The phrase "as a phoney" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe someone or something that is not genuine or is pretending to be something they are not.
Example: "He presented himself as a successful entrepreneur, but many saw him as a phoney."
Alternatives: "as a fraud" or "as a fake".
Citizens Advice has branded the cuts as a "phoney price war".
While he developed an acquaintanceship with Eliot, he dismissed Pound as a phoney.
Certain friends, including Heath, had come to regard him as a phoney, which shocked me.
Described in court as a "phoney and a bully", Morrison has four previous convictions for assault and one for harassment on his ex-girlfriend, aged 23, from Birmingham.
In the novel, everyone gradually becomes "a phoney" and what is known of Chapman suggests he saw John Lennon as a phoney.
I worry that I stand out as a phoney, but Humble assures me the majority of punters come simply for fun.
A bronze commander in Manchester described reacting to reports of disorder on social networks as fighting a "phoney war".
No one condemned this as fakery, or a phoney attempt to fool the people with hollow display.
The Acosta case in one way is a continuation of business as usual in a phoney war between the president and the press, but it should mark a turning point.
At a certain point, as if aware things are beginning to sound like a transcript of a graduate semiotics discussion circa 1990, McCarthy pushes the tone towards irony, even parody, inviting us to see U as a bit of a phoney, or at least as a study in the hollowness of a mode of discourse that has been all too thoroughly appropriated by the corporate world.
In Deutschland 83 (Channel 4), Europe is preparing for another war: albeit, as it turns out, a phoney one.
