Case 323: The GPO Girl

*** Content warnings: Sexual assault, child abuse, child sexual abuse ***
On Thursday, October 10 2013, passersby noticed a distraught-looking teenage girl, crying and shivering outside of Dublin’s General Post Office building. When police officers approached the girl, she either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk. The mystery teenager – soon dubbed the GPO girl – was taken into care, and experts suspected that she was a victim of sex trafficking.
When attempts to identify the GPO girl failed, Irish investigators went public with the case, not realising they were just dealing with just the tip of the iceberg in a crime spree that spanned continents.
---
Narration – Anonymous HostResearch & writing – Erin MunroCreative direction – Milly RasoProduction & music – Mike MigasAudio editing – Anthony Telfer
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Episode Transcript

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(01:25):
of several witnesses in this episode have been changed. The
main thoroughfare of O'Connell Street in the heart of Dublin
was bustling with foot traffic on the afternoon of Thursday
October tenth, twenty thirteen. Even though it was a cold day,
Tourists were ambling along the wide footpaths, taking in the

(01:47):
city's sites and sounds, while office workers hurried by them.
Everything about the scene was entirely typical for the setting,
with one exception. A young girl who was all alone
appeared to be in a distressed state. She looked to
be a teenager and was dressed in dark jeans, a

(02:09):
purple hoodie with a gray woolen jumper over the top,
and flat black shoes. She stood at about five foot
six and had a slim build and long blonde hair,
as well as braces on her teeth. Most notably, she
was obviously shivering and seemed to be crying as she
gazed around with fearful, timid eyes. Her skin had a

(02:33):
washed out pallor. The girl wandered along O'Connell Street, coming
to a stop outside of the Central Post Office, an
imposing Greek Revival style building that is the principal post
office of Dublin. Built in eighteen fourteen, it features six
fluted ionic columns along the front and three ornamental statues

(02:56):
on top of its roof. Its striking appear pearance has
made the GPO building a landmark for dubliners and tourists alike.
The teenage girl stood between the building's columns, looking distraught.
Passers by were beginning to notice her, including two uniformed

(03:16):
officers of the Gada Shiakhana, Ireland's National Police, who were
patrolling the area. The officers approached the young girl and
asked her what was wrong. The girl either couldn't or
wouldn't reply. The officers asked if she needed help. Again,
she said nothing. Using hand gestures, she indicated that she

(03:42):
was experiencing pain in her abdomen. She also held up
her fingers to explain that she was fourteen years old.
The officers wondered if perhaps the girl was from overseas
and couldn't speak English. She didn't have any luggage on
her nor any identification. The officers decided that the best

(04:05):
thing to do was to take her into custody for
her own safety, as she was clearly vulnerable and distraught.
The girl was taken to the nearby Children's hospital on
Temple Street, just a short distance from their GPO building.
She was ushered into a cubicle in the emergency department
with the curtain pulled around for privacy. Physicians examined her,

(04:29):
while a detective arrived to speak to the girl as well.
She appeared to be in good health, aside from being
somewhat emaciated. What was more concerning was her behavior. Although
she was polite, she was clearly uncomfortable. She hid her
face behind the long strands of her blonde hair and

(04:51):
averted her gaze whenever anyone tried to make eye contact.
The girl also remained entirely nonverbal no matter who to her.
She was questioned for hours but never said a word.
Nurses who spoke languages other than English were brought in
to try talking with her, to no avail. Eventually, she

(05:15):
found a way to communicate. The girl began drawing pictures
on a piece of paper. They were rudimentary illustrations with
stick figures representing people. First, she drew herself on an aeroplane,
suggesting she had flown to Ireland. She also sketched an
image of a gun and another of a crucifix. When

(05:39):
she drew a bed with a girl on top of it,
surrounded by men standing all around her, one of the
nurses began to cry. Over the next few days, the

(06:13):
GPO Girl, as she came to be known, was moved
from her cubicle to a private room elsewhere in the hospital.
Whenever anyone attempted to touch her, she would physically recoil
from the contact. Doctors and the police alike suspected that
she had been sexually abused, perhaps even exploited. Certainly, her

(06:36):
drawings seemed to suggest she had been trafficked to Ireland
for sexual exploitation purposes. Her clothing was forensically examined for
signs of sexual assault, and although these tests returned to negative,
this did a little to allay concerns. While physicians did
their best not to exacerbate the girl's trauma, the story

(07:00):
of the mystery girl found in central Dublin made headlines
and the subject of human trafficking became a national talking point.
The GPO Girl's identity was a total mystery. She still
wasn't speaking, but she did appear to at least understand
some English. It was speculated that she may have been

(07:23):
flown from Eastern Europe to Ireland by an organized crime
gang or at least one criminal who held her under
total control. A police guard was maintained outside of her
hospital room at all times, and a female liaison officer
was appointed to handle the delicate nature of the GPO
girl's case. The girl was also given a guardian named

(07:46):
to Aula Ryan, who shared that she was extremely concerned
about the welfare circumstances of this young person. The guard
launched Operation Shepherd, their name for the US investigation into
the case. Missing person reports were examined, but none matched
the GPO girl. People who had been in the vicinity

(08:10):
of the GPO building on Thursday, October ten, twenty thirteen
were tracked down and interviewed, while CCTV footage from nearby
cameras was reviewed. Homelessness services, child protection agencies and juvenile
liaison officers all over island were checked to see if
they had any record of the girl, as were hotels

(08:32):
and hostels, along with lockers at public transit stations and
lost luggage facilities. Detectives reviewed plane manifests from countless flights
to see if any passengers matched the description of the
GPO girl, and spoke extensively with airport police, but none
of these inquiries led anywhere. In an attempt to find

(08:57):
some record of the girl's family, the yard officers meticulously
searched through recent death notices in case her parents had
recently passed, leaving her rule alone. Noticing that the girl
had had orthodontic work, they also reached out to dentists
to check their records. Despite their efforts, no clues emerged

(09:20):
that would help them identify the girl. As the days
turned into weeks and almost a month went by, the
GPO girl remained in her hospital room. She passed the
time watching television or sometimes painting her nails, still staying
silent at all times. Although she was pleasant towards hospital

(09:44):
staff and members of the Garda, she was also unmistakably cagey.
When officers requested to take her fingerprints in the hopes
of identifying her, she refused, nor would she let them
take her photo. Detectives began to resort to clandestine methods
to obtain the information they needed. First, they recovered her

(10:09):
finger prints after clearing a used plate from her room. However,
the prince matched nothing in their systems. Next, a scheme
was concocted to allow them to take a photo of
the girl. She was told she would be moved to
a new room, and as she was escorted from one
room to another, a nearby officer managed to surreptitiously snap

(10:33):
her pitcher. The photo was grainy in quality and only
captured the girl in profile. Her long hair was scraped
into a messy bun on top of her head as
she looked straight ahead with eyes that appeared tired with
heavy bags. Her right hand was raised to her mouth,
and she was sucking on her index finger in a

(10:56):
childlike way, as though self soothing. It wasn't a perfect photograph,
but it captured enough of the girl's appearance that someone
who knew her might be able to recognize her. Detectives
sent the picture to Winterpol, an international organization that facilitates

(11:16):
police cooperation, in the hopes they might be able to
identify the girl, but they couldn't. Irish detectives were growing desperate.
Four weeks had now passed since the girl was found,
and all of their leads had dried up. They began
to wonder whether going public was the key to solving

(11:38):
the mystery. They weren't permitted to do this due to
the girl's status as a minor and likely victim of crime,
but perhaps the courts would grant them an exception due
to the extraordinary circumstances. When detectives told the GPO girl
of their plan, she became visibly distraught, shaking her head

(12:01):
no at the prospect of her photo being shared. But
Ireland's High Court gave permission for the picture to be published,
and on Tuesday, November five, the police held a press
conference at GARDA headquarters. As the GPO Girl's photograph was
held up, a GARDA spokesperson besieged the public. Do you

(12:24):
recognize this girl? Did you pass her in a distressed
state in the city center. Any information is vital to
this investigation. A special phone line was set up for
the public to call with tip offs. After the press
conference wrapped, the calls started coming in. People rang from

(12:47):
all over Ireland sharing their theories and possible leads, with
the press conference making international news. Calls were also made
from locations as far away as Cypress and Canada, yet
none of these were helpful in identifying the GPO girl either.

