An influencer has publicly apologized after admitting to falsely claiming she had cancer.
Brittany Miller, on TikTok, addressed her followers about a deception from 2017, where she lied to a friend about having cancer.
A fundraising page, which has since been taken down, was later created in her name, though Brittany insists she ‘didn’t take a penny from’ it.
The police confirmed that in 2020, Brittany was convicted of fraud by false representation. As a result, she received a 12-month conditional discharge and was instructed to pay compensation and costs to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Despite this, Brittany, now 29, has managed to amass around 3.5 million followers on TikTok and 500k on Instagram, gaining popularity for her haul videos, cooking content, and posts about raising her twin boys.
Brittany had previously stayed silent on the controversy, but she has now released a video on her TikTok page to address the situation.
In her video, Brittany stated: “If I could go back and change what I did I would do it in a heartbeat – it was one stupid sentence that I said almost a decade ago.”
Brittany clarified that during 2017 she was experiencing ‘extremely bad mental health’, though she ‘didn’t realise how bad it was’ at the time.
“I was depressed, I was suicidal, I was lost, I was confused. I lost my partner, I lost my job, and there were lots of things in that year,” she shared.
It was during this challenging time, Brittany explained, that she confided in someone that she was unwell, mentioning cancer without malicious intent.
“I said I had an illness; this was cancer,” she explained. “I didn’t do it with malicious intent or to scam people. I did it out of desperation, I did it to keep the people close to me, to keep the people in my life close to me.
“I don’t condone it, I understand why I did it and I’ve learnt from my mistakes.”
Brittany further explained that after making the false cancer claim, she learned about a fundraising page that had been created on her behalf.
“The people that I told then told a couple of others and there was a fundraising page made on behalf of me, which I knew about,” she stated. “As soon as I saw there were donations, there were two donations, I had the page immediately shut down and I didn’t take a penny from it.”
She emphasized in her video that her actions were not part of a ‘long-running scam’, noting: “I admitted what I did and I said sorry to the people that I hurt,”
Expressing remorse to those affected by her actions, Brittany conveyed: “I am so deeply sorry to anyone that I’ve upset or triggered from saying what I said.”
The influencer also highlighted that her false cancer claims were made before her rise on social media, asserting that she ‘didn’t do this for likes or followers’.
LADbible Group has approached Brittany Miller for further comment.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available through Mental Health America. Call or text 988 to reach a 24-hour crisis center or you can webchat at 988lifeline.org. You can also reach the Crisis Text Line by texting MHA to 741741.