A Dutch mother who pretended her daughter had choked to death on a piece of apple will appear in court on Monday charged with conning well-wishers out of hundreds of euros.

The woman, from Limburg, claimed she was so poor that she could not give her daughter a proper funeral, the Volkskrant reports on Monday.  Via Facebook page Make a Wish, Do a Gift some €1,500 in donations was raised to pay for a decent send-off. Others sent gifts in kind, such as flowers.

The Facebook platform has some 10,000 members who help each other in difficult circumstances.

‘She’s actually a very good actress,’ Inge Minkeberg of the Make a Wish, Do a Gift Facebook page said, after investigating the claims. ‘She was in floods of tears on the phone.’

Minkeberg became suspicious when the woman went on to claim her partner had committed suicide because of their daughter’s death.

Photograph

She checked out the photograph of the child for the ceremony programme and realised she was far older than three. In addition, the suspect failed to send a copy of the death certificate.

Later, another woman claiming to be her sister phoned up saying she would come round to collect the cash. Minkeberg refused to hand it over.

The woman’s lawyer Susanne Bauduin says her client is ‘a vulnerable woman’.

‘She will say more about what drove her to act the way she did during the trial,’ Bauduin said.