Where Is Amanda Riley’s Husband Now? All About Cory Riley’s Life Today

Amanda Riley defrauded more than 300 people when she faked having cancer to solicit donations — and whether or not he knew the truth about her health, her husband, Cory Riley, was by her side throughout her crime.

Leveraging her blog, social media and church, Amanda received more than $100,000 in monetary donations, including cash, gift cards, trips, freebies and other tokens for her lymphoma treatment, despite never being sick.

In the midst of her fraud, Cory and Amanda were also embroiled in a custody battle with his ex-wife over their daughter Jessa, who has since spoken out against her stepmother. Since Amanda’s arrest, investigative producers have released a podcast called Scamanda and a show by the same name, chronicling her fraud.

Amanda eventually got caught and ended up behind bars, but where is her husband, Cory Riley, now? Here’s everything to know about his life today.

Who is Cory Riley?

Little is publicly known about the Riley patriarch’s life before he got involved with Amanda.

Scamanda host and producer Charlie Webster claimed in episode 2, “From a very young age, he didn’t have his father. His father died by suicide when Cory was young, and he was raised by his mother.”

Jack York, who was matched with Cory in a Big Brothers program when he was a boy, said, “Cory was super fun. He always had a smile. He became a huge part of my life, and I was proud of him as he grew up.”

Cory was previously married to a woman named Aletta, with whom he shared a daughter named Jessa. Aletta also had another daughter from a previous relationship, who had acute lymphocytic leukemia, a type of blood and bone marrow cancer.

When Aletta’s daughter could no longer attend dance classes due to her cancer treatment, Amanda, then a 17-year-old cheerleader, went to Aletta and Cory’s home to give her lessons. At the time, Cory was 29.

After Cory and Aletta divorced, he and Amanda began dating, and the couple married in 2011. Big Brother York and Cory remained close, and the former later said in Scamanda that there was a marked difference in how Cory spoke about Amanda.

“When I first met Amanda, Cory was so effusive: ‘You gotta meet my wife!’ It was almost how you would treat a sculpture—he was so enamored with her,” York said. “I knew absolutely nothing about his first wife.”

What does Cory Riley do for a living?

When the Rileys lived in the Bay Area, Cory worked for a company then known as Statcomm.

According to Scamanda investigative producer Nancy Moscatiello, Cory was a fire sprinkler salesman for the company, though he allegedly told many people he was a firefighter and professor.

She also claimed that Cory submitted fake pay stubs from his workplaces for about seven years in an effort to prove financial hardship to lower his child support payments to Aletta.

What did Amanda Riley do?

Amanda launched her blog, Lymphoma Can Suck It, in 2012, detailing her so-called diagnosis and treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of blood cancer. She claimed to have been diagnosed with the condition when she gave birth to her first son in May 2012, and she’d later claim that the conception and birth of her and Cory’s second son in 2014 made him a “miracle baby.”

Through her blog, social media and large church network, Amanda began soliciting donations for her cancer treatment and living expenses, while also receiving free trips, flights, childcare, gifts and meals. She’d often take selfies in hospitals, holding syringes and wearing chemotherapy ports, and even shaved her head to make her ruse believable. At one point, she claimed that her lymphoma had metastasized to her lungs.

“She used her presence on these sites to ‘document’ her nonexistent medical condition, and to aggressively solicit donations, supposedly to cover her medical expenses,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office previously told PEOPLE in a statement. “In truth, [Amanda] had no medical expenses. The donations she received were deposited into her personal bank accounts and used to pay her living expenses.”

According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California, Amanda also forged letters from doctors and falsified medical records, medical bills and certifications to keep her scam going.

Moscatiello got a tip in June 2015 that Amanda was duping her donors. After digging into some of the treatments Amanda claimed to have had and hospitals where she alleged she was a patient, Moscatiello contacted San Jose Police Department financial crimes Detective Jose Martinez.

He alerted the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in February 2016, and federal agents raided the Rileys’ California home seven months later. In July 2020, IRS special investigator Arlette Lyons-Lee officially charged Amanda with wire fraud, citing her blog and social media posts.

