It started with a story in The Sun about a woman named Kerry Campbell and her daughter Britney. Britney was a pageant kid, and Kerry the overbearing pageant mother. Kerry stopped at nothing to give her daughter an edge. Not even Botox and bikini waxing.

After The Sun ran the story, Good Morning America and Inside Edition contacted Campbell. According to TMZ, GMA offered mom $10,000 to tell her story on national television. (ABC News says it paid a media broker for photos but did not pay the mother.) After GMA's show aired, Child Protective Services was alerted and began investigating the Campbells only to find out they didn't exist. When CPS discovered Campbell's real identity was Sheena Upton, they removed "Britney" from the home.

Finally, Upton said enough is enough and told what she now says is the truth: That she'd been paid $200 to be part of a media scam that spun wildly out of control.

Upton provided TMZ with a statement in which she swore under oath that she never injected her daughter with Botox. She says CPS took her daughter to UCLA Medical Center to have her examined, and doctors found no evidence that Britney had ever been injected.

But an ABC News insider told TMZ that ABC thoroughly investigated “Botox Mommy” and was told the same story repeatedly by various family members. The news outlet plans to further investigate and get to the bottom of things.

So it would seem that the Botox Mommy story may well have been some sort of elaborate scam, and not about an out-of-control pageant mom. Though, really, we're not convinced one is better than the other.