(13:09):
It was the middle of the night in Australia when
the Garter held their press conference, but within a few
hours of its broadcast, Australians were waking up to start
another day. One police officer in the Western Australian capital
of Perth, saw the report about the GPO girl in Ireland,
along with the photo of her that the Garter had shared.

(13:32):
He thought it sounded remarkably similar to another case from
two years earlier, and much closer to home. Two years prior,
in twenty eleven, a fifteen year old girl named Hope
moved from New Zealand to Perth with her parents and

(13:52):
three brothers. The international move was a big adjustment for Hope,
who had grown up in a small town and now
found herself living in a capital city. Moreover, she found
out that her home school credits from New Zealand were
not recognized by the Australian authorities, so she would have
to find a way to complete her education. Hope enrolled

(14:16):
at at TAFE, a kind of vocational education and training
provider in Australia. Unlike universities which focus on academic study,
TAFE soffer courses that focus on more practical, job specific skills.
It is also possible to complete senior secondary studies at
TAFE instead of enrolling in a high school. Hope found

(14:40):
it difficult to make friends in this new environment, as
she was shy and somewhat sheltered. Everything changed, however, when
she met Emily Sciberus in July twenty eleven. Emily was
completing the same course as Hope and was warm and friendly.
She also had a remarkable background. Emily was only fifteen,

(15:06):
like Hope, but she was already a champion gymnast who
ranked number one in the world for her age group.
She shared her online Facebook page for her gymnastics with Hope,
who saw that more than three thousand, five hundred people
were following it. There were lots of photos of Emily
performing in competitions, many of which had numerous likes and comments.

(15:31):
Despite Emily's incredible achievements, she was down to earth and
too easy to talk to. She told Hope about her family,
who were of Russian heritage and didn't live in Perth.
Emily's parents had separated and her mother had moved to
France to be close to her own parents who lived there.

(15:52):
Emily's twin sister, Chloe, had gone with her. Meanwhile, Emily's
father was in Sydney, where he worked as an Interpol agent.
One day, Hope invited Emily to visit her home, where
she met Hope's family. After that, Emily began visiting frequently
and sometimes stayed the night. Hope's parents were happy to

(16:15):
have her there, feeling sorry for the young teenager whose
own relatives were far away. Emily became like another member
of the family and felt like the sister Hope had
always wanted. In December twenty eleven, Emily told Hope that
she was going to France for Christmas. Her parents had

(16:37):
decided they should all spend the holidays together despite their separation.
On Friday, December sixteen, Emily flew to Paris. A couple
of weeks later, Hope was scrolling through Facebook when she
noticed a troubling post someone had shared on Emily's page.

(16:59):
It was a to a news article about Emily's family.
According to the article, Emily's father had killed his ex
wife and daughter, Chloe, before taking his own life. Emily
had been spared from the murder suicide, but had been
the one who discovered the grisly crime scene. Hope and

(17:22):
her family were horrified by this news. They wanted to
help Emily, but didn't know how. Hope's mother, Belinda, sent
Emily a message to check in with her. Emily explained
that she was staying with a family friend who was
a judge in Florida until the police wrapped up their

(17:42):
investigation and she figured out what to do next. Stunned
turned all alone, she didn't know what her next steps
should be. Belinda invited Emily to come stay with their family.
She and her husband were even open to a do
opting the orphaned teenager if that was what she wanted.

(18:04):
Emily gratefully accepted the offer. As it happened, the judge
she was staying with was an expert in adoption cases,
so he helped organize the papers and sent over Emily's
official documents. Then Emily flew back to Perth. She was
no longer taking her TAFE course and it was decided

(18:27):
she should go back to school. So in February twenty twelve,
just as the school year was beginning, Belinda took Emily's
birth certificate to Guirowen Senior High School and enrolled Emily.
Later on, however, the family received a call from the
school with the concerning update. They said that the birth

(18:49):
certificate looked forged. Belinda's husband decided to call the judge
in Florida, whom they had only previously had email contact with.
He spoke to the judge's receptionist, who said that the
judge had not dealt with any Australian adoption cases or
had contact with anyone in Australia for several years. At

(19:14):
around the same time, Emily told Hope that her father
who had died wasn't her biological father. She had actually
been conceived via sperm donation, and the donor was a
lawyer based right there in Perth. Emily planned to contact him.
Hope found this story very strange, and now the bizarre

(19:38):
circumstances were piling up. The revelation finally came when Hope's
family received a phone call from a private investigator who
had been hired by the lawyer Emily said was her
real father. Concerned by this false claim, the lawyer had
asked the investigator to find out whatever he could about

(19:59):
Emily Scaberis. As it turned out, Emily wasn't her real name,
she wasn't a Russian gymnast, and nor was she even
a teenager. Her real name was Samantha as a Party,
and she was a twenty three year old woman from
Sydney with a history of fraud. Samantha had first come

(20:24):
to police attention four years earlier in November two thousand
and seven, when she was nineteen years old. She had
been in the central Queensland city of Rockhampton at the time,
posing as an individual named Lindsay Lana John Beney Coglan.
Authorities found she had done so with intent to defraud.

(20:46):
Three years later, she came to attention for a similar
scheme six hundred and thirty three kilometers south in the
Queensland capital of Brisbane. There, she had tried to enroll
at two schools using the name Coda Johnson, the same
name as a Hollywood movie star. Samantha faced a string

(21:06):
of charges related to using a false identity to claim
welfare benefits, receiving a five hundred dollar fine and a
suspended sentence in September two thousand ten. After that, Samantha
as a party had returned to her home state of
New South Wales for a time, briefly joining a small
Christian community in the Blue Mountains and convincing their pastor

(21:30):
to take her in. Somehow, she had ended up in
Perth by mid twenty eleven, faithfully crossing paths with Hope
and her family. By March twenty twelve, her story finally
unraveled and she was arrested and charged with the frauding
Social security by Western Australia Police's Major Fraud Squad. Samantha

(21:55):
was also admitted to Greylands Hospital, the state's largest mental
health inpac facility, and was kept there for six weeks.
Almost two years later, in November twenty thirteen, a police
officer in Perth who was familiar with the case saw

(22:15):
the story about an unidentified sex trafficking victim discovered in Dublin.
Although Ireland was halfway across the world from Perth, the
girl in question looked remarkably similar to Samantha as a Party,
even in profile. The police officer contacted his counterparts in
Dublin and alerted them to the girl's possible identity. At

(22:41):
around the same time, the Gada Shiakana received another call
from someone closer to home who had recognized the GPO
girl as well. It turned out that Samantha as a
Party had some family members in Ireland. After her parents
split up when she was young, Samantha's mother began a

(23:01):
relationship with a man named Joe, who became a stepfather
to Samantha. The couple had two sons together Samantha's half brothers.
After the relationship broke down, Joe moved back to his
native Ireland, but maintained a relationship with Samantha. She had

(23:22):
flown over more than a month earlier to visit him
and her half brothers in the town of Clonmel, about
a two hour drive southwest of Dublin. Samantha had stayed
with her extended family for some time before abruptly leaving.
Joe hadn't worried when she did so. Samantha could sometimes

(23:43):
be a bit of radic, and an abrupt departure wasn't
necessarily unusual for her. Strangely, though she'd left her belongings
and identification behind, she had traveled to Ireland using a
fraudulently obtained Australian passport issued in the name of Georgia mccauliffe.

