Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hello. While we're on break, I thought it might be fun to revisit some of my favorite episodes. Swindled is coming up on its fifth anniversary. Almost 100 episodes, which is crazy. For me, this is one of the more memorable ones just because of how bizarre it is. This episode, The GPO Girl, was originally released in November 2019, and since then, the main subject, Samantha as a party, has continued her spree of puzzling behavior.
For example, in November 2021 she contacted a homeless youth charity in Sydney and told them she was a 16-year-old cult member named Eleanor Harris who was being held captive by some man named Aaron. When the police arrived to the address provided, Eleanor was nowhere to be found and they never heard from her again. A week later, a 16-year-old girl in Sydney told a doctor that she was being sexually abused and had been injected with a fertility drug against her wishes. That girl too disappeared.
A few days later, after a third report of sexual abuse, the Sydney police made an arrest. It was Samantha Azzopardi, the 32-year-old serial imposter whose list of international fraud convictions dated back to 2013. She was fresh out of jail after serving a two-year sentence for kidnapping two children in Victoria, which is covered in this episode. And that's not even half of it. Ms. Azzopardi has been very busy, to say the least.
Anyway, if you want to hear about Samantha Azzopardi's most recent shenanigans, I cover them in detail in the Valuable News for Valued Listeners update show, which you can listen to by becoming a Valued Listener at ValuedListener.com. It's only $5 a month, and you can listen at Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app of choice via Patreon. We also just released a new bonus episode about the Lake Erie Walleye Trail Fishing Tournament Cheaters. There's weights and fish. Let's ride.
Go check that out. If not, I will see you on the other side. Enjoy the show. This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Cowboys and oil wells. I guess that's what people think of most when you mention Odessa, Texas. Well, it's true. This part of the country is founded deep in Western tradition and has forged quite a legacy from its opportunities in oil production. But as any Texan will tell you, things are changing around here. There's nothing to do in Odessa, Texas. It's flat. It's hot. It's dry. It's dry.
It's boring. There are no hills to climb, no water nearby in which to fish or swim. The landscape is littered with strip malls and dollar stores. The air reeks of sulfur from the nearby oil fields. The tap water has a metallic aftertaste, and you're twice as likely to stumble upon a strip club than you would a bookstore. But that doesn't mean Odessa is completely culturally devoid.
The small city in the western part of the Lone Star State is probably best known as the setting of a 2004 film about high school football named Friday Night Lights, which chronicles the Permian Panthers' 1988 season and attempts to explain why middle-aged men in Odessa are still squeezing into those letterman jackets, showing off their class rings, and telling tales of the glory days that weren't that glorious. At one time, the town exhibited a mania for high school sports that was unrivaled.
Back in the 80s, when the district was finally forced to desegregate its schools, one of the last places in the United States to do so. Times have changed in Odessa, maybe at a glacial pace, but that kind of team spirit still exists, with the kind of fervor that makes mortal enemies out of rivals that live less than 20 miles away. The kind of small-town mentality that would make anyone born with ambition want to leave, and they usually do.
unless they find themselves trapped in the vicious cycle of teenage parenting or waiting in the wings to daddy's oil field fortune. As a wise man once said, "Odessa, Texas is a great place to be from, but there's no reason to stay. Even if you do become a big fish, you're still in a small polluted pond." But it's that kind of community support for high school sports that would make any student athlete yearn to be a Permian Panther. And Jerry Joseph was no different. He had seen the movie,
He had heard the stories, and when his half-brother and legal guardian, Jabari Caldwell, received a scholarship to play basketball at the University in Odessa, 16-year-old Jerry Joseph saw an opportunity. He took a Greyhound bus to West Texas in February 2009 to live in the dorms with Jabari to start anew. But in reality, Jerry Joseph really didn't have anywhere else to go. Both of Jerry's parents had died before his fifth birthday.
He had only recently come to America by way of Florida, stowed away on a ship from Haiti with nothing more than his birth certificate and a duffle bag of clothes. Out of all the places, Jerry ended up in Odessa. Anywhere was better than home. In Odessa, Jerry stood out in the hallways of his new middle school, not just because he was the only Haitian his classmates had ever seen,
but also because Jerry Joseph, at 16 years old, was 6 foot 5 inches tall and weighed at least 220 pounds. And he was a monster on the basketball court, dunking the ball like LeBron James, a man amongst boys. It didn't take long for Permian's high school basketball coach to hear about the physical specimen that would be coming his way through the freshman pipeline the following year. Coach Danny Wright made contact with Jerry Joseph and invited him to dinner.
He introduced Jerry to his wife and children, many of which shared no blood relation with the man they called Dad. In his 50 years on Earth, Coach Danny Wright had taken in dozens of kids off the street. He taught them perseverance and discipline and personal responsibility. He served as a positive role model and provided shelter for any kid in need. A few days after the dinner, Coach Wright received a call from Jerry Joseph asking for a place to stay.
