The court in Porrentruy heard that the woman invented the disease in order to gain sympathy from friends and to seek their financial support.

In all, 20 people dipped into their pockets to help out a person they thought was facing a life-threatening disease.

In one case, a young retired woman gave the con woman her entire life savings — 160,000 francs, according to media reports of the case.

“I asked and they gave,” the convicted woman told the court, 20 Minutes reported.

She told her friends that she had not been reimbursed for payments made to treat her fictitious disease.

“That is odious,” responded Pierre Lachat, the judge in the case.

“You have played this evil performance of having a breast cancer and then plucked on heartstrings.”

“She manipulated us,” one of the victims told the local L’Express/L’Impartial newspaper.

“And when we said ‘no’, she would look down on us, returning repeatedly to her (medical) expenses, in tears.”

 The convicted fraudster apparently was not a neophyte at taking advantage of others.

The court learned that she had already spent six months in jail in Germany for the same kind of fraud.