90% of the time a mother*, abuses someone get attention from their induced illness.
As for the second, it could be or it might not be. We need statistics to figure it out, and, as this site says, such statistics are hard to come by.
*(Cite: Vennemann B, Perdekamp MG, Weinmann W, Faller-Marquardt M, Pollak S, Brandis M (2006). “A case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy with subsequent suicide of the mother”. Forensic Sci. Int. 158 (2-3): 195–9. doi:10.1016/j.forsciint.2005.07.014. PMID 16169176. Contains possibly disturbing images if you can access the full article and choose to see them.)