The 46-year-old woman had been sentenced to prison for aggravated fraud, but in an attempt to avoid jail entirely, she produced a medical certificate that explained she would soon die of cancer.

While officials at the Swedish Prison and Probation Service (Kriminalvården) were fooled by the ruse, the Social Insurance Agency (Försäkringskassan) was less gullible, noting that the certificate looked old and as if someone had tampered with the contents.

Under interrogation, doctors revealed that the note was poorly written.

“You don’t write that someone has three-to-six months to live and you don’t use the words ‘sick with cancer’ (‘cancersjuk’),” one doctor explained, according to the Metro newspaper.

The woman blamed the attempted cancer con on her worries about life in prison.

“I’ve never been to prison before and I didn’t know what I had in store for me there,” the 46-year-old said in interrogation.

The Court of Appeals has now added two months to the woman’s prison sentence for forgery, according to the TT news agency.

TT/The Local/og

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