–as ex-boyfriend claims she duped him too

POLICE in Westchester County, New York, are pursuing new leads in which a shaven-headed Guyanese woman allegedly raised thousands of US dollars by falsely claiming to have cancer, in 2015.

CBS New York reported this week that the allegations surfaced Sunday night that Shivonie Deokaran’s former boyfriend is now coming forward to make the stunning admission that he had no idea she’d made the whole thing up.

Following appeals to assist the woman, who claimed that she was financially strapped back in 2015, she subsequently moved to Florida after persons became suspicious of her cancer claims, in which she told persons that she only had 18 months to live.

In an exclusive interview with CBS New York, Nikhlesh Parekh, Deokaran’s longtime boyfriend, admitted it was all a scam.

With her bald head, Shivonie Deokaran gave the impression that she was a cancer patient, in 2015. Out of generosity, persons in the Westchester County village of Ardsley, using GoFundMe pages and a spaghetti dinner at the local firehouse, raised more than US$60,000 to help the single-mother of two teenage boys, when she claimed she had only 18 months to live because of leukemia and a tumor.

“She has never had cancer,” Parekh said. “Shivonie has lied to me; has lied to my friends, my family, her kids, my kids!”

Parekh was once Deokaran’s staunchest supporter, the report stated. They suddenly moved to Florida in 2016 after suspicions were raised about the woman’s “cancerous” condition. Parekh said he now knows the truth, and their relationship is over.

“She’s been shaving her head, she’s been shaving her eyebrows, and I had no idea that that’s what she was doing,” Parekh said.

However, while the man claims he was fooled by his conning partner, Ardsley police confirmed they are investigating both him and Deokaran in the cancer fraud probe, the report stated.

Rob Wootten, who assisted in raising funds to assist the woman, is not at all amused, and is all for the pair coming clean and owning up to what they did.
“Do the right thing! Come forward and admit it, because then people are going to frown upon donating in the future for causes like this,” Wootten urged Deokaran and her boyfriend, Parekh, through CBS New York.

Parekh said he has nothing to hide. He said that when he started asking questions, Deokaran not only invented a fake cancer doctor, whose name resembled a real doctor at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, but even sent him typo-filled emails to prove her diagnosis.

“There is absolutely no proof,” Parekh said. “Because of Shivonie and her lies, my whole life is upside down.”

CBS2 attempted to contact Deokaran to get her side of the story, but she did not respond to messages. In addition, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center confirmed that the doctor mentioned in emails by the woman never worked there; that in fact, no doctor by that name has ever had a licence in the state of New York.