By Debbie Schlussel

Detroit is bad enough that you don’t need to lie about being a victim of crime there. Well, unless you’re a liberal reality show star welfare queen subsidized by taxpayers. Then, you gotta pretend that a standard theft was a “carjacking” . . . you know, to build up your ratings and sympathy factor.

Nicole Curtis, the attractive blonde babymama (she’s now married and pregnant with baby #2, but had a kid out of wedlock) who hosts HGTV’s and DIY’s “Rehab Addict,” made up a story that she posted on social media to her many followers. She claimed that she was a victim of an “attempted carjacking.” The thing is, it wasn’t even close. She told Detroit Police that a male grabbed a Louis Vuitton purse from her parked car’s open window (yup, a BRILLIANT thing to do in Detroit!) and took off running. Sound like a carjacking to you? Me, neither. Yes, carjackings happen on a regular basis, but none–or anything close–happened to Curtis. However, if she’d merely said, hey, my purse got stolen from the open window of my parked car in Detroit, it 1) wouldn’t be exciting and no one would care, and 2) would make her look like the obvious true blonde that she is for being dumb enough to leave a purse in a parked car in Detroit and leave the window open (that’s a twofer in the stupidity department–um, it’s Detroit, the original inner city ghetto of crime and welfare). She admits that another car (that of the thieves) was idling nearby. Oh, and by the way, this was at night (and you’re really risking it if you go to Detroit at night–just saying).

And, then, there is the reason why Curtis is in Detroit. She acts like she’s here in the Detroit area for “charity” and out of the goodness of her heart. Uh, no. She’s being paid very well, and Michigan taxpayers are forcibly subsidizing her pay. Cha-ching! The Michigan native and expatriate came to Detroit to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in showbiz welfare from Michigan taxpayers to “rehab” a dumpy old mansion that was basically completely destroyed. The Michigan Film Tax Credits were, thankfully, finally ended by the Michigan Legislature (yes, it took the GOP years to finally get some balls and get rid of them). But money was still given out before the official end.

That includes $211,031 given to Curtis and the production company filming her renovation of the Ransom Gillis mansion in Detroit’s largely-abandoned Brush Park neighborhood. The mansion was falling in and had been completely stripped. But, courtesy of taxpayers, an exorbitant amount of money (over $800,000) is being spent to rehab it and split into two small apartments for low-income residents. It would have been much cheaper just to buy them two Detroit houses in good shape. Moreover, the “renovation” is being sponsored by Quicken Loans, owned by billionaire Dan Gilbert. Sadly, while Gilbert and his company get publicity and a “sponsorship,” the real sponsorship is the taxpayers of Michigan.

The Detroit Police Department called Curtis out, but yet her very embellished lie is still on her Facebook account. The woman–a corporate welfare queen–is shameless.

Nicole Curtis, the star of “Rehab Addict” and a Lake Orion native, claims she narrowly escaped being carjacked in Detroit. “It made me question every single thing I have going on in my life,” Curtis wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday that gathered more than 15,000 likes within a few hours of posting. But Detroit police say there was no threat of carjacking or assault at all — in fact, a male grabbed a purse from a car’s open window and took off running, said Sgt. Cassandra Lewis, a Detroit police spokeswoman. The incident took place Monday night when Curtis and a friend were heading back to a car after the Jazz Fest, police said.

Curtis stopped at the parked car that was facing east on Larned and was helping her friend get a baby into the car when a man reached into the car’s open window, grabbed a purse that was sitting in the front seat, and took off on foot, according to police. But in her brief recounting of the situation on Facebook, Curtis described the incident as an “attempted carjacking.” She said she was so overwhelmed that she broke down on the way home from filing a police report.

Uh-huh. Sure, she did.

A reality TV star would never ever lie. After all, it’s reality TV, so everything they say happened, really happened. Right?

Don’t get me wrong. Detroit is a cesspool of crime and failure induced by welfare, other entitlements, and a hip-hop culture that glorifies that and anti-social behavior.

But Nicole Curtis was NOT a victim of a carjacking, an attempted carjacking, or anything close. Her purse was stolen. That’s it.

The bigger victim here: Michigan taxpayers who were robbed by Nicole Curtis and her “Rehab Addiction” to the tune of more than a couple hundred grand.