#8 - Sherita Dixon-Cole Texas state trooper Daniel Hubbard pulled over
a female motorist on suspicion of drunk driving in the early hours of May the 20th of 2018. The
woman, Sherita Dixon-Cole, was ultimately arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated.
In the incident’s wake, she publicly accused Officer Hubbard of forcefully groping her inside
and outside of his patrol car during the course of the traffic stop. The 37-year-old’s claims quickly
spread online with the help of prominent social activist Shaun King and attorney Lee Merritt, both
of whom shared various posts about the alleged assault. In response to Dixon-Cole’s accusations,
the Texas Department of Public Safety released a two-hour long video of Officer Hubbard’s body
cam footage from the evening of the traffic stop. In the recording, Dixon-Cole was shown performing
a series of field sobriety tests, all of which she failed. The woman was then taken into custody and
booked into the Ellis County jail. At no point was Officer Hubbard shown to have exhibited
any of the abusive behavior detailed in Dixon-Cole’s allegations. She subsequently
issued a formal apology to the policeman and admitted that the assault had been a fabrication.
The false claims were susceptible to legal action but the Ellis County District Attorney
announced that no additional charges would be filed against Dixon-Cole other than the original
count of driving while intoxicated. #7 - Vanessa Blanchard
On October the 29th of 2021, a school resource officer in Clarksville, Tennessee, contacted
Vanessa Blanchard to inquire as to why her child hadn’t been attending school in recent days.
Blanchard claimed that her 12-year-old son, whom subsequent reports indicated suffered from autism,
had passed away following a seizure two days earlier. Officials at New Providence Middle School
subsequently raised money in an effort to help the 39-year-old mother pay for her son’s funeral.
Suspicions arose after school staff contacted the funeral home Blanchard claimed to be using and
were told that no arrangements were being made for the boy in question. Upon being presented
with this information, Blanchard claimed that she was still waiting for the autopsy results
from Tennova Hospital before setting plans for the funeral into motion. Further suspicious
revelations came to light, however, after the laptop issued to Blanchard’s son by the
school was found to be active at the Vacation Motor Hotel in Clarksville. Montgomery County
Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the hotel, where they reportedly found Blanchard’s son alive
and by himself in one of the rooms. The boy’s mother ultimately admitted to faking his death
and leaving him at the hotel for two weeks, during which she claimed to have periodically checked in
on him. Blanchard was consequently arrested and charged with contributing to the delinquency of
a child and false impression of death. #6 - William Spivey
The police chief in Chadbourn, North Carolina, was relieved of duty, in the spring of 2021, following
an official probe into allegations of misconduct. According to the Horry County Police Department,
36-year-old William Spivey was charged with over 70 felony crimes including drug trafficking,
embezzlement of state property, and evidence mishandling. Roughly a year following the
announcement of the disgraced chief’s various offenses, he was reported missing after failing
to show up for a court appearance. Spivey’s aunt, with whom he’d been staying while out on bond,
told investigators that he’d gone on a fishing trip on the Lumber River on February the
21st of 2022. It was around that time that the Columbus County Sheriff's Office received a tip
about an abandoned boat on the river, prompting a widespread search effort by
multiple local and state agencies. The boat Spivey had taken out on the water was quickly found,
along with a death note he’d supposedly written and a .22 caliber rifle with a discharged round.
Although the evidence appeared to suggest that the former police chief had taken his own life,
investigators concluded it was unlikely that said scenario had actually occurred. Three days later,
the authorities were notified that Spivey was, in fact, alive, and that he’d been hiding at his
aunt’s house after faking his own death. When officers approached the residence, Spivey fled
into nearby woods, where he was eventually found hiding in a creek and taken back into custody.
#5 - Rachael Mattice In the early morning hours of
June the 23rd of 2016, Rachael Mattice went missing while she was on a camping trip with
her family near Wells, New York. The 24-year-old’s disappearance triggered a massive search effort
throughout the Adirondack Mountains that came to include over a hundred state police officers,
rangers and volunteers. In the weeks that followed, state authorities received and
followed up on roughly 400 leads from the public, but none of them yielded any results.
Then, on July the 6th, the search came to a sudden conclusion when Mattice showed up at
her family’s Johnstown residence. She claimed to have been kidnapped by a bearded man in his
50s or 60s who smelled strongly of cigarettes. Mattice also detailed how her alleged abductor had
repeatedly assaulted her and held her captive in a shed before eventually dropping her off two blocks
from her family’s house. The police were able to use Mattice’s description to create a composite
sketch of the suspect that was subsequently released to the public. In a surprising twist
of events, however, it was announced that a warrant had been issued for Mattice’s arrest,
on July the 23rd. Upon detecting several inconsistencies between Mattice’s story and
certain pieces of electronic and medical evidence, investigators concluded that the young woman had
fabricated her abduction entirely. Furthermore, eyewitnesses revealed that they’d seen Mattice at
a camp belonging to a relative’s boyfriend during the period in which she was supposedly missing.
