The nation was gripped by the story of the blonde ‘mystery GPO girl’, but according to reports, the woman is actually a 25-year-old Aussie con artist.
At first we were told she was a young teenager from Eastern Europe who may have been brought to Ireland as a sex slave, but after a long search to uncover her true identity we now know that the ‘mystery GPO girl’ - as she had been dubbed by the media - is a 25-year-old Australian citizen named Samantha Azzopardi.
The search to uncover Azzopardi’s true identity reportedly took up over 2,000 hours of garda time and more than 100 separate lines of inquiry.
All that lost time has cost the Irish State €200,000 and now authorities will have to decided whether or not to charge Ms Azzopardi with wasting garda time, which, according to
Crime.ie, could potentially see her having to foot the bill.
According to
Paul Williams writing for the
Belfast Telegraph, a senior security source said: "She is an international woman of mystery, a scam artist, who we now believe is involved in some sort of bizarre ruse which may explain why she did not want her picture released by the gardaí.
"She has done this kind of thing before. This is a 'catch me if you can' scenario although it is accepted that she has psychiatric issues.”
The
Sydney Morning Herald reports that it's not the first time Ms Azzopardi has led officers astray, as she's
known to police down under.
Via Belfast Telegraph