Riley pleaded guilty to wire fraud in exchange for the charge of falsifying documents being dropped. She was sentenced to five years in prison, three years of supervised probation and was ordered to pay restitution plus interest to her wire fraud victims.

Did Amanda Riley’s husband divorce her?

Webster revealed in Scamanda that she had a “25-minute conversation” with Amanda, during which Amanda told her that she and Cory were divorcing. He filed in 2024 to dissolve their marriage.

Was Amanda Riley’s husband ever charged?

Cory was never charged in relation to Amanda’s fraud cases. Moscatiello claimed in Scamanda, “Cory may not have been charged, but I think he knew all along.”

Lyons-Lee explained that because of spousal privilege, it would’ve been difficult to convict Cory. “How could we prove that Cory was part of it?” she said. “The only person who’d have been able to show us would be Amanda.”

In a Reddit Ask Me Anything in July 2023, Moscatiello reiterated that while there wasn’t a definitive smoking gun about Cory’s involvement, she believed he knew about Amanda’s fraud — and that while he wasn’t criminally charged, he may still end up as a defendant in court in a different capacity.

“In my opinion, he knew from the get-go that what Amanda was putting out there was untrue,” she wrote. “He backed and supported her lies for years and told many of his own. This is my opinion but it doesn’t mean that prosecutors think there’s a strong enough case against him, especially when, as Agent Lee explained, they go for their best target (Amanda). I think the strongest possibility for him to be held accountable in some manner would be through a civil case.”

Did Amanda Riley’s husband know about her scam?

It’s unclear whether Cory knew about Amanda’s fraud, as he’s never commented publicly on the crime. Amanda’s public defender did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment in 2024.

That said, several individuals close to the case believe Cory knew that Amanda was lying about her cancer and the fundraising associated with it.

In Scamanda episode 4, Aletta’s sister Amie said she believed Cory knew that Amanda was faking her illness based on his supposedly going to doctors’ visits and hospital stays with her, as well as from her having IV equipment lying around the house. The family’s babysitter, Mahasti Ameli, agreed with Amie. “He stood next to her crying to me,” she said. “He backed her up.”

Further, Cory testified in court that he’d been by Amanda’s side at medical appointments “for the last five years,” Moscatiello claimed. She later said in a Reddit AMA that, based on her investigation and research, she believes Amanda was the “mastermind” and that Cory was “complicit.”

“I think at some point Cory believed her, and I think at some point he knew it was a lie,” Martinez explained. “Proving where that line is is a harder go, because then you can say, ‘She fooled this entire congregation. She fooled her mom. Why is far-fetched to fool her husband who sees her with a shaved head and shivering in her bed with oxygen tubes?’ ”

Cory’s daughter Jessa also believes her dad knew about Amanda’s lies.

“He was very — I want to say ‘not himself,’ but I think I don’t really know who he is as a person,” she said on Scamanda “He kind of just looked numb all the time … He was always taking us everywhere, he was always going to the gym. With my dad, he’d always just kind of be like, ‘Oh, you know, Mandy’s sick, and we can’t do this.’ ”

Jessa added, “They would take us to the hospital, almost to kind of prove there was something wrong with her.”

At the very end of episode 4, it is revealed that Amanda gave producers a statement saying that “her brothers and parents had nothing to do with the events that put her in prison.” Cory was not included in her statement.

Moscatiello wrote in February 2025 that she thought Amanda might open up about Cory when she was released from prison. “Now that they are divorced perhaps she may come clean about a few things,” she said.

Where is Cory Riley now?

Moscatiello said in her July 2023 Reddit AMA that Cory is raising his and Amanda’s two sons privately. He hasn’t spoken publicly about the case.

In December 2024, Amanda was released from prison and moved to a residential re-entry home in Southern California for the rest of her sentence, per ABC News. Webster told Glamour in 2023 that Cory and their sons were living in Austin, Texas.