(24:05):
After more than two thousand police hours and a cost
of around a quarter of a million euros, the GPO
girl had finally been identified. The public was outraged. There
had been genuine concern and an outpouring of support for
Samantha as a party when she was believed to have
been an underage human trafficking victim. Now it turned out

(24:30):
that she was a twenty five year old con artist
who had inexplicably pretended to be in a vulnerable situation.
The sympathy was instantly revoked. Samantha's state appointed guardian, Aula Ryan,
requested to be withdrawn from the case. Ula explained that
while she remained concerned about Samantha's welfare, she was a

(24:53):
child protection specialist and Samantha was clearly not a child.
There was debate as to whether the Irish authorities should
charge Samantha with a crime. Some members of the public
were in favour of this due to the waste of
police time and resources, but she couldn't be charged with

(25:16):
making a false report as she had never made any
report at all. She had stayed silent the whole time.
People speculated as to whether her ruse had been a
spontaneous action on Thursday, October ten, or whether she had
planned it in advance. When the Garter searched the mobile

(25:37):
phone she had left at her family's house, it revealed
she had researched children's hospitals in Ireland and the UK.
This appeared to hint at a plan, but what her
end goal had been was a mystery. Samantha hadn't made
any financial gain or obtained any benefits due to her action. Instead,

(26:02):
she'd just spent four weeks in a hospital bed. As
Operation Shepherd's lead detective Dave Gallaher remarked in the documentary
series con Girl, for some people, a month in hospital
would be a kind of hell. Ultimately, the Irish police
decided not to charge Samantha as a party with anything,

(26:25):
determining that it wasn't a criminal matter. They also had
sympathy for the fact that the young woman clearly had
some mental health issues, even though a psychiatric report decreed
that she had no condition that would allow authorities to
detain her. When detectives asked Samantha if she would be

(26:46):
willing to return home to Australia, she nodded without saying
a word. She still hadn't spoken since being identified. Two
guarter officers escorted Samantha home on her flight to Sydney,
which was being paid by Irish taxpayers. She didn't speak

(27:06):
once during the almost twenty four hour journey, but Samantha
didn't stay in Australia for long. Years later, it would
emerge that she somehow traveled back to Ireland just six
months after being returned to Australia in April twenty fourteen,

(27:27):
going by the name Indy O'Shea, she moved to County
Leitrim and took a job as a no pair. She
claimed to be the unacknowledged illegitimate daughter of Princess Madeline
of Sweden. The family she worked for didn't recognize her
as the GPO girl and had no idea anything was

(27:48):
a miss until Samantha abruptly abandoned the job, leaving behind
a large amount of cash in her wardrobe, along with
multiple papers that had the name Samantha as a party
on them. She had stayed only a few months, departing
in the summer to where about unknown case file will

(28:16):
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Thank you for listening to this episode's ads. By supporting
our sponsors, you support case File to continue to deliver
quality content. In mid twenty fourteen, California native Emily Bamberger
was having the adventure of a lifetime. Emily had been

(29:32):
just seventeen when she graduated high school and started college
with ambitions of one day becoming a writer. When one
of Emily's professors heard about her dream, they encouraged her
to go out and see the world so she would
gain experiences she could later write about. Emily had taken
this advice to heart, traveling across the Pacific Ocean and

(29:56):
halfway around the world to go backpacking in Australia. So far,
the trip was proving to be worth it, and Emily
was having a blast. While staying at a hostel in Sydney,
she befriended some of the other guests there. One day,
a group of them went out to visit the renowned

(30:17):
Sydney Opera House, a striking architectural landmark nestled against a
scenic backdrop at the city's harbor. Afterwards, the group planned
to go have dinner together, but Emily declined she was
a vegetarian and wasn't going to be able to eat
at their chosen restaurant. Another girl in the group offered

(30:39):
to leave with Emily, explaining that she was a vegetarian too.
Emily agreed. That was how she met Anika Decca. Anika
was a tourist from Sweden who was polite, but quiet
and reserved. Other people in the group had thought she

(31:00):
seemed strange, but Emily hid it off with her right away.
The two became close. In the days and weeks that followed,
Anika began to share details about her life with her
new American friend, explaining that she was the heiress to
a European airline. Later, she reneged on this story and

(31:22):
admitted that the truth was even more amazing. She was
actually Swedish royalty and had been briefly kidnapped when she
was a child. Although she'd been rescued from her kidnappers,
Anika remained in serious danger from people who wished her harm,
and her family had taken extreme measures to protect her safety.

(31:44):
She was regularly moved around the world to keep her
whereabouts unknown, and there were two Winterpol agents who she
described as her keepers, dedicated to her protection. Emily found
all of this a bitter hard to swallow, but never
voiced her skepticism to Anika. Her mind changed abruptly one

(32:07):
day when she received an email from a man identifying
himself as one of Anika's keepers. His email address was
linked to the domain interpol dot com. This indicator of
legitimacy finally had Emily convinced she believed that her new
friend was who she said she was. The content of

(32:32):
the email itself, however, was concerning Anika's keeper, informed Emily
that she and Anika were both in danger and would
have to leave Sydney immediately. This was consistent with an
email sent to Anika that she showed to Emily. The
email indicated that the nefarious individuals who'd been stalking Anika

(32:56):
since childhood were now aware of Emily's existence and knew
everything about her too. The e mail included page after
page of private details about Emily and her family, including
addresses where they lived. It even mentioned a secret phrase
Emily and her mother had come up with in case

(33:17):
they ever needed a code word, blue bananas. Emily had
never shared any of this information with Anika. The two
young women fled to Brisbane, and Anika provided that terrified
Emily with a crash course in living on the run.
She taught Emily how to look for exits wherever they

(33:40):
went and to be aware of her surroundings at all times.
Once they caught a bus together and when they disembarked,
Anika asked Emily how many people had been on the bus.
Emily said she didn't know. Anika told her there had
been twenty eight people, including thirteen Caucasians. She warned that

(34:04):
Emily needed to start paying closer attention. She also advised
Emily on how to lie if she needed to. The
trick was to always sprinkle some truth in with the lies.
Annika also told Emily that they both needed new identities.
Her keepers had mailed them the relevant documents, and the

(34:27):
two went to a local licensing authority together. Emily felt
uneasy about the process, but had been convinced that if
she didn't obtain a new identity, then she and everyone
she loved was in danger. The scheme worked, and Emily
walked away with new identification, naming her as Amy Fisher.

(34:53):
Emily had always been under the impression that Anika was
around her age eighteen years old. That changed when Anikar
received an e mail with some medical information attached that
indicated she was actually fourteen. Anikar was shocked by the news,
prompting Emily to ask if she thought she was fourteen.

(35:16):
All Anika said in response was that she couldn't remember
the last time she'd had a birthday. One night, while
the two were in Brisbane, Anika woke in the middle
of the night complaining about terrible head pain. Emily called
for an ambulance, and when the paramedics arrived, Anika told
them that she was fourteen and Emily was her older sister.

(35:41):
Not knowing what to say, Emily just went along with
this story. The young women were taken to a local
hospital where a doctor treated Anika. He appeared suspicious of Emily,
and soon two police officers arrived to question her. They
questioned Emily for hours, eventually accusing her of kidnapping Anika,

(36:06):
who they said was an unknown miner, and of giving
her drugs. Emily repeatedly denied this, but was detained in
jail for two days. When she was searched, police recovered
the fake ID she had in her possession. Emily was
ultimately charged with fraud and released after paying a hefty fine.

