This story may not beat the Napa gal who faked her cancer so that she could collect donations and disability, but it comes close! We find today, via SFGate's Mommy Files, that a Chicago Mommy blogger who went by the name of "B" and claimed to be carrying a terminally ill fetus to term, turns out to be one Becca Beushausen, a social worker from Mokena, Illinois who mostly just wanted to work through the loss of a child a few years ago by composing this fiction and finding readership. Her primary readership appears to have been abortion opponents who thought her willingness to carry out God's will by not aborting a baby that was likely to die within days of being born. And as the Chicago Tribune notes, it was only after Becca's posts got 50+ comments and she saw her traffic spike that she became addicted to the medium and let her lies get out of hand.

"B" was unmasked due to a poorly staged photo of her with a "lifelike" doll that she claimed was her newborn baby, April Rose. One frequent reader, a doll aficionado from upstate NY, recognized the doll immediately and called B's bluff. To Becca's small credit, she did, in fact, lose a child shortly after birth in 2005 and making up the characters of "B" and "baby April" were her way of working through it. We think her little art project was kind of brilliant, in a way -- like a Citizen Ruth-ish satire of anti-abortion activists -- but yes, as James Frey and that lady in Napa learned, faking your tragic life, at best, will only get you humiliated by Oprah.