Fake schoolgirl Samantha Azzopardi jailed for two years for child stealing
The people who let a conwoman into their lives thinking she was a girl have told stories about the bizarre behaviour she exhibited.
The people who let a conwoman into their lives thinking she was a little girl in need of help have told creepy stories about the bizarre behaviour she exhibited.
These are Sydney woman Samantha Azzopardi’s victims — and they are sprawled across multiple continents and more than 11 years.
Many would have watched on from afar on Friday as the 32-year-old was jailed for two years in a Melbourne court for child stealing.
They would be equally interested in the fantasist’s time served — her 574 days behind bars means she could soon be free.
Azzopardi was jailed in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court for a string of fraud and child stealing charges including an incident in the regional Victorian city of Bendigo.
The November, 2019 incident saw the then-30-year-old dressed as a schoolgirl with a four-year-old child and 10-month-old baby.
She told staff at a mental health clinic she was 14 and that she was pregnant but a worker recognised her and called police.
She was arrested but refused to give officers the names of the children. They had been taken from a couple who hired her as an au pair not knowing her backstory.
Numerous others had fallen for her lies, including American woman Emily Bamberger.
Ms Bamberger met Azzopardi in 2014 as an 18-year-old on holiday in Australia. For months she was hoodwinked into believing far-fetched stories including that Azzopardi — who went by the name Annika Dekker back then — was royalty and had been kidnapped when she was a young girl.
The conwoman said her “keepers” were Interpol agents and that, for the majority of her childhood, she’d been moved around the world to stay off the radar.
On Friday, when reached for comment, Ms Bamberger said she still becomes “very empathetic and sad” when she hears about another family who has been conned the way she was.
‘I can’t believe how creepy that was’
Ms Bamberger’s most terrifying moments with Azzopardi involved a stint in hospital and a trip to a remote home where she was kept in what Azzopardi called a “safe house”.
“One night, she wakes me up complaining that her head hurts,” Ms Bamberger said of the pair’s time together having met a hostel.
“I called her an ambulance. When the ambulance arrives, she tells doctors she’s 14 and that I’m her sister. I didn’t know what to say so I went along with it.
“At the hospital, police arrived and started questioning me. They accused me of kidnapping her and I spent hours answering questions.
“They asked me if I thought I was in danger and I nodded yes but said no into the recorder. I spent two days in jail and they charged me with fraud over the fake ID. I was fined a lot of money.”
The pair didn’t cross paths again until Azzopardi fled from her hospital bed.
“[Azzopardi] escaped and met me with her catheter still in her f***ing arm. We boarded the plane back to Sydney the night she escaped.”
On another occasion she took Ms Bamberger to a house in southwest Sydney.
For eight days, she was kept in a cabin and not allowed to use the main house. There was no Wi-Fi, meaning she couldn’t let her family know where she was or if she was OK.
“I can’t believe how creepy that was looking back on it,” Ms Bamberger says. “Nobody knew where I was.”
Azzopardi known worldwide for her crimes
If you search the name Samantha Azzopardi on the internet, you get stories from publications around the world. Her antics are so bizarre that she even appeared in a book titled The Confidence Game, written by New York Times author Maria Konnikova.
From her first notable incident with police in Dublin where authorities spent £200,000 ($386,000) trying to identify her. Her story made international news.
In late 2014, she landed in Calgary telling a different story under a different name. She was Aurora Hepburn now, and she was trying to start a new life.
She was charged with public mischief and deported back to Australia after spending two months in custody.
Back in her home country she once again created a new life for herself.
Among the scams she was jailed on Friday were ones involving Basketball star Tom Jervis and his wife Jazze, who hired Azzopardi as an au pair in mid-2018 after seeing a listing in a Facebook post. Azzopardi used the alias Harper Hernandez and claimed to be a 17-year-old who was “somebody who came from a rich American family,” according to a court summary.
She worked for the couple in Brisbane and relocated with them to Melbourne six months later.
But by June 2019 Ms Jervis had become suspicious of Azzopardi and sacked her.
She was paid $6500 for the 26 weeks she worked for the couple in Melbourne and was later charged with obtaining property by deception in relation to the fraud.
When the fake nanny left the property her former employer discovered her driver’s license was missing and an iPad had been stolen.
At the same time Azzopardi claimed to be an au pair she also posed as a talent scout.
She met with a girl in February 2019 when they responded to an agency ad looking for people to be in a cartoon.
The conwoman told the girl she wasn’t right for the cartoon role but offered to “mentor” her for a show called Punk’d.
She told the girl there was an audition in Sydney and the pair flew to the city together in April.
The day after they arrived, Azzopardi took the child to Centrelink where she was told to speak to a specific woman and “write on a piece of paper that she was seeing ghosts”, court documents show.
The girl was on a call with Azzopardi at the time so she could monitor the interaction which she claimed was part of the audition.
The fake agent then put the 12-year-old girl on a train for a ten-hour journey back to Melbourne.
When the strange plot was uncovered after her arrest she was charged with another count of child stealing.
But Azzopardi went off the radar until she was found dressed in a school uniform in Bendigo months later.
‘She was a bit of an attention seeker’
One of Ms Azzopardi’s childhood friends, Juanita Levi, previously told news.com.au the young woman from Campbelltown was always stretching the truth.
Ms Levi said she told people in high school she was Lindsay Lohan. When the movie Freaky Friday came out, Azzopardi allegedly died her hair to match the Hollywood star.
“She was a really smart student, she always did her work and was conscientious. She had a small circle of friends (and) I guess she was a bit of an attention seeker. She would walk out of class sometimes and the teacher would have to go after her.”
In her book, Konnikova explores why people fall for elaborate lies.
“When we’re immersed in a story we let our guard down. We focus in a way we wouldn’t if someone were just trying to catch us with a random phrase or picture or interaction.”
She said the more powerful a story is, the more likely we are to accept it as truthful. She said the opportunity to offer help overrides any suspicion.
“Emotions on high, empathy engaged, we become primed to help. Azzopardi may have been lying, but that isn’t all she was doing. She was also giving people the opportunity to shine in the humanitarian light that they always suspected lay within them.”
— with Caroline Schelle