She convinced her (healthy) child he had cancer. The reason why will floor you.

An American mother has been arrested following claims she convinced relatives and friends that her 6-year-old son had cancer and that the family needed money for his treatment.

Sandy Thi Nguyen allegedly collected $25,000 from the community to fund her son’s scare. And then she used the cash to take her family to Disneyland.

Sound too horrible to believe? It gets worse.

According to a sheriff in Colorado where the family lives, 28-year-old Nguyen’s elaborate hoax began sometime in 2013.

Since that time, Nguyen managed to convince her son that he actually DID have cancer and even used social media to post pictures of her son with a shaved head to make it look like he had been receiving chemotherapy treatment.

“The little boy believed he had cancer. The rest of the family believed he had cancer,” Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Captain Larry Etheridge told KMGH.

In June 2013, on a website for a 5K charity run, Nguyen told the community that her son had “an aggressive, rare, stage 3 childhood bone cancer and Acute Myelogenous Leukemia”.

She said that he had “received 317 days of chemotherapy, 7 days of radiation, multiple blood & platelet transfusions, monthly spinal taps, biopsies, and MRI’s” since his diagnosis in September 2012. She also wrote that her son might only have eight months to live.

This from KMGH:

In September 2013, the community began raising money for the boy, including fundraisers at the boy’s school, Rolling Hills Elementary, and donations by students, parents, school staff and other community members, according to sheriff’s officials and the Cherry Creek School District. More than $25,000 was raised and placed into an account for use by the Nguyen family.

The school has since responded saying they are “deeply troubled by these allegations and saddened to learn that an adult may have taken advantage of an innocent child and our school community”.

When police searched Nguyen’s home they found $23,000. After she was arrested, Nguyen reportedly admitted to making the whole thing up. The mother of three is now facing felony charges of theft and criminal impersonation.

The story draws a number of parallels to that of a Gold Coast mum who was last year found to be feeding her daughter chemotherapy drugs in an effort to convince her friends and family that the four-year-old was suffering from a life-threatening illness.

Over the course of her daughter’s alleged illness, the Gold Coast mum’s Facebook page – which she updated with desperate heartbreaking messages about her daughter’s health – amassed more than 7000 followers.

But her story was later unraveled and in October 2013, the Queensland mother pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm.

Her case is thought to be one of the most extreme examples of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome (MBPS) ever seen in Australia. MBPS is a form of child abuse in which parents lead people to believe their child is sick in order to gather sympathy. (Source: KMGH)

Thi Nguyen has been released from jail for the time being, after posting a $10,000 bond. We will keep you updated on the story.