By Luke Costin
Serial con artist and compulsive liar Samantha Azzopardi will spend at least six weeks in prison after admitting she pretended to be an abused French teenager living in Sydney, prompting a multi-agency nine-hour search.
The 33-year-old was arrested on Monday after a case worker recognised elements of a previous Azzopardi con in the story the offender had given to police and a religious charity, Jewish House.
Serial con artist Samantha Azzopardi has admitting she pretended to be an abused French teenager living in Sydney, prompting a multi-agency nine-hour search.
She declined to appear in Waverley Local Court on Friday and pleaded guilty through a lawyer to making a false representation resulting in a police investigation.
A mental health assessment was ordered ahead of her sentencing on October 12.
Jewish House first alerted police on Monday about a child welfare concern.
When officers arrived at a Woollahra property, Azzopardi tried to escape before saying she was Enslie Cohen, aged 14, who had fled abuse in France and recently moved in with an Australian foster family.
She led police on a five-hour wild goose chase around the eastern suburbs to find her fictitious foster family’s home, repeatedly claiming through limited English to be lost and unaware of her surroundings.
A French-speaking police officer attempted to engage with her but she wouldn’t speak back.
Her ruse ended when an officer from the NSW Department of Communities and Justice responded to the police’s serious harm risk report and recognised similarities to a recent Azzopardi con.
Fingerprinting eventually confirmed the 33-year-old’s identity.
Still, she tried to pull the wool over the eyes of a custody manager, signing paperwork as Emily Ramberger.
Azzopardi also declined to allow her mug shot to be taken.
Her prior frauds include duping Irish and Canadian police into believing she was a human trafficking victim, acting as a qualified nanny to a Victorian couple and claiming in a Bendigo mental health clinic she was a pregnant and abused 14-year-old.
She was released by Victorian authorities in May 2021 for fraud and child stealing, only to spark another false investigation in late 2021 in NSW while posing as a 14-year-old.
Waverley police say she has been charged 100 times in Australia, mainly for fraud and deception-related offences.
“It is apparent that the accused is a compulsive liar and suffers from several mental health issues which no doubt is a catalyst for her offending,” a police statement says.
Monday’s search resulted not only in significant financial cost, but demanded the resources of several agencies that could have been meaningfully used to assist people in actual need of assistance, the facts state.
“[Azzopardi] had every ample opportunity to inform police of her real identity, in which case such an extensive investigation would not have ensued,” it said.
She suffers from a severe personality disorder and pseudologia fantastica, which manifests itself in compulsive and pathological lying, court documents say.
She also suffers from schizophrenia, the court was told on Friday.
AAP
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