(36:32):
When she left jail, scared and confused in a foreign country,
somehow Anika managed to find her. She'd fled the hospital
and still had an IV drip in her arm. Anika
told Emily that because they'd been discovered, they'd have to
go back to Sydney. She knew a safe house where

(36:55):
they could lie low for a while. It was located
about four twenty five minutes outside of the CBD and
was a converted shipping container behind a house in a
suburban backyard. The two girls remained there for eight days.
Emily was terrified. She believed that her life was in

(37:18):
so much danger that she had no choice but to
do exactly as Anika said and hide out. She was
not permitted in the main house on the property and
had no phone or access to the internet, meaning she
had no way of contacting her family to let them
know she was okay. Eventually, Emily and Anika left the

(37:41):
safe house. By this time, Emily had spent about four
months of her trip with Anika. She was visiting Australia
on a tourist visa which had almost expired, so she
flew to the neighboring country of New Zealand to apply
for a new one. Customs officials in both countries questioned

(38:04):
Emily extensively about her movements, clearly aware of her recent
fraud charge. When she landed back in Australia, she was
informed that she was being deported back to the United
States and would never be permitted to return to Australia.
The first available flight was to Hawaii, and she would

(38:26):
have to board a connecting flight to California from there.
Emily had no option but to do as she was told.
All of her belongings were still with Anika in Sydney.
Emily's dream holiday had ended abruptly after months of stress

(38:48):
and uncertainty. During the long flight to Hawaii, she had
no access to Wi Fi, so she had to wait
until she landed to check messages and make contact with
the loved ones. When Emily logged onto the internet, she
saw that Anika had messaged her during the flight. She

(39:08):
warned Emily that she was in grave danger. Somebody in
the United States wanted to kill her, and Emily should
do her best to return to Australia if she could.
Emily had thought she was finally done with Anika and
her associated dramas, but clearly not. She caught her next

(39:31):
flight to San Francisco, only to discover another message from
Anica when she arrived. This one warned that Interpol had
issued an alert that an attack was going to take
place in California. Emily's life was at risk. Anika had
bought her a ticket to Vancouver, Canada and would meet

(39:54):
her there. Believing Anika was telling the truth, Emily did
as she said. When she landed in Canada, she received
an e mail from the Interpol agent who had been
communicating with her for months now. It informed her that
he had met with Anika and given her a package
of items that would assist in keeping them safe. Anika

(40:18):
would also have further instructions for the both of them.
Sure Enough, when Emily met with Anika, she had some
things for her. One was an electronic card that Emily
was to keep on her person at all times. The
other was a pair of earrings equipped with tracking devices

(40:39):
so that Interpole could keep track of her. The two
girls then checked into a hostel. Not long into their
stay in Vancouver, they were approached by two other young
women who were staying there. They were Swedish and had
noticed from Anika's entry in the Hostile Guest book that

(41:00):
she was too. The young women spoke to Anika in Swedish,
who said nothing in reply. Her expression was almost scared.
After a long pause, she said in English, it's been
a long time since I've spoken Swedish. Emily was baffled.

(41:24):
She'd asked Anika to speak Swedish on previous occasions, and
Anika had always done so. Not knowing Swedish herself, Emily
had always assumed that Anika was speaking the language. Now
she realized that Anika had been pretending the entire time
and couldn't fake it when confronted by actual Swedish people.

(41:49):
In an instant, the spell was broken. Emily knew that
something was wrong and she had to get away. Could
clearly tell that Emily was no longer willing to go
along with her, so she proposed a plan. They would
hitchhike to another region of Canada so no one would

(42:11):
know where they were. Van Anika would pretend to be
an abuse victim so that social services would take her
into the Canadian system and Interpol could extract her from there. Meanwhile,
Emily could fly back to the Uas exhausted and desperate
to go home, Emily went along with the plan. After

(42:36):
landing back in San Francisco, she told no one of
the roller coaster she had been through. At four pm
on Tuesday, September sixteen, twenty fourteen, a girl calling herself
Aurora Hepburn walked into the Alexandra Community Health Center in Calgary,

(42:57):
a large city in Alberta, Canada, about a ten hour
drive east from Vancouver. Aurora said that she was fourteen
and a victim of sex trafficking. Covered in bruises, she
said she'd escaped from a cult and had suffered a
head injury resulting in nausea and vomiting. Concerned by this

(43:20):
alarming report, authorities took Aurora into care and had her
interviewed by specialists. It was important they uncover as much
information as possible, as there may have been other miners
out there being victimized by the same individuals. Aurora explained
that she was originally from Denmark and said she'd experienced

(43:43):
a childhood of neglect and physical violence. She and her
older sister, Daisy, had eventually run away from home and
had been living on the streets. The mention of a
sister named Daisy gave police their first clue who. One
week earlier and seven hundred kilometers away in Fort McMurray,

(44:06):
a missing person's report had been filed by a woman
named Daisy Hepburn. She was reporting the disappearance of her
sister Aurora. Aurora spent two weeks in the hospital while
detectives looked into her case. As part of their investigation,

(44:27):
they took Aurora's fingerprints and ran them through an international
database to see if they could be matched to anyone. Meanwhile,
healthcare workers tried to establish the extent of Aurora's abuse
and provided her with services to aid in her recovery. Eventually,
on Thursday, October two, the police received a call from

(44:50):
their counterparts in Ireland regarding the girl's prints. They informed
the Canadian investigators that, according to her fingerprints, Aurora Hepburn
wasn't a fourteen year old victim of trafficking. She was
actually twenty six year old Australian con artist Samantha as

(45:10):
a Party, who had pulled a similar stunt in Dublin
less than a year earlier, and just as they had
in Ireland. Samantha's false claims had accrued a significant cost
in Canada, estimated at around one hundred and fifty thousand
US dollars. When confronted by officers from the Canadian Border

(45:33):
Security Agency, Samantha as a Party refused to answer questions
about how she had obtained the necessary travel documents to
enter Canada. She was charged with public mischief, which could
see her serve up to five years in prison. Samantha
appeared in court wearing a purple prison tracksuit and looked

(45:55):
to be smirking as an officer from Canada's Border Security
detailed how she was known to have at least forty
different aliases. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to Just
two months after completing her sentence, she was deported to
Australia on Tuesday December nine, escorted by a Canadian Border

(46:17):
security agent. Once back in Australia, Samantha as a Party
was charged with fraudulently obtaining an Australian passport, another charge
she pleaded guilty too. At her sentencing, prosecutors indicated they
didn't hold high hopes for her rehabilitation. Nevertheless, the judge

(46:39):
opted to place Samantha as a party on a good
behavior bond, warning that if she broke the bond by
assuming further false identities, she would face imprisonment. The Good
Shepherd Warrinara School in the West Sydney suburb of Marrickville
is a special assistant school for students needing extra support.

(47:04):
It is a small institution, only taking about sixty students
through high school, and first opened its doors in twenty fifteen.
Late in twenty sixteen, the second year that the school
was open, a new student named Harper Hart was enrolled.
Harper was a vulnerable thirteen year old living with the

(47:27):
Foster family who had particular difficulties with reading and writing.
Her enrollment was somewhat rocky, as initially she'd failed to
provide the necessary documents. When the school lasked for identification,
Harper explained that she didn't have any as she was
in the United States Witness Protection Program. She stopped attending

(47:50):
the school for a little while, only to return with
the doctor's certificate to explain her absence, and a birth
certificate issued in the U S state of California. Strangely,
the birth certificate named the foster family she was staying
with as her biological parents. This wasn't the only odd

(48:13):
thing about Harper. Some members of the school staff thought
she looked at least several years older than she claimed
to be. When they spoke to her foster parents, the
couple informed them that Harper was indeed thirteen and was
a victim of sex trafficking. She had also alleged that

(48:33):
she'd been raped by a New South Wales police officer.
Harper's foster parents believed their foster daughter wholeheartedly. They'd first
met her randomly on the street, where she'd told them
her story. Moved by all that she'd been through, the
couple had invited her to live with them and offered

(48:55):
her a safe haven. Because the foster placement hadn't gone
through through any official channels, there was no documentation available.
The school still had concerns about Harper's allegations and the
legitimacy of her birth certificate. After they started questioning Harper's

(49:16):
story they'd received an odd call from a doctor confirming
that Harper was indeed thirteen years old, as they had
the medical records to prove it. Despite this, the school
reported their concerns to the authorities, which ultimately led to
New South Wales Police commencing an investigation. Inquiries with an

(49:38):
FBI liaison at the U. S Consul General in Sydney
confirmed that Harper's supposed California birth certificate was a forgery.
The medical certificate she'd submitted was also fake, and the
doctor named on it wasn't even an employee of the
hospital listed investigation, it is scrutinized the school's phone records.

