Cancer faker going to prison

Staff Photo by Angela Lewis/Chattanooga Times Free Press Keele Maynor wipes away tears while testifying in her sentencing hearing Monday afternoon at the Hamilton County-Chattanooga Courts Building. Ms. Maynor was sentenced to 42 months incarceration followed by 10 years probation after pleading guilty to nine felony charges of theft and forgery.

A former city worker who lied about having cancer for five years and received thousands of dollars in cash and gifts said it never was about the money but about “the need to be loved.”

Keele Maynor sniffled and shed tears on the witness stand Monday, explaining during her sentencing hearing how the idea first surfaced in 2003 that, if she could fake having breast cancer, she might receive the same goodwill that a co-worker who truly suffered from the disease received.

“Just listening to her, I wanted to feel the same things she felt,” Ms. Maynor said about cancer survivor Sandy Hughes, a retired city worker who would become one of her biggest champions during the fraud by publicizing her supposed illness and organizing an auction benefit that put $4,000 straight into Ms. Maynor’s pockets.

Ms. Maynor used every bit of that money, she said, to buy Christmas presents for her three children one year, admitting she knew “somewhere in the back of my mind” that it was wrong.

“But I also knew I would be able to get the kids what they wanted for Christmas,” Ms. Maynor said.

Telling the courtroom that he “has a problem with people who shave their heads and pretend to have cancer,” Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Don Poole sentenced Ms. Maynor to three years and six months in prison followed by 10 years of probation in the wake of her guilty plea months earlier to nine felony counts of theft and forgery.

She must also pay back $54,000 in restitution, an issue the prosecution never pushed since they argued incarceration would be a stronger punishment.

Ms. Maynor’s defense attorneys argued against incarceration throughout the hearing, saying she was fully prepared to work the rest of her life to pay off her debt. They also cautioned that the strong emotions associated with the crime needed to be set aside.

“She’s guilty,” attorney Stuart Brown admitted over and over. “But this is a theft case, pure and simple. If the victim were Bi-Lo or Walmart, we wouldn’t be talking this much about it.”

On the stand Monday, Ms. Maynor said she would stay home and sleep while trying to deal with her depression and feelings of inadequacy, all the while getting paid for about 1,500 hours that she might otherwise have spent at work as an administrative assistant since she never had cancer or any other debilitating disease.

“It’s nice to stay home and get paid for it, right?” Assistant District Attorney Lance Pope angrily asked as he cross-examined Ms. Maynor during the four-hour hearing.

She already had said she was sorry several times, pausing often to cry softly and finding it difficult to explain any of her actions more fully.

It was the first time Ms. Maynor, 39, has spoken about her actions since her arrest in early 2009 when authorities found out that, from 2003 to 2008, she bilked the city out of close to $79,000 in donated leave time and even more money and gifts from private organizations that wanted to help her through her fraudulent crisis.

The perks included one individual giving her $120 a month toward her car payment for 30 months — all in cash because she believed Ms. Maynor was too sick to take checks to the bank.

The Breast Cancer Network in Chattanooga gave her $8,100 to pay for utilities and rent. Then there were the free counseling sessions through Memorial Hospital as well as massage therapy sessions and retreats to Georgia and Florida designed specifically for cancer patients.

Even the Red Bank High School Quarterback Club gave her $960 one year, again for Christmas presents in an attempt to help comfort children thought to be suffering emotionally from their mother’s poor health. Ms. Maynor by then had started to tell people that her cancer was terminal, and her children had no idea that it was a sham.

Those details of the fraud weighed heavily with Judge Poole, who largely rejected arguments that Ms. Maynor only did it for “sympathetic attention” as one of her defense attorneys claimed.

Instead he called Ms. Maynor’s actions “horrible” and “reprehensible,” the kind of crime designed specifically to exploit the human trait of wanting to do right by others.

“We are a loving group and we want to help people,” Judge Poole said. “This is what it’s all about, and Ms. Maynor took advantage of that.”