International conwoman pleads guilty to ‘making up’ sexual assault

The troubled mind of a 32-year-old conwoman has been revealed in court following her latest elaborate deception.

A serial conwoman with a severe personality disorder has admitted lying about being a sexually abused cult member after being released from prison for child stealing.

Samantha Azzopardi, 32, was described in court as having “an uncontrollable desire to make fictitious reports” after she contacted a youth worker and pretended to be a 15-year-old forced by her parents to live with a sexually abusive 24-year-old man.

Azzopardi, who has over 40 aliases both domestically and internationally, told a similar story to a paediatrician at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital about 10 days later.

Both the youth worker and the doctor were required by law to report the incidents to Child Protection and the matters were referred to police for investigation.

It is just the latest story of deception carried out by Azzopardi, including claims of sex trafficking in Dublin and Calgary, which resulted in a $400,000 police investigation.

Image from Dublin police show Samantha Azzopardi.

She has been charged 99 times domestically for mainly fraud and deception, and was released from a Victorian prison in May 2021 for fraud and child stealing offences.

The court heard Azzopardi suffered from a rare psychological disorder called pseudologia fantastica.

The disorder developed during her traumatic early childhood and manifests as pathological lying, her lawyer told the court.

But the court heard that for the first time Azzopardi, who was charged by police as Emily Bamberger, finally saw the error of her ways and wanted to seek treatment.

“She said, ‘Finally I want to get help, finally I’ve realised I’m desperately ill,” her lawyer Carolyn Shiels told the court.

“Either we help this client or we lock her up and throw away the key.

“Her whole life is one of dishonesty and fantasy.”

Despite police opposing bail, Magistrate Janet Wahlquist agreed Azzopardi needed treatment and granted her strict conditional bail, which included mental health appointments.

“Unless she does start receiving treatment she will be released from custody and similar offences are likely to occur,” Magistrate Wahlquist said.

The elaborate story Azzopardi fashioned in November this year involved a cult called the “Institute of Basic Life Principals” and the alias “Eleanor Harris”, according to court documents.

She contacted a youth worker at Marrickville’s Youth off the Streets and claimed her parents sent her from Brisbane to Sydney to live with a man named Aaron, who was holding her captive and raping her.

Azzopardi told the youth worker she had been sleeping rough in Hyde Park to escape Aaron but had returned home because of the weather.

The youth worker contacted police, who tried to organise a meet-up with Azzopardi a few days later, but she pulled out at the last minute.

Samantha Azzopardi suffers from a rare psychological disorder called pseudologia fantastica.

About a week later, Azzopardi attended the emergency department at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, where she told staff her date of birth was in November 2006.

She told a paediatrician she had been sexually assaulted by Aaron, and that her parents sent her to live with him so that she could become impregnated.

She added that Aaron had injected her with a fertility drug against her wishes, according to facts tendered to the court.

But Azzopardi left before a proper consultation with the doctor.

Later that day she met up with the youth worker again, who noticed a bruise below her eye.

Azzopardi said Aaron had hit her after she told him she was thinking of going to the police station.

This incident was again reported to police.

After further investigations, authorities soon pieced together that Eleanor Harris was in fact Samantha Azzopardi who lived in Douglas Park, not Rushcutters Bay as she had previously suggested.

Court documents state when police spoke with Azzopardi a short time later, the bruise was gone and “investigators believed the bruise initially observed by Woods was makeup applied to look like a bruise”.

When Azzopardi tried to call the youth worker again on December 1, detectives arrested her.

Azzopardi pleaded guilty to two counts of falsely represent to police an act or event calling for investigation.

She was granted bail while awaiting sentence and will return to court in February next year.

Azzopardi is expected to make an application for the charges to be dealt with under the mental health act, which allows persons with mental health issues to avoid a criminal record on the condition they undergo treatment.