When a young girl was found distraught and non-communicative in the streets of Dublin in 2013, it kicked off one of Ireland’s biggest mysteries. After the Dublin police had exhausted all of their options, they got permission to release a photo of the girl to the media in hopes of finding out her true identity. When Garda eventually did, they discovered she wasn’t a 14-year-old as initially expected. She was 25-year-old Australian con woman, Samantha Azzopardi.

As Samantha’s story went global, others began to contact Dublin authorities with tales of how she’d deceived them as well. Irish authorities grappled with how to process Samantha. Technically, she hadn’t committed any crime, or filed any false claims …but she’d wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars in Government money and countless hours of time. 

How would authorities decide what to do with Samantha? And what exactly were her goals in pretending to be a distraught teenage girl in a country 29 hours away from her home in Australia? And what other false identities had she been living under for the past ten years?

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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