(50:02):
In an attempt to pinpoint the number responsible for the
doctor's call supposedly confirming Harper's age. They honed in on
one number in particular, which belonged to a twenty four
year old French backpacker named Lucy. Lucy met with the
detective and admitted she'd made the call posing as a
doctor at the request of an acquaintance of hers named Layla,

(50:25):
evens Layla had said it was part of a prank.
Lucy had met Layla in a Facebook group and had
a photo of her, which she showed to the detective.
The photo revealed that Layla Evans and Harper Hart were
one and the same. Back at the station, the detective

(50:48):
chatted to a colleague about the twist in the case,
prompting his colleague to remark that it sounded similar to
the GPO Girl case in Dublin three years earlier. The
PEG googled that case together just in case there were
some differences. Harper Hart wore her hair in braids and

(51:08):
had noticeable freckles, but overall she and the GPO girl
looked remarkably similar. Now they had a link to infamous
con artist Samantha as a Party. They just needed to
prove it. Detectives obtained some copies of Harper's homework from

(51:28):
the Good Shepherd School. It was covered in Samantha as
a Party's fingerprints. She had struck again. It was now
May of twenty seventeen. Teachers and other staff at the
Good Shepherd School were stunned to learn Harper's true identity.

(51:50):
Although they had believed she was older than her claimed
age of thirteen, the revelation that she was a twenty
eight year old woman was shocking Samantha had deliberately dressed
in childlike clothing and had used a make up pencil
to draw freckles across her nose in an attempt to
look younger. She had also feigned difficulties with literacy for

(52:13):
almost a year, while teachers worked hard to improve her
reading and writing skills. Her foster parents had had no
idea of her true identity and had stood firmly behind
her throughout the police investigation. They maintained their support even
after Samantha was arrested for her latest scam. When detectives

(52:37):
took Samantha as a party down to the police station
to be formally charged, she turned her back on the
room's cameras, pulled her hoodie up over her head, and
covered her face with her hands. Two months later, in
July twenty seventeen, Samantha faced court, charged, this time with
four counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage deception for education, counseling, food, accommodation,

(53:05):
and electronic devices she was given while pretending to be Harper. Hart,
a not for profit, had gifted Harper with an iPad,
a mobile phone, and an Opal smart cart used to
travel on public transport. Throughout Sydney. The total cost of
her fraud had amounted to one hundred and fifty five

(53:25):
thousand dollars, including counseling costs and staff wages. Samantha as
a party once again pleaded guilty. This time she was
sentenced to a year in jail and would be eligible
for parole in six months. During sentencing, the judge noted

(53:46):
that Samantha suffered from significant mental health issues, adding one
might wonder as to the likelihood of improvement down the track.
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our quality content. One day two years later, in mid
twenty nineteen, thirteen year older Georgia Beviage received a private

(55:46):
message on her Instagram account. When she read it, her
excitement quickly grew. Georgia lived with her family in Sydney.
An aspiring model, Georgia was signed with an agency and
had already worked on a few modeling campaigns, but work
from the agency was slow to trickle in, so Georgia

(56:09):
also used social media to promote her modeling, sharing previous
projects and noting in her Instagram bio that she was
available for work. The message that Georgia received was from
someone who'd seen these photos and was keen to hire her.
Twenty two year old Coco Palmer was a talent scout

(56:30):
for Elite Model Management, a famed modeling agency with offices
all over the world, including New York, Paris, and London.
Coco was based in Melbourne and had discovered George's pictures online.
She loved Georgie's style and thought she would be perfect
for an anti bullying campaign Coco was working on. Georgia

(56:56):
was thrilled and shared the exciting news with her mother,
mal Mel was pleased for her daughter, but cautious. She
told Georgia to have Coco call her so she could
vet her. Cooko did so and the conversation went well.
Mel later googled everything Coco had told her and her

(57:18):
story seemed to check out. The next step was to
have an in person interview. Coko traveled up to Sydney
to meet Georgia and Mel. They met her in the
lobby of the Hilton Hotel, then walked across the road
to a cafe where Coco ordered hot chocolates for everyone.

(57:40):
Cooko explained that she wanted to cast a Georgia in
a short film campaign and they'd complete a photo shoot.
By the end of the week, Coko came across as
warm and professional, putting Mel's mind at ease. After they
finished chatting, Cooko said she wanted to take Georgia's shopping

(58:02):
for a blazer to wear in the campaign. She and
Georgia walked ahead to a department store, while Mel tried
to follow but got stuck behind some construction work. Georgia
and Cooko returned after a short period, and Mel later
asked Georgia how the shopping had gone. Georgia said it

(58:23):
had been a little strange. While they were in a shop,
Koko had told her she needed to practice her acting
in anticipation of the upcoming film. She told Georgia to
call Lifeline, a crisis support service for individuals experiencing mental
health issues, and say her name was River. Posing as River,

(58:47):
Georgia should tell Lifeline that she was a victim of
abuse and to share a really sad life story. Georgia
did as she was told. Soon, the Lifeline staff member
who'd dancewered her corps was pressing for more information, clearly
concerned about the miner on the other end, Coco told

(59:09):
Georgia to hang up, so she did. Mel thought this
sounded like a very strange task, but wondered if perhaps
it was considered normal in the acting world. It wasn't
an industry she knew much about. Not wanting her daughter
to miss out on a great opportunity, she decided they

(59:30):
should keep moving ahead. The next step was for Georgia
and her family to spend a week in Melbourne, where
Coco was based and where Georgia would be working on
her campaigns. Coco arranged flights for Georgia and mel as
well as Georgia's older sister Tiana and her infant son.

(59:52):
The family was excited it was their first time on
an aeroplane. When they arrived in Melbourne on on day
July one, twenty nineteen, they met up with Koko, who
was putting them all up in a hotel in South Bank,
a popular tourist destination in Melbourne's CBD. The group quickly

(01:00:14):
bonded with Cooko, who was kind and engaging. They also
discovered that they shared similar sorrows when Koko revealed that
she'd had leukemia as a child. As it happened, George's
father was currently in remission from leukemia. Koko admired how

(01:00:34):
tight knit the Beverages were, and said she envied their
family she had grown up in a series of foster homes.
Mel was touched by this and invited Koko to spend
Christmas with them, But Georgia wasn't always comfortable with the
things Koko asked her to do as part of their

(01:00:56):
work together. Sometimes Koko would apply makeup to make a
Georgia look beaten up, then instruct her to go into
an office for child services and claim to have been abused.
This made Georgia upset, and she feigned illness to get
out of it. Coco's lack of familiarity with Melbourne also

(01:01:19):
seemed strange, given she claimed to live there, she didn't
seem to know her way around the city streets or
know which tram to catch to go somewhere. On one occasion,
Georgia cried to her mother in the hotel bathroom, sharing
that something felt wrong. Mel reassured Georgia that it was

(01:01:40):
okay and she just needed to adjust to being out
of her comfort zone. On Thursday, July fourth, towards the
end of their week in Melbourne, the group had to
relocate from the hotel where they'd been staying to a
hostel because Coco had only booked the hotel for a
certain number of nights. While Coco and Georgia were out working,

(01:02:04):
one of the hostel staff at reception asked Mel which
member of their party would be providing identification to confirm
their booking with the front desk. Mel replied that Coco would.
The staff member appeared confused and asked who Coco was.
Mel said she was the woman they were staying with.

