A fraud measured in trust.
Sympathy Pains is a serialized true-crime account of Sarah, whose invented illnesses drew friends, caregivers, and disability communities into years of intimate trust. The show follows the damage through personal testimony, police records, and a federal fraud case that looks small on paper but lands heavily in human terms.
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Sympathy Pains is a measured serialized true-crime narrative about deception, illness, and the emotional economy of care. Sarah is the central figure, a woman whose claims of cancer, muscular dystrophy, abusive relationships, motherhood, and grief drew others into years of obligation and concern. The show is not built around a glamorous heist or a tidy courtroom twist. Its subject is smaller and more unsettling. People believed they were helping someone fragile, and that belief changed their days, homes, friendships, and memories. In one account, Bethany meets Sarah at Camp Summit during a session for new campers, where soft clothing, a power wheelchair, and a CPAP machine establish the practical demands of care. In another, Liz and Brian welcome Sarah into a peaceful home by the water, feeding her, sitting with her, worrying over what a terminal illness might allow. Their exhaustion becomes part of the evidence. So does their tenderness. The series also traces the earlier paper trail, including Chris Conrad’s recollection of police contact over a stolen quilt and Sarah’s explanation that her online deception began with research into SMA. These scenes widen the story without turning it into a diagnosis. Sympathy Pains keeps returning to behavior, consequences, and the people left to make sense of what happened. The legal chapters are equally restrained. Sarah pleads guilty to wire fraud and mail fraud, and the virtual court setting underscores how strange the case looks from a distance: low dollar amounts, but profound injury. Victim statements become the moral center of the proceeding. They describe harm to individuals and to organizations whose purpose is care. The series works because it understands that trust is not an abstract loss. It is breakfast made before a visitor wakes up. It is a family photo taken because someone might not be around much longer. It is a counselor organizing a stranger’s medical equipment. Sympathy Pains treats those gestures as serious, and that seriousness gives the story its quiet force.
Made for: For true-crime listeners drawn to careful reporting, victim-centered storytelling, and cases where the damage is psychological as much as legal. It suits audiences who prefer restraint over sensational narration.
What sets it apart: Sympathy Pains stands apart by treating a low-dollar fraud case as a deep study of care, credibility, and emotional aftermath. The storytelling gives ordinary gestures the same weight as court records.
Hosted by Laura Beil (Dr. Death, Bad Batch), Sympathy Pains is a six-part series from Neon Hum Media and iHeartRadio. For 20 years, Sarah Delashmit told people around her that she had cancer, muscular dystrophy, and other illnesses. She used a wheelchair and posted selfies from a hospital bed. She told friends and coworkers she was trapped in abusive relationships, or that she was the mother of children who had died. It was all a con. Sympathy was both her great need and her powerful weapon. But unlike most scams, she didn’t want people’s money. She was after something far...
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Sympathy Pains makes an unusual fraud legible by tracing the emotional labor and legal consequences surrounding Sarah's deceptions.
Sympathy Pains follows Sarah's deceptions through the people whose care and trust she enlisted. Laura Beil builds the account from close personal testimony, then widens it through a former police officer's recollections and federal court proceedings.
A margarita in a backyard becomes the moment your sympathy starts feeling like evidence.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A restrained sentencing episode that keeps the harm concrete and the legal stakes clear.
This episode stays on Sarah’s fraud case from the guilty plea on October 13, 2020 through the last court appearance on January 19, 2021. The virtual setting gives the sentencing enough shape to matter: the judge asks for victim statements, Bethany goes first, and her halting…
A small-town fraud case told with patience, detail, and emotional weight.
It moves patiently through Chris Conrad's recollection of a 2006 FBI call about a stolen quilt, letting Highland, Illinois feel specific without leaning on drama.
Quiet, intimate storytelling that turns a backyard goodbye into something hard to shake.
The episode keeps its focus on Brian and Liz as they open their home to Sarah, and that closeness gives the story its pull. The backyard, the fish tacos, the hammock by the water, and the goodbye all carry real weight because the episode trusts those everyday details to do the…
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A calm camp arrival scene gives the episode its sharpest details, from Sarah's power wheelchair to a CPAP machine and a carefully packed suitcase.
Sympathy Pains is at its best in the quiet arrival at camp. Bethany and the counselors move through a busy cabin while new campers unpack during a session in fall 2015. Sarah, a young woman in a power wheelchair, introduces herself and says she has muscular dystrophy.
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A guilty plea changes the temperature.
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Sarah calls the backyard hammock her happy place.
Erin stays tied to Sarah, but the transcript only lets that connection go so far.
New campers arrived on Sundays.