Is there a term that describes the below action:

A person who claims they are speaking about one person, but in actuality, they are speaking about another person instead to help hide that fact.

My teenage daughters' stepmother was discussing her "friend who is paying alimony to his ex-wife, but the ex-wife got remarried and never told him, thus is selling money" when in reality their stepmother is talking about me, however, I'm not married and thus not stealing.

Is there a term for that? I want to say it's something like pathological lying, but I know she's lying for a reason as opposed to no reason at all from what I read about pathological lying.

Thank you