It's amazing what some people will do for money – including faking a separation, and even a pregnancy.
For Reddit user, with the user name AuntNobody, her own nephew was the culprit, and the rouse so outlandish, it was almost too farfetched not to believe.
Around five years ago, the original poster's 40-year-old nephew (who is actually older than she is) met a woman, also 40, who he eventually married.
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According to the OP, while the couple was dating, the woman had told family and friends that she'd had a complete hysterectomy. "The whole time they were dating, engaged and early in marriage, they told everyone she could never have a baby because she had a complete hysterectomy," wrote the OP.
The girlfriend-turned-new-wife gave various (sometimes seemingly conflicting, according to the OP) reasons for why she'd had the surgery, including appendicitis and even cancer.
"When her daughter started having periods, she told me she had to run to the store to get products because she herself had not had a period in 10 years," the OP writes.
Then, last year, after the couple had been supposedly separated for several months, the nephew's wife called to announce her surprise pregnancy — and their decision to get bak together.
"Everyone was sceptical because she had told everyone she had a hysterectomy," wrote the OP. "When I said I didn't believe it, she said the surgery had only been a cervix removal, not her uterus."
Then came the hard-luck story – their house is in bad condition, they said. A toilet that doesn't work, a leaky roof. "And not good enough to raise a baby."
They needed a new house, but couldn't afford it, so they asked the extended family for a combined $150,000 to make a down payment on a new house — "for the baby".
"We didn't respond, mostly because they had grifted us in the past with claims that she needed to fly to Florida to see her dying father, etc."
Then the couple offered up proof – a sonogram. But it didn't take the family long to discover the photo was from a book.
It seemed the jig was up, but instead of offering an explanation or trying to make amends, the couple just pretended as though nothing happened.
"The baby just seemed to disappear," writes the OP.
"They didn't lose the "baby," they started to pretend the whole thing never happened."
Asking the Reddit community if she was in the wrong, the OP says she stopped talking to her nephew for months.
When he eventually contacted her just to "chitchat", the OP demanded to know what had happened.
"He told me that I was being negative and judgmental and I need to apologise to him and wife, and perhaps send them a 'I'm sorry' gift.
"Am I the butthole for being angry? I am concerned that I might be the a-hole because I stopped trusting the nephew I grew up with, without even letting him explain."
Unsurprisingly, the Reddit community were fairly unanimous in their response that the OP wasn't in the wrong, and that the world has, in fact, gone mad.
Feature image: Getty.