A anxious woman who created bizarre and false identities as a nanny, a talent scout and a pregnant and abused teen is a pathological liar at high threat of re-offending.
Samantha Azzopardi, who created false backstories for herself around the field, was sentenced on Friday to 2 years in reformatory in Victoria over her latest innovations.
The 32-year-customary’s criminal history of deception dates back extra than a decade and involves high-profile international scams.
Her latest sentence comes after she admitted charges of baby stealing, having pretended to be an skilled and extremely instantaneous au pair.
Based on false recommendations she was employed by Victorian couple Jazze and Tom Jervis, who mistakenly believed she was a qualified dwell-in nanny named Harper Hernandez.
Melbourne Magistrate Johanna Metcalf said Azzopardi’s deceptions had been prolonged and a depraved breach of belief.
A second elaborate talent scout ruse eager Azzopardi, using the name Marley, cultivating a relationship with a 12-year-customary woman who auditioned for a function advertised by an agency where Azzopardi claimed to work.
Azzopardi claimed to be mentoring the woman for an upcoming tv explain and took the woman – with her mother’s falsely obtained permission – to Sydney to audition.
She told the woman to enter a Centrelink place of business and advise a woman a bizarre tale about a ghost. Azzopardi then sent the woman dwelling alone on a train.
“The deceptions in this case had been a depraved breach of belief toward the baby, a 12-year-customary woman who believed you had been serving to to realise her acting ambitions,” Ms Metcalf said.
She tried her au pair ruse again later on a newly arrived family in Australia and after in quest of permission to take the couple’s two young teenagers on a picnic to the You Yangs, instead went with them to Bendigo.
Whereas there she went to Headspace, a youth mental health organisation, claiming to be a 14-year-customary pregnant schoolgirl who had been abused by her uncle.
That deception went on for months with police launching a prolonged and laborious investigation.
It was police in Bendigo who arrested Azzopardi, after she caught the attention of social media.
She refused to answer to her real name and wouldn’t advise officers who the young teenagers had been. She eventually gave officers ample clues to reunite the teenagers with their parents.
Azzopardi has a long history of dishonesty offences.
In 2013, she showed up in central Dublin claiming to be a teenage sex trafficking sufferer from Eastern Europe. It tag the Irish authorities a complete bunch of thousands of dollars earlier than her loyal id was uncovered.
After being deported she emerged in Canada, where she said she was a sufferer of sexual assault and torture.
In Australia, she convinced a Perth family she was a Russian gymnast named Emily whose complete family had been killed in a slay-suicide in France.
She’s been caught in Sydney too, passing herself off as a schoolgirl extra than half her age.
Azzopardi has criminal convictions for dishonesty offences in Queensland, Western Australia and NSW, as neatly as for Commonwealth offences.
Experts told the court Azzopardi had skilled a extremely traumatic upbringing including emotional neglect and physical abuse.
Psychiatrist Jacqueline Rakov assessed Azzopardi this year and came upon she had a extreme personality disorder and pseudologia fantastica – a “rare nevertheless dramatic” psychiatric disorder bright an “shameful assemble of lying”.
Dr Rakov came upon Azzopardi was at high threat of reoffending if left to her have devices, nevertheless low threat if she willingly engaged in long-time frame and ongoing therapy.
Ms Metcalf said Azzopardi was clearly a anxious young woman and sentenced her to 2 years leisurely bars, nevertheless said she can be eligible for release on parole – on circumstances including that she obtain appropriate mental health treatment – after 12 months.
Azzopardi is immediately eligible for release having served 574 days in custody.
Earlier than Victoria’s lockdown she expressed plans to immediately travel to northern NSW.
