Man forced to return money after lying about sick daughter

A Spanish judge is investigating a man who persuaded well-wishers to hand over tens of thousands of euro in order to pay for treatment for his sick daughter after it was revealed he had lied about her situation.

Since 2009, Fernando Blanco has regularly appeared in the media, explaining the rare genetic disease, trichothiodystrophy, afflicting his 11-year-old daughter, Nadia. A long article about her published in El Mundo newspaper in November prompted readers to donate €153,000 in four days to pay for the specialised treatment Blanco said she needed in Houston, as her case went viral on social media and was promoted by celebrities.

The father had said Nadia required a medical procedure that was not available in Spain in order to stay alive, as well as claiming he had travelled the world, including to war-torn Afghanistan, to seek specialist professionals who could treat her.

But El País newspaper subsequently revealed that Blanco had made no such efforts to find the doctors and that he had no treatment for his daughter planned in Houston. Instead, he has admitted, he had been consulting an alternative healer.

On Sunday, the Facebook page run by Blanco detailing Nadia’s case announced that all the money raised will be returned to donors.

Trusted

“A wrong was committed but not an embezzlement,” Blanco’s wife, Margalida Grau, told a television interviewer on Wednesday. “Fernando is the one who went to the doctors and I trusted what he said.”

The family continue to insist that Nadia's illness is genuine. Trichothiodystrophy is a rare condition, often linked to brittle hair and sometimes to intellectual impairment. However, one specialist consulted by El País and who was part of the team in a Barcelona hospital that first diagnosed the girl in 2006, said that most of the 200 or so known cases were "not serious". Blanco had told the Spanish media that only 36 cases were known around the world.

El País has also found that in 2000, Blanco was sentenced to nearly five years in jail for embezzling €120,000 from a beverage distribution company he had previously worked for.

The judge investigating the case in Lleida, in northeastern Spain, has ordered Nadia’s passport to be confiscated so that her parents cannot take her out of the country. The bank account of donors’ money has been frozen.

The El Mundo journalist who wrote the now-infamous article, Pedro Simón, has apologised to readers, saying his relationship with the family had prevented him from corroborating key facts. On Wednesday the newspaper also published an apology on its editorial page.