Authorities Arrest North Carolina Woman For 'Cookie Lady' Scam

A woman in North Carolina who had come to be known as the "Cookie Lady" has been arrested for running a lengthy scam involving the fraudulent sale of cookies.

Police in Pitt County, North Carolina, have reportedly had their eye on 37-year-old Vickie Gaynor since February, when it was brought to their attention that Gaynor was scamming locals by pretending to sell cookies.

According to Neil Elks, the Pitt County sheriff, Gaynor regularly solicited local businesses, telling them that she was selling cookies on behalf of children at a local Christian camp.

"The cookie lady would come in at night and say that she was raising money to take a church youth group to a summer camp and try to get people in the bar to buy her cookies," a local bar employee told WCTI 12, an ABC affiliate.

By February, several residents began reporting their suspicions about Gaynor to the police. "As minor as it sounds, we got enough complaints we really needed to look into it," said Elks, who would sometimes receive multiple calls a day on the issue.

As part of her scam, Gaynor would reportedly claim that the cookies were homemade by women at the camp's affiliated church, but they were actually cookies from Walmart. Investigators also discovered that Gaynor had been altering prescriptions for oxycodone in order to obtain them at an earlier date.

Gaynor is currently being held at the Pitt County Detention Center under $20,000 bond, and faces multiple charges, including obtaining property by false pretense.