LAS VEGAS (Court TV) — A woman who lied to her friends for months, even pretending she had cancer at one point, will head to jail after pleading guilty to theft.
Haleigh Knight appears at her sentencing on June 24, 2026. (Court TV)
Haleigh Knight pleaded guilty to a felony theft charge; if she completes her probation and pays the full $19,787.12 in restitution, she may request that the conviction be reduced to a misdemeanor.
That plea agreement didn’t sit well with the victims who testified at Wednesday’s sentencing hearing. “The financial impact changed the course of my life,” Corey Fink said in court. “I lost everything I had built for myself. While I was unknowingly funding Haleigh’s lavish lifestyle, I was packing up my own life and leaving behind everything I had built for myself.”
Prosecutors said that Knight first convinced her friends that she had gotten them positions as content creators with a company called “Four Seasons.” The friends were told that if they paid a deposit for training, they’d soon be taken on trips together. “Based on the life that she portrayed, and the confidence she spoke with, I had no reason to doubt her,” Corey Fink said. “What I know now is that much of what Haleigh presented to me was a lie.”
Corey Fink said that Knight assumed different personalities of managers at the fictitious company, not only making false promises but even executing documents. “Looking back now, what disturbs me is how detailed it all was,” she said. “It’s not just a name she created. These people had personalities, job titles, explanations and ongoing conversations. There were contracts, DocuSign agreements and even communications from what we believed was a legal team.”
Corey Fink, her sister, Cydney Fink, and their mother, Leann Fink, were all victims of Knight’s scheme and testified in court. “The money was just the tip of the iceberg,” Leann Fink said.
“She knew exactly what our dreams were, and she used those dreams against us,” Cydney Fink, who had known Knight since high school, said. “When people hear this case, they think it’s just about the money. But for us, it’s so much more than that. We stepped down from work, lost income, delayed education and gave up family time and built our future around something that never existed.”
After collecting money in “deposits” from her friends, Knight then claimed she had pancreatic cancer. Her friends responded by donating money to her, giving her gift cards and even arranging for food deliveries and babysitting to help her family.
“I truly believed my friend was dying,” Corey Fink said. “This was not a single bad decision or a momentary lapse in judgment. It was a yearslong pattern of deliberate deception carried out against people who trusted her and cared about her.”
Knight became emotional when she delivered a statement at the hearing. “I know I’m here because of my own actions, and I take responsibility for that. I think about my choices and the people I hurt every day,” she said. She asked for “the opportunity to keep moving forward, make restitution, support my family and prove through my actions that I can learn from this and be a better person.”
“While you were making your statement, you were dabbing at your eyes,” Judge Jessica Peterson noted as she began to hand down the sentence. “But it was not lost on the Court that when your former friends were telling you the ways that you hurt them, that you stood there emotionless.”
While the plea agreement between Knight and the prosecutors called for a suspended sentence — meaning she would not serve jail time — Peterson felt some incarceration was warranted in the case. “There needs to be a consequence that is more than just you paying money back; there just does. Thirty days seems right to me. And I know that does not seem like a lot of time to the family, but it’s me saying that there needs to be a consequence to you taking people’s trust and destroying people’s trust that is more than just you paying back money.”
Knight will be allowed to self-surrender; she has until July 1 at 9:30 a.m. to do so.