(01:02:27):
Oh you mean Jazz Jervis, the staff member replied, then
showed them a copy of a bank card emblazoned with
the totally unfamiliar name. Mel and her elder daughter Tiana
had no idea who Jazz Jervis was or why Coco
Palma would be using her bank card. They googled a

(01:02:51):
Jazz Jervis's name and quickly found social media accounts for her.
She wasn't Coco Palma. She was a younger mother living
in Melbourne with her husband and daughter. Her husband, Tom Jervis,
was a professional basketballer who'd played for the Perth Wildcats
in Australia's National Basketball League. Tiana sent Jazz a message

(01:03:15):
on Facebook and told her what had happened. Jazz saw
the message quickly and knew exactly who Tiana was talking about.
She sent back her own story. In June twenty eighteen,
Jazz and Tom had been living in Brisbane and needed
an O pair for their two year old daughter, Clementine.

(01:03:39):
Jazz turned to a popular O pair group on Facebook
to find someone and was soon contacted by another host
family with a recommendation. They had a seventeen year old
O pair named Harper Hernandez who was amazing, but they
were moving overseas so didn't need her services anymore. Harper

(01:04:00):
needed a new job and the host family recommended her wholeheartedly.
Delighted to have received a referral, Jazz met with Harper
and liked her right away. Clementine adored her and it
seemed like a perfect feit. Harper moved in with them
and was as good as the host family had promised.

(01:04:24):
She helped out around the house, was excellent with Clementine
and got along well with the Jervis's family and friends.
When the Jerviss relocated to Melbourne, Harper came with them
for about a year. All had gone well, but things
eventually took a turn. Jazz and Tom noticed that Harper

(01:04:47):
was very cagy about her background, and she had a
tendency to lie about random things. When they googled her name,
nothing at all came up, which seemed strange. Eventually, they
decided to let Harper go, telling her it was no
longer the right fit. She told them she intended to

(01:05:09):
travel west to Perth, and Tom gave her a lift
to Melbourne Airport on Wednesday, June nineteen, twenty nineteen. It
wasn't until after she'd left that they discovered she'd stolen
Jazz's driver's license and the family iPad. Harper had left
some things behind as well, including several passports in different names.

(01:05:35):
Just over two weeks later, Jazz received the message from
Tiana Bevige informing her that a supposed talent scout they
were working with at a bank card in her name.
Tiana and mel were horrified to learn Jazz's story. Realizing
they had no idea who Coco Palma really was, they

(01:05:58):
called the police to report her, only to receive little assistance.
Then they called Georgia on her mobile phone. As Georgia
was currently out alone with Coco, they had to tread carefully.
They told Georgia that Coco wasn't a safe person, that

(01:06:18):
she should pretend to feel sick and say she had
to leave. Georgia did as she was told, and when
she and Coco returned to the hostel, Mel and Tiana
confronted the supposed talent scout with what they knew. Tiana
secretly recorded the confrontation on her phone, managing to capture

(01:06:40):
some surreptitious footage of Coco cage and nervous. Coco repeatedly
refused to show the family her ID, but reassured them
that she had tickets for them all to fly home.
She wouldn't show them or send them the tickets then
and there, and when Mel began shouting at her to

(01:07:02):
share her real name, Coco suddenly flat. By the time
police arrived, she was long gone. The family flew home
the next day after paying almost one thousand dollars for
tickets out of their own pocket. When they were safely
at home, Mel shared a post about the ordeal to

(01:07:25):
her Facebook page. She attached a photo she'd taken of Coco,
as well as a screenshot from their secretly recorded confrontation.
To say I'm shadowed and disappointed in myself is an
understatement How could I be so blind to be had
like that? Mel wrote, please share this woman's face. Police

(01:07:50):
were no help, but I'm taking it further as she's dangerous.
An acquaintance of Mels soon saw the post and sent
her a message, Mel, I know this woman. Google GPO
girl and you'll know what I'm talking about. Mel did so,

(01:08:11):
and as soon as she saw the infamous photograph of
Samantha as a party taken by Dublin police, she knew
that she and Coco Palma were one and the same.
Jazz Jervis also shared Mel's post, and other revelations quickly
came to light. As the story spread, A total stranger

(01:08:33):
reached out to the Jervis family to tell them Samantha,
posing as Harper Hernandez, had once left their daughter Clementine
in the stranger's care for several hours. Another Melbourne family
had also fallen victim to the same scheme as Mel
and a Georgia Beviage earlier that year, when Samantha posed

(01:08:56):
as a talent scout named Marley, she wanted to hire
their twelve year old daughter Emma to do voiceover work
in a cartoon. After charming the family, she began to
meet with Emma every Tuesday and asked her to do
strange things. She had to go into shops, a hospital,

(01:09:17):
and the office of a statutory authority responsible for providing
Australians with Social Security payments, claiming to be adopted and
in need of help. Marley instructed Emma not to tell
her parents about any of these tasks. On one occasion,
she had to report that she was seeing ghosts. Things

(01:09:40):
came to a terrifying head when Marley took Emma on
a paid trip to Sydney, promising her an audition in
the Australian version of the prank focused television program Punked.
They stayed together at a ranch. Emma noticed that the
other people there called Marley Samantha, but when she asked

(01:10:02):
her about that, Marley refused to answer. After two days,
Marley sent Emma home on a train to Melbourne, an
eleven hour journey that the twelve year old had to
make a loan. When the family subsequently confronted Marley, she disappeared.
They could find no trace of her online as word

(01:10:27):
got out on social media that infamous con artist Samantha
as a Party was at it again. While she was
supposed to still be on a good behavior bond. Traditional
media picked up the story. Victoria Police commented that they
were investigating reports of her alleged deception in the state.

(01:10:47):
What was most concerning was that Samantha was no longer
the center of her own scams. While before she had
posed as a child herself in repeated stories of abuse
and suffering, now she appeared to be enlisting actual children
to live out that same fantasy. Four months later, on Friday,

(01:11:12):
November one, twenty nineteen, a teenage girl wearing a blue
school uniform with a blue felt hat walked into Headspace
officers in the regional Victorian city of Bendigo, about a
two hour drive north from Melbourne. Headspace is a youth
mental health foundation with centers all over Australia. The girl

(01:11:34):
wasn't alone. Standing next to her was a four year
old girl, and strapped to the teenager's chest was a
ten month old baby. The girl told Headspace staff that
she was fourteen years old and pregnant. The pregnancy was
the result of her abusive uncle having raped her. But

(01:11:56):
one staff member at the center had seen the recent
social media posts about Samantha as a party's latest deceptions,
and they recognized the person in front of them as
the now thirty one year old con artist. The staff
member took a photo of Samantha and called the police.

(01:12:17):
Although detectives were quickly dispatched, Samantha was still wanted by
Victoria police for her use of Jazz Jervis's stolen driver's license.
By the time they arrived, Samantha had fled with the
children in tow. Undeterred, the detectives headed to Bendigo's main
shopping district, located on a busy thoroughfare called Pall Mall.

