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A Bendigo family thought Samantha was a qualified au pair. She was actually an international conwoman.

 

A serial international conwoman is at it again, this time charged with two counts of child stealing in the Victorian town of Bendigo.

Samantha Azzopardi was arrested by investigators on Friday, The Age reports, with a 10-month-old baby and a four-year-old girl in a local mall. The kids were returned to their parents unharmed.

It’s not the first time the 31-year-old has allegedly been involved in fraud, as Mamamia found out in July, she’s amassed more than 40 aliases.

Tom and Jazze Jervis hired “17-year-old Harper” as their au pair in July 2018 and found out a year later that she’d actually just been released from prison, and was in fact 14 years older than she said she was.

Here’s the Bevege family confronting ‘Coco’ after finding Jazze’s name at the front desk. Post continues after video.

Video by Supplied

Initially she’d blended smoothly into their family, moving into their Melbourne home to help care for two-year-old Clementine.

“I treated her like my daughter. She was a part of the family,” Jazze told Mamamia at the time.

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The only thing that stood out as odd was that the teenager didn’t want to be in any photos – in fact she’d avoid them at all costs.

In June, the Jervises told Harper they no longer needed her services after a series of strange events that just didn’t sit right with the family. It was only after she left that they found out the true depth of her lies.

She’d pretended to be married to Tom to get free stuff (he’s a well-known professional basketball player), and had also been posing as a fake casting agent while working for the Jervises.

Jazze jervis
Tom, Jazze and Clementine Jervis. Image: Supplied.
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It's hard to pinpoint just how many people Azzopardi has lied to over the years.

She first came to the attention of authorities in Rockhampton in 2007, when she falsely represented herself as 'Lindsay-Lana Johnbenet Coughlan', and then again in Brisbane in 2010, when she posed as 14-year-old student Dakota Johnson at a local high school.

She was convicted of forging documents and false representation but was at it again by 2011, telling a Perth family she was a troubled gymnast from Russia whose name was 'Emily'.

News.com.au reports she told them she was 16 and her entire family had died by murder-suicide.

In 2013, she sought a fresh start in Dublin, Ireland, telling police there she had been sexually assaulted by a number of men, and was a 14-year-old sex-trafficking victim from eastern Europe.

The case consumed more than 2000 hours of police work, and when her story was discovered to be a lie, she was kicked out of the country.

In 2014, she made her way to Calgary, Canada, where she was known as 'Aurora Hepburn' and claimed to be a 14-year-old victim of an abduction, sexual assault and torture.

Police there too, after spending thousands of dollars and hours of time on her case, found it to be a ruse.

In 2017, she posed as a 13-year-old schoolgirl called Harper Hart and tricked a Sydney school into allowing her to attend classes. She went to prison for a year for that deception, pleading guilty to four charges of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception, where she gained education, food and accommodation.

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She was released in June 2018, which is when she found the Jervis family. This time her name was only slightly different, she told them she was 'Harper Hernandez'.

SAMANTHA AZZOPARDI FILE
This is a photo supplied by the National Police Service of Ireland who were investigating Samantha for crimes in their country. Image: AAP.

While working for the family she'd been running another con as a casting agent, flying an unsuspecting Sydney family to Melbourne on the promise of modelling work for their 13-year-old.

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In a bizarre series of events, the Bevege family claims 'Coco' had their daughter physically clean international currency and rehearse strange roles that included playing a girl whose sister had died.

It was only when they were checking something at their accommodation's front desk that they realised their rooms had been booked under the name "Jazze Jervis".

 

"I had given her a bank card for emergencies, for picking up groceries, running errands that kind of thing. There was only 50 dollars or so on it at a time, but it had my name on it," Jazze told Mamamia.

When Jazze started posting about Azzopardi's deception of her family on her social media, a woman around the corner from her Brighton East home got in contact to reveal she also nearly hired "Harper" as had several others in neighbouring suburbs.

"Another person in Melbourne responded to a Gumtree ad for a voiceover in a Pixar film. She was flown to Sydney," Jazze said of another dupe she'd been made aware of.

In the Bendigo case, which Azzopardi is currently facing charges for, she once again forged documents to be employed as an au pair, and has also been charged with handling stolen goods after allegedly being found with Jazze Jervis' passport and driver's licence.

She is appearing in Bendigo Magistrates Court this morning.