Serial fraudster Samantha Azzopardi has been at it again. Picture: Calgary Police Service
Serial fraudster Samantha Azzopardi has been at it again. Picture: Calgary Police Service
Now fraudster Samantha Azzopardi has admitted to posing as a 13-year-old girl to attend a Sydney school and have herself placed into foster care.
The 28-year-old this week pleaded guilty to four counts of dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage by deception to get an iPad, mobile phone and Opal cardsfrom a youth charity.
Azzopardi used the alias Aurora Hepburn at a health centre in Canada. Picture: Calgary Polic
In an extraordinary repeat of her past behaviour, Ms Azzopardi adopted a fictional identity, convincing bureaucrats at the Department of Families and Community Services that she was a schoolgirl called Harper Hart.
After repeating her previous claims of sexual abuse, she was placed into foster care and defrauded the Department of Families and Community Services through the financing of medication.
Based on her lies, charity service Good Shepherd Australia paid for the cost of an ambulance transfer to Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.
Prosecutors have now asked for a health report on Azzopardi before she is sentenced at Hornsby Local Court.
Azzopardi spun a web of lies that convinced authorities of her claims. Picture: Calgary Police
The serial con artist, originally from Campbelltown in Sydney's southwest, is known to have used more than 40 aliases, including Annika Dekker, Aurora Hepburn, Dakota Johnson, Lindsay Coughlin and Emily Peet.
She previously duped authorities in Ireland and Canada into thinking she was a child sex abuse victim held by human traffickers in 2013 and 2014.
When she turned up looking skinny and shaken outside a post office in Dublin, she wasn't speaking, instead drawing pictures for police illustrating how she had been abused by a group of men.
She was eventually deported but not before authorities spent a great deal of time and more than £200,000 ($386,000) trying to identify her.
News.com.au has previously revealed how during her travels, she drew fellow traveller Emily Bamberger into her web of deceit, resulting in the American teenager's deportation.
"I was terrified," Ms Bamberger said, detailing how Azzopardi had convinced her that she was royalty and had been kidnapped when she was a young girl, only to be moved around the world by "keepers" from Interpol tasked with keeping her "off the radar".
"It's the strangest thing that's ever happened to me," Ms Bamberger told news.com.au last year. "She knew my family, my addresses ... I've never felt so scared."
Back in Sydney, Azzopardi recycled her previous sexual abuse claims and even accessed counselling services from the Victims of Crime Assistance League.
But things started to unravel when the Department of Families and Community Services became suspicious and alerted police.
Azzopardi did not apply for bail at Thursday's court appearance and is scheduled to reappear in via video link on June 28.
Azzopardi first made headlines in 2013 after she was found wandering the streets of Dublin and duped authorities there into thinking she was a teenage sex-trafficking victim from eastern Europe.
She was deported to Australia but in September 2014, using the alias Aurora Hepburn, Azzopardi walked into a clinic in Canada claiming she was 14 and had been a victim of an abduction, sexual assault and torture.
