'The thing is, you don't have to lie well about cancer for people to believe you'

Why would anyone pretend to have cancer, as in the plot of Netflix's hit show 'Apple Cider Vinegar'? Zoë Beaty speaks to Bill Petrich, who has spent years tracking down the fakers

- Zoë Beaty

Bill Petrich's life's work lives on his computer, in a database titled "The Fakers". The file is vast: in it, more than 1,000 people’s lives are documented, analysed and sorted into subcategories like “Age”, “Gender”, “Motivation”, “Legal outcome” and “Did this faker go to Disney World?”. This is not his job – by day, he works in biotech, managing marketing for agencies that make cancer treatments in Oregon, USA. By night he sets about finding people doing the unthinkable: lying about dying from cancer.

For 15 years, Bill has dedicated thousands of hours to unpacking this extraordinary social phenomenon. He isn’t a “hoax hunter”; his aim isn’t to find active “fakers” and expose them to the public, and he isn’t “into pushing desperate people into more desperate positions”. He’s also not an apologist for their crimes, though he admits there’s a morbid curiosity to it all. “It’s like true crime without the murders,” says Bill.

Over the years he’s documented heinous offences – financial and emotional – and depicted the bizarre reality of a world few of us understand. At least 10 cases on his spreadsheet used cancer fraud to cover up breast implant surgery (“as if that’s somehow more shameful than faking cancer,” he says); scores “had help” from partners in on it too.

But, beyond the boundless betrayal, Bill’s work tells a story that cuts deeper than the narrative we’re familiar with. In private conversations, those who have cast elaborate lies confess their darkest secrets to him. His aim is to uncover answers to the one big question that confounds us all: why would someone do this?

The subject has long been a point of public fascination, particularly right now. Hit podcast and soon-to-be-released documentary