Dozens of personalities and fake stories: how a girl lives when her illness makes her be a fraud

This girl deceived many and still makes them think about what prompted her to do such things. Edition Hromadske told the story of a girl who did not impersonate other people without specific motives.

Photo: Shutterstock

Victim of the international sex trade. The girl who was sent to live with a foster family. An orphan who was bullied at school. An agent looking for actors to shoot. A relative of the Swedish royal family.

Emily Peet. Lindsay Cowlin. Dakota Johnson. Georgia McAuliffe. Harper Hernandez. Harper Hart. And a few dozen more similar pseudo.

What all these stories and names have in common is one person. Her real name is Samantha Azzopardi and she is 32 years old. A court in Australia on May 28 sentenced Azzopardi to two years in prison on charges of fraud and child abduction.

Fate led Azzopardi to Ireland, Canada and almost all the states of his native Australia. The woman has more than once served a sentence behind bars because of her deception. But at the same time, she did not offend anyone and, it seems, did not steal anything from anyone. Why is she pretending to be someone else?

October 2013. Dublin, Ireland. "The girl from the main post office"

A frightened blonde girl in a purple hooded top, dark jeans and a gray woolen sweater stands outside the main post office building. The unusual scene attracted the attention of law enforcement officers.

The police in the Irish capital are trying to understand who she is and what happened to her. The girl refused to talk for weeks, except that she made it clear with gestures that she was 14 years old.

Law enforcement officers suspected that she could be a victim of the sex trade. The Irish media began to write about the "girl from the main post office".

The search operation as a whole lasted more than 2000 man-hours. Law enforcement officers analyzed video from surveillance cameras, interviewed people, collaborated with missing persons services, Interpol, the immigration department, and the task force to combat domestic violence and sexual crimes. Noticing the newly installed braces, the police contacted nearby dental clinics in case they were the ones who operated on the girl.

On the subject: A professor from the USA has been posing as an immigrant woman of a different race for months

For all this, according to The New Yorker, they spent at least 250 euros.

The case moved forward when Dublin police took the unprecedented step of asking the court for permission to release a photo of what they believed was a minor.

In November 2013 - the same day that the girl’s photo was made public - Dublin police reported that she was recognized by a man - her mother’s former boyfriend, with whom she had come to stay from Australia. It turned out that the girl was actually 25 years old, and her name was Samantha Azzopardi.

At first, law enforcers did not know what to do. Some believed that it was necessary to start criminal proceedings, because a lot of money and effort was spent on establishing the girl's identity.

But Irish police detective David Gallagher, who was in charge of the case of the "girl from the main post office," decided to simply send her to Australia.

“From a legal perspective, she didn't actually make a single false statement because she didn't speak at all. Therefore, we should talk about her mental health and well-being,” Gallagher later recalled.

Azzopardi, accompanied by the police, boarded the plane and went to her native Sydney. Even then she did not say a word.

September 2014. Calgary, Canada. "Victim of the international sex trade"

A black-haired girl came to a clinic in a city in the southern Canadian province of Alberta. She told the doctors that her name is Aurora Hepburn, she is 14 years old, she was kidnapped by unknown persons, and she was sexually harassed for years.

“Aurora” was admitted to the hospital. The police spent two weeks trying to determine what happened to her and how they could help her. This search operation also had its own price - more than $150.

Suddenly, colleagues from Dublin contacted the Canadian police and told about the real name, age and history of Samantha. On October 6, 2014, Calgary police charged the 26-year-old Australian woman with fraud to mislead law enforcement.

The trial exposed even more surprising details of Samantha's life. After being deported from Dublin, she was able to obtain documents for a new name from the Australian authorities, with their help, to return to Ireland in April 2014 and work for a month as a nurse in a foster family. And then miraculously she came to Canada and ended up in Calgary.

In December 2014, the court found Azzopardi guilty, but instead of the maximum five years in prison, he sentenced only two months, most of which the girl had already served during her detention.

At the trial, Azzopardi sat smiling smugly, wearing a purple sweater and handcuffs. The only word she uttered during the entire hearing was the answer to the question whether she would mind waiting for deportation while in custody: “No.”

You may be interested in: top New York news, stories of our immigrants and helpful tips about life in the Big Apple - read it all on ForumDaily New York

By the end of the year, when Azzopardi's two months of imprisonment had expired, history repeated itself: accompanied by police, she was put on a plane to Australia.

July 2018. Brisbane, Australia. "Casting manager" and "basketball player's wife"

Spouses Tom and Jez Jervis are relatively well-known personalities in Australia. Tom is a former professional basketball player, Jez is a motivational speaker with a lawyer's background. The couple has a little daughter, Clementine. Three years ago in the summer they just needed a nurse for her.

Jervis was found on the specialized Au Pair Australia website - the profile of 17-year-old Harper Gernandez from Melbourne. We talked to her on Facetime. Harper was quite pleasant to talk to. Nothing suspicious caught my eye.

