Coco Berthmann: Trafficking Lies, Cancer Fraud, and ICE Custody

Coco Berthmann is a German-born woman who built a public profile in Utah as a human trafficking survivor and anti-trafficking advocate before being exposed as a serial fabricator. Born Sandra-Renata Ruff in Celle, Germany, in December 1993, she pleaded guilty to a fraud charge after South Jordan, Utah, police determined she had faked a cancer diagnosis to raise roughly $9,000 on GoFundMe. In May 2025, she was taken into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Utah.¹

The Trafficking Story She Told

Berthmann came to the United States in 2015, working first as an au pair in New York and then as a nanny in Las Vegas. She moved to Salt Lake City in 2017 to attend a nanny training course and converted to Mormonism.² After the conversion, she began telling local Mormon community members and social media followers that her own family had sold her into child sex trafficking in Germany, that she had watched her sister be murdered, and that she had fled home at 15.

The story opened doors. She became active in anti-trafficking circles, appeared at events with child-safety campaigner Elizabeth Smart, and in 2021 spoke at the Malouf Foundation’s inaugural Human Trafficking Policy and Education Summit in Logan, Utah.¹

How the Trafficking Claims Unraveled

Her real name is Sandra-Renata Ruff. She has an older sister, Magdalena, and a brother, Mike, both alive. Her parents divorced when she was four, she ran away from home at 16, and she spent time in a German clinic for children with traumatic experiences before legally changing her name to Coco Verajeanne Berthmann in 2013.²

Investigative journalist Lynn Packer tracked down Berthmann’s mother, Renata, in Germany and published a YouTube exposé in August 2021 titled The Coco Berthmann Hoax. Renata denied the allegations, provided records to support her account, and said her daughter had been diagnosed with “borderline schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.” She also took legal steps to have the false allegations removed.² Journalists Sara Ganim and Karen Given later traveled to Germany twice to interview relatives and found no evidence supporting the trafficking account.³

A 2022 probable cause affidavit filed in Berthmann’s fraud case stated that investigators had concluded she “had in fact not been sold into slavery, been a child sex slave or watched her sister get murdered at a young age.”⁴

The Fake Cancer Diagnosis and GoFundMe

In January 2022, Berthmann said she had been diagnosed with stage 3 Mantle Cell Lymphoma, calling it aggressive with a 30 percent survival rate. An associate, Amy Bowler, created a GoFundMe titled “Help Coco Fight Cancer” after Berthmann raised concerns about treatment costs and showed her what she said were medical records. The campaign brought in roughly $9,000 to $10,000.⁵⁶

South Jordan police received a tip in February 2022 and opened an investigation. Search warrants served at the Huntsman Cancer Institute confirmed Berthmann had never been a patient there and had only been prescribed anxiety medication. An Alaska oncology clinic said she was never a patient. A Chicago doctor she had named turned out to specialize in PTSD and anxiety, not oncology. Asked for her medical records, she produced none, and officers who searched a location where she said documents were stored found nothing relating to cancer.⁶ Police also verified that none of the money withdrawn from GoFundMe went to medical treatment.⁷

During the investigation, Berthmann gave shifting accounts of where she was being treated and claimed to be working as a witness for the FBI and the Davis County District Attorney’s Office on a sex trafficking case. The officer she named denied it.⁶

Arrest, Guilty Plea, and Restitution

Berthmann, then 28, was arrested on February 16, 2022, and booked into the Salt Lake County Jail.⁵⁷⁸ She pleaded guilty and was ordered to repay the more than $9,000 she had collected. One report indicates the court case was closed in July 2022 after she repaid the funds.¹

ICE Custody in 2025

On May 26, 2025, Berthmann was booked into the Salt Lake County Metro Jail and placed in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE records confirmed she was being held in Utah, but the agency did not respond to press inquiries about why. Her immigration status and citizenship have not been publicly clarified, and whether she faces deportation proceedings has not been confirmed in the most recent reporting.¹

1
KUTV. Utah Human Trafficking Advocate, Convicted Fraudster Coco Berthmann in ICE Custody
2
News.com.au. German Fraudster Has Been Exposed for Her Years of Lies
3
Podnews. Dear Media True Crime Docuseries
4
KJZZ. Utah Human Trafficking Advocate, Convicted Fraudster Coco Berthmann in ICE Custody
5
Newsweek. Human Rights Advocate Arrested After Allegedly Faking Cancer
6
Fox 13 Now. Utah Woman Arrested for Allegedly Faking Cancer Diagnosis
7
KSL TV. Utah Woman Charged After Raising Thousands for Fake Cancer Diagnosis
8
Utah Legislature. Utah Code 76-10-1801, Communications Fraud