Samantha Azzopardi: Global conwoman abandons fraud appeal after judge’s warning

A notorious conwoman, once the subject of a documentary, has abandoned plans to appeal her latest fraud conviction after a judge delivered a simple warning.

An Australian conwoman, once the subject of a documentary, has abandoned plans to appeal her latest fraud sentence after a judge warned she was facing more jail time.

Samantha Azzopardi, 36, appeared via video link in the Melbourne County Court on Tuesday for her appeal against a two-year jail sentence handed down last October.

Wearing a deep blue matching jumper and track pants, Azzopardi sported a face mask and had her blonde hair up in a tight bun.

About 45 minutes into the hearing she got up and exited the field of view, prompting Judge Fran Dalziel to question if the hearing should be stopped. “Your client has just walked out, she has a right to be here, it’s her appeal,” she said.

“Should I give her a chance to compose herself and come back?”

Samantha Azzopardi has been convicted of fraud offences in Australia and Canada. Picture: Facebook

A guard at the prison was called on to provide an answer, responding that Azzopardi was still present, she had just moved her chair into the doorway and out of the camera’s view.

“There’s not a lot of airflow in here,” he said.

“She’s still participating.”

The court was told Azzopardi was appealing a two-year jail sentence for defrauding two specialist family violence care providers in mid-2023 while pretending to be a 17-year-old sex-trafficked Belgium girl named Hattie Leigh.

She had roped a Danish backpacker she met interstate to play the role of her sister by manipulating her into believing police were hunting her over something that occured in Coffs Harbour.
Ustilisign a series of aliases, Azzopardi also convinced the backpacker she was being paid by a low budget film company to create video diaries of her travel.

Believing Azzopardi was pregnant, abused and at extreme risk, she received more than $20,000 worth of accommodation, specialist care, clothing, medical costs and vouchers through the family violence charities.

One organisation later told police she presented as developmentally younger than 17 years of age and had been seen playing with toys in communal space “in a childlike manner”.

Azzopardi will be released from prison in October. Picture: NewsWire / Dylan Coker

She was arrested in October 2023, and later pleaded guilty to charges including obtaining financial advantage by deception and operating a bank account under a false name.

In victim impact statements, representatives of the two organisations, which cannot be named, described the impact of her “abhorrent manipulation” on both the staff and other real victim-survivors of family violence forced to wait in hotels or with their abusers for space.

“The stress of all this left me at one-point deflated, needing to take a break just to comprehend everything and try and understand why someone would want to make up such a horrific story to exploit my compassion,” one woman questioned.

“It goes without saying, that family violence is at epidemic levels and there is simply is not adequate funding and resources to keep victim-survivors safe,” another said.
“Ms Azzopardi has deceptively accessed resources and accommodation from our service for over a month, having manipulated an entire system into believing she was a child victim of family violence and sex trafficking.

“We should all feel extremely frustrated and angry at the colossal waste of taxpayer resources that has been poured into Ms Azzopardi’s sick hoax.”

The court was told Azzopardi had a “strikingly similar” criminal history across Victoria, NSW, Western Australia and Canada.

She was once found in Dublin, Ireland and believed to be a 14 year-old sex trafficking victim who could not speak English but was not charged with any wrongdoing. Picture: Calgary Police Service

Azzopardi’s lawyer Patrick Hurst asked the court to revisit her two-year sentence, suggesting that after 490 days behind bars the “punitive aspect” of her sentence had been satisfied and the court should instead release her on a community corrections order to receive support in the community.

He said psychological reports demonstrated Azzopardi had a “tragic history” of trauma and dysfunction dating back to her childhood, alongside multiple diagnoses.

These included borderline personality disorder, a mild intellectual disorder, severe post-traumatic stress disorder and pseudologia fantastica – a condition characterised by compulsive lying and an inability to understand the wrongness of her actions.

“She attempts to gain attention, charity, sympathy from the sort of people who, in my submission, were not present in her childhood and desperately needed at the time,” he said.
“She’s not a cunning mastermind.”

Azzopardi was the subject of the Conwoman documentary released in 2023. Picture: Supplied.

But Judge Dalziel resisted his argument, noting that Azzopardi had spent years creating false aliases and manipulating people, with the conwoman telling vastly different stories about her past to different medical practitioners.

“I take issue with that, she’s extremely cunning. I take everything your client says as potentially false. I do not accept she has properly been assessed,” she said.

After a 15-minute break, Judge Dalziel came back on the bench to issue a warning.

“Mr Hurst, are you aware that the Criminal Procedure Act requires me to give your client a warning effectively as soon as it becomes apparent a more severe sentence may be passed if the appeal proceeds,” she said.

After a short break to speak with Ms Azzopardi, Mr Hurst returned to say he’d been instructed to “abandon the appeal at this stage”.

The appeal was discontinued.

Azzopardi was eligible for parole in August last year and her sentence will expire in October.

Originally published as Samantha Azzopardi: Global conwoman abandons fraud appeal after judge’s warning