(01:12:42):
They located Samantha as a party and the two children
wandering along the street, and she spotted them too. Samantha
fled inside a department store and the detectives followed. She
ducked and weaved around racks and counted. As the police
closed in. She'd made it to a cosmetics counter and

(01:13:05):
was unbuckling the harness that kept the baby strapped to
her chest. When one of the detectives called out Samantha.
She stopped and stared back at him before asking who me.
Samantha as a party was arrested and taken into custody

(01:13:25):
along with the two small children. They appeared to speak
little English, making it difficult for police to communicate with
them and to find out their names. Meanwhile, Samantha sat
in a cell, turning to face a corner and hugging
her knees to her chest. The detectives tried to question her,

(01:13:46):
but she refused to be formally interviewed, speaking only in
strange riddles. She began providing cryptic clues as to the
children's identity, indicating she'd met their parents via a work
wanted ad. Eventually, detectives were able to identify the children

(01:14:07):
as two sisters, the daughters of French nationals who had
recently moved to Melbourne. The couple had hired Samantha as
a no pair one month earlier in October, and she
had been living with the family. They believed her name
was Sakhar, that she was eighteen and a qualified childcare worker,

(01:14:28):
with the documents to prove it. Earlier that morning, Samantha
had told the couple she was taking the girls on
a picnic in the Yu Yangs, a mountain range and
regional park about an hour southwest of the family's home
in Melbourne. Instead, she'd taken them to Bendigo in a
completely different part of the state. The children were unharmed

(01:14:53):
and reunited with their parents. Samantha as a Party was
charged with two counts of child's dealing and with stating
a false name. She was also charged with handling stolen
goods for the theft of Jazz Jervis's driver's license, and
obtaining property by deception for the wages she'd been paid

(01:15:14):
by the Jervis family. When the COVID nineteen pandemic hit
Australia the following year, court cases faced delays due to
restrictions put in place to prevent the spread of the virus.
Samantha as a Party spent a year and a half
in jail before her case was finally heard in Melbourne

(01:15:37):
Magistrates Court in May twenty twenty one. She appeared via
video link wearing a blue face mask and her hair
up in a bun. Once again, Samantha as a Party
pleaded guilty to all charges. She was sentenced to two
years incarceration with a one year non parole period. Given

(01:15:59):
the time she served on remand she was free to go,
though she would have to receive mandatory treatment and therapy.
Despite the more serious charges and mandated therapy. Samantha, as
a party, continued to offend. In November twenty twenty one,

(01:16:20):
she approached a youth worker at the not for profit
organization Youth off the Streets in Sydney. She claimed to
be sixteen years old and a member of a cult
whose parents had sent her to Sydney from Brisbane to
live with a man who sexually assaulted her, took photographs
of her and held her captive. Samantha said she'd been

(01:16:43):
sleeping in Sydney's Hyde Park to escape the abuse. The
youth worker reported the case to the Child Protection helpline,
who referred it to police and an investigation was launched.
Samantha had an appointment to speak with office, but avoided
doing so at the last minute. When the police followed

(01:17:05):
up at the address where she was living, they found
no trace of the abusive man she'd described. Samantha went
to a hospital one week later and reported a similar story,
this time adding that she'd been injected with a fertility
drug against her will. She ran away before hospital staff

(01:17:27):
could examine her. The following month, she was finally arrested
and charged after once again reaching out to a youth
worker when Subsequently, speaking to a psychiatrist about the incident,
she claimed to have no memory of it, stating, holy crap,
it's as if my day was wiped out when the

(01:17:49):
police said I did something and that I could go
to jail again. It's all very hard to believe. When
she appeared in court on when day, May eighteen, twenty
twenty two, Samantha was emotional shaking and type of ventilating
as a magistrate described her crimes as serious and a

(01:18:09):
drain on resources. She was ordered to serve a three
year community corrections order and undergo mental health treatment. Just
seven months later, she was back in court after pretending
to be a fourteen year old abuse survivor from France.
She was initially sentenced to seventeen months jail, but the

(01:18:32):
sentence was reduced on appeal and she was released in December.
Two months later. In February twenty twenty three, a young
Danish woman called Sophie traveled to Australia on a working
holiday visa and began living in regional New South Wales.

(01:18:54):
Sophie soon met an eighteen year old Norwegian backpacker named
Asta Hansen, who was also traveling through New South Wales,
Asta Hanson, who in reality was thirty five year old.
Samantha said she had been hired by entertainment agency Village
road Show to create video diaries of her travels. As

(01:19:16):
part of the project, she would have to stay in
low budget accommodation. She invited Sophie to work alongside her
and also posed as a Village road Show employee, sending
Sophie a non disclosure agreement to sign. The job paid
well at two thousand, eight hundred dollars per week. When

(01:19:39):
the two women arrived at one of the low budget hotels,
Sophie discovered it was actually a women's refuge. She was
told that she would have to pretend to be Samantha's
sister as a condition of her employment. Sophie objected to
staying at an accommodation for women fleeing violence, but was
told she had to. Over the following weeks, Sophie and

(01:20:04):
Samantha traveled north to Queensland, staying at refuges on the
Gold Coast and Mackay using fake names. Sophie was incredibly
upset about this arrangement and tried to quit her job,
but Samantha manipulated her by claiming the police were after her.
She convinced Sophie to go to Melbourne with her and

(01:20:26):
hide out while she contacted her Danish grandfather, who was
a lawyer, for help. As Sophie's phone and passport had
somehow gone missing during the course of their travels, she
was even more dependent on Samantha. The two arrived in
Melbourne in August twenty twenty three, and Samantha adopted a

(01:20:48):
new identity. Now she was Ocean Jones. She set about
trying to walter her physical appearance, using a credit card
in another woman's names, pay for freckles to be cosmetically
tattooed onto her face at a salon. Then she contacted
Family Violent Support Services and claimed that she and her

(01:21:10):
sister were living rough after running away from their abusive stepfather.
She spoke in broken English, pretended to be a Belgian teenager,
and said she was a victim of sex trafficking. This
led to the pair being housed in women's shelters and
emergency accommodations designated for those fleeing family violence. Police soon

(01:21:35):
cottoned onto the scam and contacted a support worker who
had been handling Samantha's case to tell her they believed
that one of the victims she was supporting was actually
a con artist. Staff who had gone out of their
way to assist Samantha were devastated by the revelation. A
senior manager at one of the shelters told The Sydney

(01:21:58):
Morning Herald that they were traumatised and riddled with self
doubt following the ruse. Moreover, the scam had undoubtedly deprived
women who were genuinely in need of help. Family violence
is currently at epidemic levels. There's simply not enough funding
or resources available to keep victim survivors safe, resulting in

(01:22:22):
one woman being killed every four days. The critical impact
of this abhorrent manipulation is in so many ways immeasurable
for the victim survivor's denied support. During this period, Samantha
as a Party's false claims led to her receiving more

(01:22:42):
than twenty thousand dollars from funds designated to family violence victims.
In October twenty twenty four, she pleaded guilty to six charges,
including obtaining financial advantage by deception. Samantha was against sentenced
to two years jail. At the time of this episode's recording,

(01:23:06):
she remains incarcerated at the Dame Phyllis Frost Center in Melbourne. However,
she will be released at some point in the near future,
and it appears inevitable that she will commit further offenses
once freed. Although Samantha as a party has created elaborate

(01:23:29):
backstories and histories for the more than seventy five aliases
she's used over the past two decades, not much about
the real Samantha is known. She was born in August
to nineteen eighty eight into a middle class family who
resided in Campbelltown, a suburb on the outskirts of Sydney.

(01:23:51):
Her parents separated when Samantha was young, and both her
and her brother remained with their mother. Samantha later attended
high school, where she was a conscientious student and had
a small group of friends, but she was known for
seeking attention by sometimes walking out of class without explanation.