Jerry said his half-brother Jabari was moving back to Florida, but he wanted to stick around. Coach Wright told the Odessa American newspaper, During his first year, Jerry Joseph thrived in his new town. He did his chores at home and completed his homework on time.
He jogged to school every morning to stay in shape, and he became a fixture at one of the town's numerous Baptist churches, where he eventually asked to be baptized. Jerry wanted to be reborn into Christ, cleansed of his past sins. Jerry was thriving on the basketball court as well. The Haitian sensation as he became known led the Panthers basketball team to their best season in years. He led his team to 16 victories while averaging over 20 points a game as a sophomore.
and was the recipient of the district's Newcomer of the Year award. Even though that season ended with a disappointing loss in the playoffs, the future was bright. Jerry had already received multiple scholarship offers from colleges all over the country. He did his best to stay focused, even after a devastating earthquake in his home country of Haiti claimed the lives of many people he knew. I couldn't imagine not playing basketball right now.
In the offseason, Jerry joined an amateur athletic union team to keep his skills sharp. He traveled to tournaments in different states to play with and against some of the best high school players in the nation. His size and style raised eyebrows in every gymnasium he stepped foot in. But on April 16, 2010, in Little Rock, Arkansas, eyebrows were raised for a different reason.
In the middle of one of Jerry's games, Louis Fives, the president of the South Florida Elite Basketball Club, approached Jerry from the edge of the court and asked, Hey Gerd, what's going on? What you doing here? Jerry turned around but didn't seem to recognize the man. He replied, Sir, I don't know you, and walked to the other side of the court. Weird. Louis Fives and his team of Florida players swore that they recognized Jerry.
They recognized him as a kid named Gerdwitch Montemir, a former teammate that had graduated from high school three years earlier. Lewis told GQ, quote, Lewis Vives had a gut feeling that Jerry Joseph and Gerdwitch Montemir were the same person. And admittedly, it was kind of funny at first.
A 21-year-old returning to high school as a 16-year-old to dominate in basketball is a story straight out of a Hollywood movie. But this wasn't a movie. This was real life. And as a father of a teenage daughter, Louis Fives had a bad feeling about what else might be happening behind that fake teenager's doors. That's when school administrators and the media began receiving anonymous tips about Jerry Joseph's true identity less than two weeks after the tournament in Little Rock.
Permian High School principal Roy Garcia called Jerry into his office. Waiting for him was Coach Wright and a photo lineup. They included shots of Jerry in his Permian uniform, next to photos of another person that looked just like Jerry in a Dillard High uniform, a school from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Jerry agreed that the kid did kind of look like him, but he denied that it was him in the photographs. So Coach Wright called his wife at home and asked her to look through Jerry's belongings.
She called back in tears and told her husband that she had found a passport and a social security card belonging to someone named Gerdwitch Montemir. The evidence was turned over to the Odessa Police Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Jerry's fingerprints were run through the FBI database. Three days later, ICE announced that Jerry Joseph was not Gerdwitch Montemir.
When the United States government tells me he isn't this other guy, Principal Garcia told GQ, who am I to argue with him? Jerry Joseph was allowed to return to school. However, even though he had been cleared of being an imposter, ICE agents determined that Jerry was in the States illegally, grounds for deportation. But in order to prevent that, Coach Wright and his wife had agreed to adopt him. The Florida coaches were incredulous.
There was no way that Jerry Joseph was not Gerdwitch Montemir. After persistent pressure to continue the investigation, ICE officials relented and eventually dug up a hard copy of Gerdwitch Montemir's immigration file. The fingerprints in the file matched the fingerprints of Jerry Joseph. He wasn't here illegally. He was a naturalized citizen, and when confronted with the evidence, Jerry, or Gerdwitch rather, confessed.
The lie unraveled today when investigators found out sophomore Jerry Joseph is really a 22-year-old man. Gerdwitch Montemir was born on February 23rd, 1988. He moved from Haiti to Florida with his mother and twin brother when he was six years old. After graduating high school, Gerdwitch tried to continue his basketball career at a community college in Freeport, Illinois, but never played a game. He dropped out within months and returned to Florida with no plans for his future.
After a heated argument with his mother in 2008, Gerdwitch packed his bags and left. Nobody in Florida had seen him since. Until now. Gerdwitch Montemir was arrested at Permian High School on May 11th, 2010. He was charged with presenting a false ID to a police officer. Montemir was bailed out of jail the same day by friends from church and arrested again less than 24 hours later, this time for tampering with government documents, a third-degree felony.
