Serial scammer Samantha Azzopardi - out of custody in Victoria - has been arrested in Sydney after yet another instance of seeking support from a philanthropic or official body on the basis that she is a distraught victimised teenager rather than a 34 year old with a history of impersonation in Australia and overseas.
Azzopardi - who has used names such as Dakota Johnson, Emily Peet, Lindsay Coughlin, Georgia McAuliffe, Harper Hernandez, Samantha Azzapadari and Harper Hart - was last year sentenced in a Victorian court to time in prison, having faked qualifications for employment as a live-in nanny and then taking away two small children.
In previous incidents - some of which are noted here, here and here - she pretended to be a child or teenager who was a member of a Swedish royal family, a Russian gymnast whose family died in a murder-suicide, and a young victim of human trafficking.
During her time as a nanny in Victoria she dressed in school uniform, visited a nearby counselling service and presented herself as a pregnant teenager. When was arrested she refused to provide her identity information or the children’s names, gave cryptic responses and locked her phone to prevent access.
In 2013 she appeared in Dublin, appearing distressed and refusing to speak but indicating through hand signals that she was 14. A large-scale search followed, involving police, child welfare experts, missing persons services, Interpol, a forensic science laboratory, the immigration bureau, the domestic violence and sexual assault unit. The deception was ultimately detected and she was returned to Australia, escorted by police.
The incident attracted global media attention. US author Maria Konnikova wrote that the supposed victim of abuse
seemed dazed and distressed as she wandered down O’Connell Street, looking around timidly, a helpless-seeming terror in her eyes. … She was dressed in a purple hoodie under a gray wool sweater; tight, darkly colored jeans; and flat, black shoes. Her face was ashen. She was shivering. A passerby, stunned by her appearance, asked if she needed help. She looked at him mutely, as if not quite grasping the essence of the question. Somebody called the police. …
She was a teen-ager—fourteen or fifteen, at most. At five feet six, she weighed just more than eighty-eight pounds. Her long, blond hair covered a spiny, battered back. Once she did talk, some days later, it became clear that she had only the most rudimentary grasp of English—not enough to say who she was or why she’d appeared as she had. But the girl could draw. And what she drew made her new guardians catch their breaths. One stifled a gasp. One burst out crying. There she was, a small stick-like figure, being flown to Ireland on a plane. And there she was again, lying on a bed, surrounded by multiple men. She seemed to be a victim of human trafficking—one of the lucky ones who had somehow managed to escape.
Three weeks later, the girl still wasn’t talking—or, at least, nothing she said made much sense. The state was throwing everything it had at getting her help. Who was she? Where was she from? Into early November, the Irish authorities poured more than two thousand man- hours into a hundred and fifteen possible lines of inquiry. Door-to-door queries. Reviews of CCTV footage. Missing-persons lists. Visits to airports, seaports, rail stations. Guesthouse bookings. Did anyone fail to turn up, or fail to return? It was costing a pretty penny—two hundred and fifty thousand euros— but every cent was worth it if it brought them closer to helping a child regain her lost home and her fragile sanity.
A year later she appeared in Calgary, Canada, claiming she was a 14 year victim of abuse named Aurora Hepburn, who had escaped a kidnapper. After extensive investigation she was convicted on a mischief charge for misleading Calgary police. She was deported with a police escort on the flight to Australia.
It appears that she'd gone to Canada within six months of deportation from Ireland. In the interim she scammed people in Sydney and Perth with claims about her fictitious family, and later persuaded social services in NSW that she was a teen victim, enrolling in a school and being placed in a foster home.
In 2010, after she had attempted to use a fake Medicare card to procure services in Rockhampton she was charged with two counts of false representation, one count of intention to forge documents, and one count of contravening directions. She was convicted in Brisbane Magistrates Court, with a $500 fine. Later that year she was convicted on four counts of false representation over another fake identity, with a $500 fine. In 2012 she was sentenced to six months in prison for attempting to illegally collect social welfare benefits, suspended for a year. A few months later she reportedly pled guilty in Perth Magistrates Court to three counts of opening up accounts under a false name, one of inducing someone else to commit fraud, and one of intent to defraud by deceit. In 2017, after she used a fake California birth certificate, she was charged in NSW with "dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception, for the education, counselling, food, accommodation and electronics she was given while posing as Harper." She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year in prison. It is unclear how much time she spent in prison in Victoria before engaging in the alleged offences in Sydney this year.
Given the recurrent behaviour - imprisonment seems to have no effect on what has variously been characterised as a psychological problem or cold-blooded con by soomeone without psychiatric issues - she will presumably be appearing again in this blog in 2024 if not earlier.