(01:24:13):
She was also known for stretching the truth. She used
to tell her friends that her real name was Lindsay Lowan,
like the American actress. When the movie Freaky Friday was
released starring the real Lindsay Lowen, Samantha dyed her hair
red to match the film stars. After graduating from school,

(01:24:36):
she found a job at a pancake restaurant in Campbelltown.
When journalists later spoke to her former boss immediately following
the GPO Girl incident, she described her as a lovely
girl who had issues. Samantha's mother has also spoken to
the media, though has requested that she not be identified

(01:24:58):
by name. She described Samantha as having been a sweet,
adventurous and independent child, and said that the way her
daughter's life had unfolded was heartbreaking. Samantha has said very
little to anyone about her background, and court records have
noted that what she has said cannot necessarily be believed

(01:25:21):
due to her being an unreliable historian. She has claimed
that when she was a child, her mother had her
admitted to a psychiatric unit for a year due to
being a pathological liar, but this has never been verified.
At one point, Samantha also admitted herself to Campbelltown Hospital

(01:25:43):
in the suburb where she grew up, due to self
harming behaviour, memory loss, confusion, and suicide attempts. In twenty
twenty three, a four part documentary series about Samantha as
a party was released under the title Girl in It.
News Corps journalist Roland Smith described how he was contacted

(01:26:07):
by a member of Samantha's family while covering the case.
They told Rowan that Samantha was sexually abused when she
was growing up and had subsequently spent some time living
with another family member who was very religious. This family
member had told Samantha that she needed to recreate herself

(01:26:27):
following the abuse, and that she would go to hell
unless she built a whole new life. Rowan Smith asked
this individual for proof of their claims, including verification of
their identity and how they were related to Samantha. He
never heard from them again. A twenty fifteen report by

(01:26:50):
forensic psychologist to doctor Susan Pullman noted that Samantha had
been sexually abused by two separate males as a child.
Numerous mental health experts who have looked into her case
say that there are indicators she has been abused at
some point. The motive for her crimes does not appear

(01:27:10):
to be financial despired occasionally receiving some financial benefit. Instead,
Samantha appears to be motivated by receiving attention and affection.
In all of her ruses. There is a pattern of
identifying as a victim of sex trafficking and abuse. Initially,

(01:27:31):
Samantha repeatedly posed as a young teenager aged around fourteen years,
and in all of these assumed identities, she described being abused,
usually at the hands of a male relative, such as
an uncle. As Samantha aged and it became more difficult
for her to pass as a miner, she began targeting

(01:27:52):
young adolescent girls and had them lie about being abused
to live the same story through them. Doctor Richard Fryson,
a professor of psychiatry at the University of South Carolina,
studied Samantha's crimes for the documentary series con Girl. He

(01:28:13):
believes Samantha's targeting of adolescent girls was a form of
factitious disorder imposed on another previously known as Munchausen syndrome
by proxy. This is a serious mental health condition where
an individual, usually a parent, repeatedly lies about their child
or a dependent being unwell in order to receive attention

(01:28:35):
from others. Doctor Fryarson suspected that Samantha as a party,
did a similar thing, using young girls who were in
her care. The fact that all of her scenarios centered
around early adolescence led him to believe that something highly
traumatic likely happened to her at that age, and that

(01:28:57):
she has a need to relive that for some reason.
Either she got a lot of sympathy back then and
it was rewarding, and she wants to feel that love
and attention again, he said. Or if she were abused
at age fourteen and her report of abuse was ignored
or minimized or non validated, then she may have an

(01:29:18):
inner need to get that validation and to get it
repeatedly to sort of undo the trauma of not being
believed previously. Samantha as a party has also been assessed
by numerous court appointed psychiatrists in Australia, Ireland and Canada.

(01:29:38):
In twenty seventeen, after Samantha posed as abused teenager Harper Heart,
one psychiatrist that diagnosed her as having borderline personality disorder,
a mental health condition characterized by difficulties in regulating emotions
and unstable interpersonal relationships. They reported that Samiantha had a

(01:30:00):
remarkably unstable sense of identity with a tendency to disassociate.
In twenty twenty one, Australian forensic psychiatrist, the Jacqueline Rakov
also determined that Samantha had borderline personality disorder and added
a diagnosis of pseudoloja fantastica, a rarer condition characterized by

(01:30:23):
compulsive line. It is the same condition attributed to Alicia
Estevere Head, who falsely claimed to be a survivor of
the September eleven, two thousand one World Trade Center terror attacks,
as featured in episode to eight six of Case File.
Doctor Rakov found that Samantha had experienced a highly traumatic

(01:30:46):
childhood where she was emotionally neglected and physically abused. Notes
from a two thousand six psychologist session between Samantha and
her mother revealed her mother had physically abused her. Like
Dodor Fryarson, doctor Rakov believed Samantha's compulsive lies were motivated

(01:31:08):
by a desire to relive a certain period in her
life and recreate a happier version. Despite Samantha as a
Party's mental health issues, assessments have also indicated that she
is not mentally impaired and has at times had full
awareness that what she was doing was wrong. While experts

(01:31:33):
have been called upon to explain Samantha as a Party's actions,
they have also been asked how it was that she
was able to dupe so many people with her seemingly
outlandish stories. Countless people have been lied to and manipulated
by Samantha as a party, with her earliest scams dating
back to two thousand and seven and resulting in more

(01:31:55):
than one hundred criminal charges and fifty five convictions. These
crimes have had a significant impact on their victims. Thirteen
year old Georgia Bevidge struggled for months after being manipulated
by Samantha. She was so scared at night that she
had to sleep with her mother and found it difficult

(01:32:15):
to trust people. George's parents have grappled with terrible guilt
and shame after trusting Samantha, as have other parents who
left children in her care, like Tom and Jazz Jervis.
Others who have encountered Samantha, such as American Emily Bamberger,
have had traumatic experiences as a result of befriending her.

(01:32:40):
Emily shared her story with the journalist Rowan Smith, admitting
that she asks herself every day why she fell for
Samantha's lies. The best way I can describe it is
I was wide eyed, terrified, and really thought I was
helping another human being be safe. Since meeting Samantha, Emily

(01:33:02):
has lost trust in other people. She finds it hard
to make new friends and believe the things people tell her.
Support workers who helped Samantha in her various guises have
also spoken of experiencing a loss of trust in others,
which has had an effect on the work they do.

(01:33:23):
Tiana Bevich, whose sister Georgia was targeted by Samantha, said
in an interview for the docuseries con Girl, Samantha is
so believable because she just talks her way into it.
She talks her way around things and makes you say
yes without saying yes. She just gets into your mind

(01:33:45):
and is just so convincing. Experts in human behavior have
said that Samantha follows a distinct pattern in order to
win people over. Doctor Vera Tobin, an associate professor of
cognitive science, spoke in the docu series con Girl about
how Samantha reels people in with narratives the human mind

(01:34:09):
is drawn to. Samantha begins by building a rapport with people,
bonding over small things they have in common or a
sympathetic story. As their connection grows, she starts to test
them with what Doctor Tobin calls her world building by
sharing larger fabrications. If they're susceptible to these, then she

(01:34:33):
introduces even bigger twists and turns. Doctor Tobin likened Samantha
to a human page turner in the way she maintains
a sense of action by introducing new developments all the time.
In her book The Confidence Game, author Maria Konikova explained

(01:34:54):
how Samantha as a party has an ability to tell
compelling and heartbreaking stories that cast those listening in the
role of savior. This was partly how she was able
to convince people quote stories bring us together. We can
talk about them and bond over them. Stories are so

(01:35:17):
natural that we don't notice how much they permeate our lives.
That's precisely why they can be such a powerful tool
of deception. When we're immersed in a story, we let
down our guard. We focus in a way we wouldn't
if someone were just trying to catch us with a
random phrase or picture or interaction. The more extreme the story,

(01:35:43):
the more successful it becomes. Emotions on high, empathy engaged,
we become primed to help. As a party, may have
been lying, but that isn't all she was doing. She
was also giving people the opportunity to shine in the
humanitarian light that they always suspected lay within them.