Gerdwitch posted Bell again, but was arrested for a third time two days later, after a 15-year-old girl came forward to confirm that Jerry Joseph was her boyfriend and that they had been having sex. Neither the girl nor her mother wanted to press charges on 22-year-old Montemir. The girl's mother told GQ, "...he was sweet, polite, respectful, a hell of a lot better than most of the trash around here. He will always be welcome in my house."
but those charges were filed anyway. On July 27th, 2011, Gerdwitch Montemir pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault and three counts of tampering with government records. He was sentenced to three years in prison. Jabari Caldwell, who had posed as Jerry's half-brother, was actually a former teammate of Montemir's in Florida.
He was charged with two counts of tampering with government records and was sentenced to four years of deferred adjudication, probation, and a $500 fine. The entire community of Odessa had been deceived. This is Coach Danny Wright.
Yeah.
Gerdwitch Montemir was released from prison two years later on May 13th, 2013. He returned to Odessa to work in the oil field for a short period of time. Some residents reported seeing him living on the streets and camping in a vacant lot. Eventually, Montemir relocated to Kyle, Texas near Austin. It's a little easier to keep track of him nowadays.
Anywhere he goes from here on for the rest of his life, he'll have to go to the local authorities and tell them, I'm in your town, I'm Gerdwitch Monomer, and I'm a convicted sex offender. He will never be able to do this to anybody else for the rest of his life. Probably not the fresh start that he had in mind. Was Gerdwitch running from something? Was it Peter Pan syndrome? Was he just trying to relive his glory days? Nobody really knows.
Koltrak told ESPN, quote, I don't think you'll ever get a why. Maybe it's as simple as some people just don't want to grow up. That appears to be the case with Gerdwitch Montemir, and it's definitely the case with a woman named Samantha as a party. After a string of international exploits, a young female imposter is named Australia's most notorious con woman on this episode of Swindled.
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On Thursday 10 October at approximately 4.15pm, members of Angarda Sikana from Stour Street discovered a young female on O'Connell Street in a distressed state.
The investigation to date has involved over 2,000 man hours and over 115 lines of inquiry. As a result of these inquiries, 15 possible names were provided to investigators. They were fully checked out, but unfortunately her identity remains unknown at present. On Thursday, October 10th, 2013, at approximately 4.15 p.m.,
A man walking down O'Connell Street in Dublin, Ireland spotted a young woman shivering in the cold in front of the General Post Office or the GPO. The girl looked to be about 14 or 15 years old, average height and skinny, long blonde hair draping across her shoulders. She was wearing a grey woolen sweater pulled over a purple hoodie, dark denim jeans and flat black shoes. Terror in her eyes. The passerby asked the girl if she needed help but she never responded.
She wouldn't even acknowledge his presence. So the man called for help and after trying unsuccessfully to communicate with the girl, the police transported her to a local hospital for further evaluation. Days passed without the girl saying a word. When she finally spoke, it was in short fragments and barely comprehensible. Her English was so bad that she couldn't even tell authorities her name.
A source close to the investigation told the Irish Independent newspaper that the girl was "fretful of any engagement with officialdom and extremely nervous around anyone in a uniform." The reason why became clear when the GPO girl began communicating with short notes and drawings. She drew a stick figure on an airplane to symbolize how she had arrived in Ireland.
and then she drew a stick figure lying on a bed surrounded by other larger stick figures as if to say she had been the center of attention in a room full of men the revelation hit the hospital staff like a ton of bricks some of them began crying this poor girl was a victim of human trafficking some kind of eastern european teenage sex slave but here she was she had escaped she was safe now thank god but who was she how did she get here
And where did she come from? It had been three weeks since the girl had been found in front of the GPO and the police still did not know the answers to those questions. Investigators went door to door in search of leads. They visited airports, seaports, rail stations, guest houses. They set up checkpoints and dug into CCTV footage and dental records. But still, the girl had yet to be identified.
with no other avenues to explore. On November 5th, 2013, Irish police turned to the public for help. They had been granted the right to distribute the girl's photo without her permission in hopes that someone would recognize her and come forward. A sergeant of the Guard of Shekinah, the Irish National Police, stood before cameras holding a photo of the girl in his hands and pleaded for help.
In accordance with the approval given by the High Court last Friday, Angarla Shekharna are this morning issuing an image of the child and seeking the public assistance in identifying her. She is described as being 5 foot 6 in height, slim build and having long blonde hair. When she was found she was wearing a purple hooded top, tight dark colour jeans, flat black shoes and a grey woolen jumper. These clothes may have been bought in Ireland. Do you recognise this girl?
Before long, the phone lines were flooded with calls from around the world, many from frantic parents who believed that the teenager could be their child who had gone missing long ago.