Over the next months, the girl will become almost part of the Jervis family. She told them that her father was a pilot and her mother was a lawyer in San Francisco. And she herself studied in Dubai.

“I treated her like my daughter,” Jez recalled.

The only thing that seemed strange to her was that Harper was categorically against the photo. The family has only one photograph with the girl: an incredulous look, a strained smile.

Almost a year passed, and Jervis had even more reasons to wonder who they trusted Clementine.

In May 2019, Jez reported that her daughter was seen with a girl who called herself Marley. She stated that she is Tom's wife and works as a casting agent.

Moreover, "Marley" has been dating a 12-year-old girl once a week for several months, as it turns out later, and she has been promised a career at the Pixar studio. But for this, the girl had to undergo training in her acting skills.

“Marley” asked her to go to the central hospital of the city, identify herself as Dasha and ask for help; tell the woman in the store that her mother is dead and she has been adopted; tell the social workers that her name is Emily and she sees ghosts.

But all this will come later. Now the Jervis spouses asked Harper bluntly why she calls herself Tom's wife. And she came up with such a convoluted lie that they even believed her, Jez later recalled.

In June 2019, Jervis told Harper that they no longer needed her services. They put the girl on a plane to Perth, where she was going to supposedly see her grandparents.

Harper, like Marley, never existed. Nor were my grandparents in Perth.

May 2021. Melbourne, Australia. Court and verdict

At the trial of Azzopardi, a number of even more incredible stories of her reincarnations and deceptions became known.

In 2014, Samantha pretended to be Annika Dekker, a distant relative of the Swedish royal family who was kidnapped as a child and taken to Sydney. 18-year-old American traveler Emily Bamberger, who was in Australia at that time, believed this.

And how could you not believe when one day she received a message in the mail from an address that ended at interpol.com and where she and Dekker were accused of forging documents? Emily decided to stay with her new girlfriend until the end.

The story unfolded like a real spy detective. The girls lived in a house without the Internet for more than a week. Then, when Emily ran out of her visa, she returned home to the United States. “Annika” continued to write to her that they were being watched and that they were in danger.

It all ended when Emily arrived in the Canadian city of Calgary and met with "Annika". She noticed how someone tried to speak to her in Swedish, and she did not understand a word. Emily went home and never saw the girl again.

And that is not all.

On the subject: Doctor, teacher, clown: how cruel maniacs pretended to be ordinary people for years

In the already mentioned Perth, Azzopardi told one of the families where she lived for some time that she was a Russian gymnast whose family was killed in France. In Sydney, she was somehow able to convince social workers that she was a victim of sexual harassment, and she was even assigned to school and placed with a foster family.

The story, which was the latest in a series of fictions by Azzopardi, took place in 2019 in Geelong, Victoria. There she again worked as a nurse in a French family, calling herself 18-year-old Saki.

Once "Saki" took the children on a picnic, which turned into a trip to the city 200 kilometers away, she pretended to be a pregnant teenager and persuaded a stranger to call the social service by calling her father.

Ultimately, a police detective detained a suspicious girl with children in one of the shops. She was arrested in November 2019. Again.

The accusations against her increased and increased. In addition to the kidnapping of the French couple's two children, Azzopardi also recalled "activities" with a 12-year-old girl when she worked for the Jervis family. The couple said that the 32-year-old fraudster illegally received money as their daughter's caregiver - because, as it turned out, she had been lying to them all this time.

Azzopardi pleaded guilty to all charges.

The psychiatrist who worked with her found that the girl suffered from a rare psychological disorder - mythomania, or pathological lying. In other words, Samantha simply cannot help but lie. The expert suspects that Samantha was subjected to sexual and psychological abuse as a child.

"You are a traumatized young woman," said Judge Gianna Metcalf, who heard Azzopardi's case.

Psychiatrist Azzopardi suggested that she be sent for treatment (if she herself agreed to it). But the prison where the girl is sitting refused to issue directions.

At the time of sentencing, the girl spent 574 days in custody. This means she will be released from prison in less than six months. And perhaps even earlier - if he files an appeal.

That is, we can hear more than one story about dozens of personalities who are hiding in Samantha Azzopardi.

Read also on ForumDaily:

'Mother-in-law from Hell': an American made rules for her son's girl and angered the Network

A needle in a haystack: how the Internet helped find a California maniac who has been hiding for 40 years

Doctor, teacher, clown: how cruel maniacs pretended to be ordinary people for years

In the United States, a white professor has been posing as an African American for years

Do you want more important and interesting news about life in the USA and immigration to America? — support us donate! Also subscribe to our page Facebook. Select the “Priority in display” option and read us first. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our РєР ° РЅР ° Р »РІ Telegram  and Instagram- there is a lot of interesting things there. And join thousands of readers ForumDaily New York — there you will find a lot of interesting and positive information about life in the metropolis.