phoney vs cheater

phoney and cheater both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
phoney	Yes	Yes	No	No
cheater	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, cheater is a hypernym of phoney; that is, cheater is a word with a broader meaning than phoney:

phoney: a person who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives
cheater: someone who leads you to believe something that is not true

Other hypernyms of phoney include beguiler, cheat, deceiver, slicker, trickster.

phoney (noun)	cheater (noun)
a person who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives	someone who leads you to believe something that is not true

phoney (adjective)	cheater (adjective)
fraudulent; having a misleading appearance