She was ultimately charged with falsely reporting an incident and, in June of 2017,
she was sentenced to 4 weeks in jail, 3 years of probation, and 100 hours of community service.
#4 - Trent Freeman
A former sheriff’s deputy from Gilchrist County, Florida, was taken into custody,
in December of 2021, after it was discovered that she’d lied about being hospitalized with COVID-19.
According to related reports from local news outlet WCJB, 38-year-old Trent Freeman
claimed to have been admitted to the hospital after contracting the virus in the fall of
2021. Over the next 2 months, the deputy allegedly forged multiple doctors’ signatures
and falsified her medical records to maintain the fraudulent claim that she’d become comatose
while undergoing treatment. Freeman was actually in perfect health and had begun working full-time
at what was described as a “private-sector non-law-enforcement job”. Her superiors at
the county sheriff’s office began to suspect her fraud in early October. Following an investigation
by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, it was determined that Freeman had been lying about
her medical condition, therefore swindling her colleagues out of more than $3,700 in
paid sick time. After Freeman was fired from her position on October the 15th,
a warrant was issued for her arrest. She ultimately turned herself in, whereupon she
was charged with two counts of uttering a forged instrument and one count of scheme to defraud.
#3 - Timothy Wilks
Shortly after 9 pm, on February the 5th of 2021, police officers in Nashville, Tennessee,
were dispatched to the parking lot of an Urban Air indoor trampoline park in response to reports of a
shooting on the premises. 23-year-old David Starnes Jr. openly admitted to the officers
that he’d fatally shot an individual, later named as Timothy Wilks, aged 20. Starnes denied
initiating the deadly altercation and reported that it was Wilks who’d first approached a group
of people while wielding a butcher knife and claiming that he was going to rob them. Starnes,
who was a part of the group being threatened, sought to defend himself and the others by pulling
out a handgun and firing at Wilks. The authorities later determined that Wilks, a local YouTuber, and
his friend had been attempting to film a video in which they captured the reactions of people being
held at knifepoint. The prank robbery ultimately had a dramatic outcome for the young man,
who failed to anticipate the possibility that one of the video’s subjects might act in self-defense
to his fake attack. As of the latest updates on the matter, neither Starnes nor Wilks’ friend had
been charged in connection to the incident. #2 - Ava Coleman and Christopher Kratzer
At about 6 pm, on July the 3rd of 2019, several concerned citizens contacted the Forsyth County
Sheriff's Office, in Georgia, to report a suspected kidnapping in the parking lot of
The Collection shopping center. According to eyewitness testimony, 17-year-old Ava Coleman
was crying out for help and screaming “He’s going to kill me” while sitting in a Chevrolet Tahoe
with her hands bound and head covered by what appeared to be a pillowcase.
Eight sheriff’s deputies were rushed to the scene in a swift and ample law enforcement response
that reportedly included more than half of the South Forsyth police force. The vehicle in which
Coleman had been seen was subsequently located at another nearby parking lot, and law enforcement
initiated a traffic stop. The occupants were ordered out of the vehicle at gunpoint.
Shortly thereafter, it was discovered that the alleged kidnapping had actually been a hoax
devised by Coleman and 19-year-old Christopher Kratzer. The teens had reportedly planned to
film the elaborate stunt in order to post it on social media. Although no one was harmed during
the incident, a spokesman for the county sheriff’s office contended that Coleman and Kratzer were
fortunate the situation hadn’t escalated further. They’d fabricated a high-tension scenario that
could’ve resulted in them or other members of the public being hurt. The pair consequently
faced felony charges of raising a false alarm and a misdemeanor count of reckless conduct.
#1 - Jessica Ann Smith
Through a Facebook post from June of 2019, Pennsylvania resident Jessica Ann Smith announced
that she’d been diagnosed with colon cancer. The 31-year-old was quickly met with an overwhelmingly
sympathetic response. On the 10th of the month, she created a Facebook fundraiser titled
“#FightLikeAJessica”, which she used to raise money for her purported extensive medical bills.
Smith also allegedly started a GoFundMe campaign towards the same end, and she ultimately received
more than $10,000 in donations across the two fundraising platforms. The authorities were first
notified of the situation on June the 19th, when a female acquaintance of Smith’s contacted the
Uwchlan Township Police Department. She reportedly stated that, to the best of her knowledge,
Smith hadn’t actually been diagnosed with cancer of any form. On July the 31st,
Smith’s husband filed an official police report in which he alleged that his wife had fraudulently
obtained the Facebook and GoFundMe donations under the false pretense that she was ill.
He also revealed that he knew for a fact that Smith hadn’t been diagnosed with cancer,
as she was covered on the medical insurance he received through his employer. In November of
2019, Smith was arrested and charged with theft by deception and other theft-related counts. She
was ultimately sentenced to 3 years of probation and mental health treatment in January of 2021.
Thanks for watching! Would you rather never be able to tell a lie convincingly
or never be able to hold in your farts? Let us know in the comments section below!