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Woman scammed $480G from Marathon-bombing compensation fund, cops say

BOSTON — An upstate New York woman used fake hospital records to pose as a Boston Marathon bombing victim with a brain injury and collected nearly half a million dollars from the fund for victims, authorities said yesterday.

Audrea Gause, 26, of Troy, was arrested there yesterday on a Massachusetts fugitive warrant charging her with larceny, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said.

Gause submitted a claim to the fund last month, including several pages of false medical records indicating she was treated at hospitals in Boston and New York for a traumatic brain injury suffered in the bombings, Coakley said.

She received a $480,000 check from the fund, created to help victims of the April 15 attacks, which killed three people and wounded more than 260.

Coakley said investigators are making every effort to take back the money given to Gause.