Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - She's Pretending to be 14 - The Samantha Azzopardi Story

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

Samantha Azzopardi is an Australian serial con artist whose crimes span more than a decade and multiple countries, built almost entirely on elaborate false identities.

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After three months, plan auto renews and 1299 a month, terms apply. So this woman keeps getting arrested because she keeps pretending to be a teenager. So the woman's name is Samantha and Samantha's about 22 years old when this story starts, living in Australia, and Samantha, she's an odd person. More than anything else in the world she loves to lie. I mean she's always bullshitting people like she'll lie and tell people she meets that she's the actress Dakota Johnson or that she's Lindsay Lohan and I guess people believe her, I don't know. But one day in 2010, she decides to tell her biggest lie yet.

She pretends to be a 14-year-old girl, and she tries to enroll in two different high schools. And pretty quickly, she's caught and she has to pay a fine for trying to use fraudulent documents. But that doesn't bother Samantha. Her plan to pretend to be a teen nearly worked. So she tries again. About a year later, she goes to Perth, and she befriends a local family, and she tells her, them that she's a Russian gymnast and an orphan whose family had been killed and she almost talks this poor family into adopting her. So she does this stuff a lot. And by 2013, her lies get

even bolder. That year, she flees Australia and goes all the way to Dublin, Ireland. And there, she goes to the Dublin General Post Office and she starts hanging out outside the building. And people come across her and she's acting all distressed and she refuses to speak to anyone. So of course, someone calls the police and police take her to the hospital. But Samantha still isn't saying a word, like she's pretending she doesn't speak English. However, she does use hand signals to indicate that she's 14 years old. So police and staff assume that she was a victim of trafficking. So she stays in the hospital while police try and figure out who she is.

and where she's from. And weeks go by. And Samantha, she's still chilling in that hospital. She hasn't said a word to anyone. But then police communicate with Interpol. And Interpol figures out exactly who she is. Not a 14-year-old girl, but a 24-year-old woman from Australia. But now, the Dublin police, they kind of don't know what to do.

Because while she has wasted a tremendous amount of their time, she never actually told them that she was a teenager or that she needed help. They kind of just assumed that because of her general state of distress. So she didn't technically make a false police report. She did, however, lie about her age, but lying about your age isn't exactly a crime. So they don't know what to do with her. So eventually they just say, fuck it, and they put her on a plane and they send her ass back to Australia. And there she continues to bullshit people.

But then, in 2014, she leaves Australia again and she travels all the way over to Calgary in Canada. And there, she goes to a local health care center and she tells the staff that she is 14 years old and that she had been kidnapped and that she was the victim of S.A. And of course, the staff believes her because they have no reason not to. So they alert the police and police start investigating this extensively. while Samantha, I guess, just gets to live in the healthcare center for free. And weeks go by. And Calgary police take Samantha's fingerprints and they submit them into an international database. And boom, they get a match.

A match in Dublin, Ireland. So then the Irish police let them know that the person they have in their custody is not a 14-year-old girl, but rather a 26-year-old woman, a con artist. And so Calgary police charge her with public mischief and bam. She spends two months in jail before they deport her back to Australia. But Samantha, she's not going to let a little jail time stop her. No, no, no. She loves lying to people way too much.

So in 2016, she goes to Sydney and she pretends to be a 13-year-old girl wandering the streets. And a nice couple finds her and she tells them some nonsense story that the U.S. government has her under the witness protection program and that she's a victim of trafficking and essay. And this couple believes her and takes her in as a foster child and they enroll her in a local secondary school. So Samantha, this 28-year-old woman, is going to secondary school somehow

pretending to be 13 years old. And she's also like pretending to be illiterate. So the school staff spends tons of extra time with her trying to teach her to read when she can totally fully read. I'm not even sure what she's getting out of all this at this point. Anyway, she keeps this scam going for a few months until 2017, when she has to go and see a doctor about something, and later that doctor calls the school and he's like, I just gave this girl a medical exam and she is not 13 years old. And so the school calls the police and bam, Samantha gets arrested.

and she pleads guilty and she's sentenced to 12 months in prison. Later she gets out and in 2019 she is 31 years old now. And after lying and conning a few more people for various reasons, she eventually makes a profile on a website looking for work as an Alpair, which is like a nanny who lives with you. But this profile doesn't say that she's 31, it says that she's 18. So she's now pretending to be an 18. 18 year old girl. I guess she got too old to play a 14 year old. But through that site, she meets

a wealthy French couple who had recently moved to Brisbane. And so they are super impressed by her fake resume and they end up hiring her as an alpair and she has to relocate to Melbourne and essentially move in with them to help them take care of their two young kids. And this goes fine for about a month. But then she does something really weird. One day, she has a lot. One day, she asks the couple if she can take the kids out for a picnic at a nearby park. And the parents are like, sure. But instead of taking the kids to the park, she actually drives them two hours away to a completely different city.

And there she goes to a local mental health facility dressed in a school uniform. And she tells them that she is 14 years old and pregnant and that she had been essayed by her uncle. And I don't know why she had to bring the French couple's kids with her to pull this con, but whatever she did. Regardless, she lies to these people. However, immediately, one of the staff recognizes her, because by this point, she's a well-known con woman, and she had been all over the news.

And so Samantha's like, oh shit, they're on to me! And she leaves. Well, then the staff calls police, and police show up, and they catch her walking down the street, and bam, they arrest her. And she tries to lie to them about who she is, but once they get her fingerprints, they know that she is actually Samantha, the well-known con woman. And so Samantha pleads guilty to theft and child stealing and she gets sentenced to two years in prison. And in 2021, she gets out again, but later that same year, she's pretending to be a 14-year-old French girl and bam, she gets

arrested another time. Then in 2023, she's around 36 years old now. She goes out scamming again. This time she goes to two specialist family violence charities, and she pretends to be a pregnant Belgian 17-year-old who is a victim of trafficking. And after scamming them out of food and shelter and medical services, they finally realize who she is, and so bam, she gets arrested again. And I couldn't find a mugshot, but here's a picture of her in real life. And ultimately, she pleads guilty and she gets sentenced to two years in prison. And by the way, this is only like a fraction of the times that she has conned people.

I couldn't even name them all. Like she's had over a hundred criminal charges against her over the years for her various lies and cons. This woman is busy.