Real stories, and manipulative fake stories , would be almost exactly the same, because one is copying the other. The manipulative stories are often slightly more realistic or interesting as the person telling it has had a second chance to refine it from the original version.
But it also happens in America, Japan, China, India, etc. It's just way more visible and in the open and accepted as part of life in some places --i.e. police would not bat an eye.
As some of the other commentators pointed out, we don't know the full story, and it was also a different time.
So does Mother-in-law & Daughter-in-law fights !
There are human predators that take advantage of people of skeptical minds, just as there are those who prey on the faithful. The human history of advancement and revolution has been an arms race of all of us vs. the great bamboozlers. As we refine our ability to detect them, they refine their ability to walk among us.
Maybe she's lying, maybe she's telling the truth. If she's lying, she and everyone affected are long dead. Doesn't change the fact she's describing a kind of human that has always existed.
Looks like scoundrels exist in any age.