In 2013, she puzzled Garda Síochána when they found her at the GPO in Dublin.
An upcoming true crime series will investigate the story of Samantha Azzopardi, an Australian woman who was once known in Ireland as the GPO Girl.
Samantha Azzopardi made headlines in Ireland when she appeared at the GPO in Dublin one day, looking very distressed but refusing to speak. She was taken to hospital where authorities tried to determine her identity. She did manage to communicate to staff that she was 14-years-old.
The Garda Síochána worried that she may have been a victim of a crime, however after working in conjunction with Interpol and the Missing Person’s Bureau, they were unable to determine her identity. As a result, they decided to share a photo that had been taken of her without her knowledge, to the press.
After it was released, Gardaí received a tip from a contact in Australia who was able to tell authorities that Samantha was not a child at all, and in fact a woman in her 20s, who had lied about her identity in the past.
Azzopardi, an Australian woman, would go on to lie about her identity on multiple occasions in Canada and Australia. Now, her story is the basis of a new true crime TV series, Con Girl.
The show hones in on a number of Azzopardi’s fabrications, including an instance in which she enrolled in a Perth high school, claiming to be a 15-year-old Russian gymnast, when she was actually 23. Another arc explores a time when she pretended to be a model scout. During this period, she brought a teenager to Sydney and ended up using her and her family as part of another scam.
Con Girl is available to watch on Paramount+, but if you would like to learn more about the case from an Irish angle, check out RTÉ’s podcast, Girl at the GPO.
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