In October 2013, two police officers in Dublin, Ireland came across a disheveled, emaciated and distressed teenage girl wandering around by herself outside the General Post Office. She was unable to speak, using only primitive sign language to show her age. From what the officers could translate, the girl indicated that she was 14-years-old. 

Child welfare authorities took her to a nearby children’s hospital while trying to figure out who she was. As The Garda looked into uncovering the young girl’s identity, local media began speculating about possible sex trafficking as the country-wide interest in her case grew. 

Who was this young girl? Where was her family? What was her name? When Irish authorities uncovered the truth, it turned out the young girl was not a young girl after all. She was a 25-year-old Australian con woman named Samantha Azzopardi, and this incident was not the first (or the last) time she’d convinced people to shower her with care and attention by assuming a false identity. In fact, Samantha had been doing this for most of her adult life. As interest in this case grew, so did the stories of the dozens of people she’d de-frauded across three continents. To this day, Samantha’s motive for doing all of this isn’t exactly clear.

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Follow host, Jami Rice, on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube @JamiOnAir to keep up with this story and other true crime cases she’s deep-diving into and providing commentary on.

Check out Jami’s other true crime podcasts, MURDERISH and Lipstick & Lies, which are available in all podcast apps.

Dirty Money Moves is a collaboration between MURDERISH and Cloud10 Media.

Executive Producers are: Jami Rice and Sim Sarna

Research and writing by: Zach Selwyn

If you enjoy Dirty Money Moves, please do us a favor and give the podcast a 5-star rating and review in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any podcast player.

Sources are available at MURDERISH.com

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