Maricopa County Superior Court jurors found Chalice Renee Zeitner guilty of all 11 counts filed against her. She was convicted after discovering that she falsified her cancer diagnosis just to secure tax-funded abortion.
The 30-year old Arizona woman was scheduled for trial on Monday afternoon. She will face charges including theft, forgery, fraudulent schemes and identity theft. She was accused of staging falsified medical records to support her claim that she had cancer and informs an obstetrician that her pregnancy puts her life at risk. Investigators stated that the scheme was found out a year after the abortion in 2010, according to a report from the New York Post.
"Investigators say the scheme was discovered a year after the April 2010 abortion when a doctor who performed a C-section during Zeitner's subsequent pregnancy found no signs of cancer," according to the Associated Press. "Another doctor who was listed on medical records as having treated Zeitner for cancer later said he never treated her."
She tried her scam twice informing her doctor in 2010 that her fetus had been exposed to radiation. However, the specialist discovered her fetus was healthy but Zeitner still forged a letter from another doctor stating her expectancy had to be stopped to save her life, as reported by Life News.
Her pregnancy was stopped on April 8, 2010 by doctors at a Phoenix hospital after claims that she must travel to Boston to undergo Stage IV tumor removal from her stomach and lower spine said the authorities. The doctor she listed as her physician claimed he had never met or treated her for cancer according to the investigators.
The cancer she was accused of faking was sarcoma involving tumors of the body's bones and connective tissues. Soft-tissue sarcomas cause 3,900 deaths in the U.S. each year, based on the report of the New York Daily News.
Zeitner motioned a not guilty plea and her attorney reasoned out she really thought she was ill at that time. She faces eight felony charges that include fraud, theft, money laundering, and identity theft in the separate scheme. While already in jail, a grand jury charged her August 17.
