Fake nanny Samantha Azzopardi abandons sentence appeal
A shock twist has developed in the case of a ‘disturbed young woman’ who pretended to be a 14-year-old schoolgirl despite being in her 30s.
A serial liar who posed as a nanny, sex trafficking victim and a talent scout has abandoned her appeal at the 11th hour.
Samantha Azzopardi was jailed for two years in May this year after pleading guilty to a string of offences including child stealing, theft and obtaining property by deception.
However she was immediately eligible for parole at the time of her sentence because she spent more than 570 days behind bars.
The 33-year-old was due to appeal her sentence in the County Court of Victoria on Monday but in a shock twist her lawyer announced it would not be going ahead.
“We don’t wish to proceed,” defence barrister Jessica Willard told the court.
The appeal was abandoned and Ms Willard said her client consented.
Azzopardi did not appear during the brief hearing.
Her latest crime spree ended when she walked into a mental health clinic in the regional Victorian city of Bendigo dressed as a schoolgirl with two young children in tow in November 2019.
Azzopardi claimed to the mental health worker she was a pregnant 14-year-old girl who had been abused by her uncle.
A worker recognised the notorious fraudster and called police. She was arrested in the cosmetics section of a Myer department store with a 10-month old and a four-year-old child.
She conned the children’s French parents into thinking she was a professional au pair and told them she was taking them for a picnic.
When she was arrested she refused to give her details or the children’s names to officers, gave cryptic responses and locked her phone to prevent access.
“You are a disturbed young woman,” magistrate Johanna Metcalf said when handing down her sentence in May.
It was the latest in a bizarre pattern of crimes where the con-artist moved locations, created identities which often had traumatic backstories.
Azzopardi first came to international attention in October 2013 when Irish police released a photo of a mysterious young woman found wandering the streets of Dublin. She was dubbed “GPO girl” in the press and it was feared she was a sex trafficking victim.