FBI Adds Vanessa O’Rourke to Most-Wanted List Over Alleged Cancer Fraud

Com reported. Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania indicted O’Rourke in 2018 on 15 counts of wire fraud. Court documents state she claimed between 2015 and 2016 that she needed experimental treatment available only in Australia.

O’Rourke used GoFundMe campaigns and two Pennsylvania fundraisers to collect the money, authorities said. The FBI stated that on or around April 2016 she traveled to Australia, engaged in leisure activities, and received no medical treatment. After returning to the United States, she organized additional fundraisers whose proceeds financed a second trip to Australia for the same purpose, according to the FBI.

When the indictment was unsealed in 2020, O’Rourke was last known to be living in Queensland. O’Rourke has used the aliases Vanessa Gulinello and Cecilia Vincent Gaeta Lazaro. US authorities urge anyone with information about her whereabouts to contact the FBI or the nearest US embassy or consulate.

Au that she telephoned him in 2020 asking for proof of their 2011 divorce so she could return to the United States. Gulinello said he refused because she was already wanted and that he did not report the call. Gulinello stated he had changed his phone number after the 2009-2011 marriage and did not know how O’Rourke obtained the new number.

He added that, as far as he knows, she has never returned to the United States. Gulinello described O’Rourke as a “pathological liar” and recalled that she told him a $2,500 wedding-venue deposit would yield only a $1,200 refund, after which her mother obtained a new car.

He said he co-signed student loans for her to attend Eastern Nazarene College and that the unpaid debt, now exceeding $100,000, remains in collection against him.