In total, Irish police received 15 names for who the mysterious girl might possibly be. But after some research, all 15 of those names led to dead ends. And then, 10 hours after the photograph had been broadcasted publicly, the garter received a phone call from a man in Conmel, a small town in County Tipperary, about 175 kilometers southwest of Dublin. The man said his name was Joe Brennan and that he recognized the girl in the photo.
He said her name was Samantha Azzopardi. Joe knew that because he used to date Sammy's mother. After the breakup, Joe said Sammy came to visit him in Ireland from Australia late last summer. She had stayed for three weeks at his place before leaving without saying goodbye. Joe said he had done nothing to provoke her, but he hadn't been worried. He knew that Sammy was prone to erratic behavior. Joe had assumed that Sammy had just returned home without telling him, but then he saw her photo on the news.
Samantha Lindell Azapardi was born in 1988. In 2013, when she was found in front of the GPO, Samantha was 25 years old. She wasn't a helpless teenager. She wasn't human trafficked. She wasn't sexually abused. Sammy grew up in Campbelltown, New South Wales, just outside of Sydney, with, by all accounts, normal, loving, middle-class parents. And while people that knew her growing up described her as a lovely girl,
It was clear that something was a little off about Samantha. She had a tendency to lie. A schoolmate named Juanita Levi told news.com.au that one time Sammy called the police when she found a dead cat in the street. She told them that all of the cat's bones were broken. The police arrived to find out that no such cat existed. Sammy had just made it all up.
And then in high school, Samantha Azzopardi told her classmates that she was actually Lindsay Lohan, the famous American cokehead and movie star. Samantha had even dyed her hair red to lend credence to her unbelievable claim. The lies started small and mostly harmless, but soon ballooned in scope as Samantha continued to age.
In 2010, she told police in Brisbane that she was a 14-year-old named Dakota Johnson who had escaped from her sexually abusive uncle and desperately needed help. Brisbane authorities provided the girl with food and shelter. She was eventually enrolled in high school, but after documentation she submitted was discovered to be fabricated, authorities searched Dakota's computer and uncovered a photograph of the girl with her smiling family standing atop the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Authorities requested the guest records from the bridge tour companies from that time period and discovered that the 14-year-old girl in need of help was actually 22-year-old Samantha Azzopardi, using the name of an actress from the movie Fifty Shades of Grey. Samantha was charged with two counts of false representation, one count of intention to forge documents, and one count of contravening directions. She was ordered to pay a $500 fine.
Less than a year later, in 2011, Samantha Azzopardi struck again, this time as Emily Azzopardi, a Russian gymnast whose father had murdered her mother and twin sister before taking his own life. As an orphaned teenager, Emily was in need of new guardians. She stole the identity of an adoption judge in Florida and sent the paperwork to a new friend's family in Perth who had agreed to take her in.
Samantha's adoption scheme fell apart when the birth certificate for Emily as a party was discovered to be a fake. By that time, the 23-year-old had already been enrolled in high school. In 2012, Samantha was convicted for two more fraud-related schemes, one in Perth for opening accounts using a false name and another in Victoria for trying to claim welfare benefits for what she was not entitled.
Samantha Azzopardi was given a six-month suspended sentence for the latter. She had yet to serve any hard time behind bars for any of her crimes. By the time Samantha Azzopardi surfaced in Dublin in 2013, according to Interpol, she had amassed as many as 40 different aliases around the world. A senior security source told the Belfast Telegraph that Azzopardi was a quote,
Although it is accepted that she has psychiatric issues.
Yet, despite the Irish court's acknowledgement that Samantha Azzafardi suffered from a condition that made her, quote, vulnerable, she was given a clean bill of mental health and was deported to Australia six months after she had been discovered without being charged with the crime.
The investigation into the GPO girl's identity, codenamed Operation Shepherd, had taken Irish police over 2,000 man-hours to complete for a total cost of 250,000 euros. The Irish Independent newspaper said the authorities had been, quote, taken in by a Walter Mitty-like con artist. To be honest, the Irish police were probably just happy the ordeal was over.
But back in Australia, Samantha as a party was just getting started. Support for Swindled comes from Rocket Money. Most Americans think they spend about $62 per month on subscriptions. That's very specific, but get this, the real number is closer to $300. That is literally thousands of dollars a year, half of which we've probably forgotten about.
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Emily Bamberger was excited about her upcoming holiday in Sydney. She had just graduated from high school in California, class of 2014.
and the trip to Australia was her first big solo trip overseas. Emily was looking forward to experiencing a different part of the world and meeting people of a different culture. She didn't know what was waiting for her, but she was anxious to find out. In Sydney, Emily Baumberger became fast friends with another traveler she met in a hostel, a Swedish girl about her same age named Annika Decker.
Emily said her friendship with Annika was typical at first before weird things started to happen. She would test me like it was some kind of social experiment. Emily told news.com.au, "We were on a bus one day and when we got off she asked me how many people were on the bus. I told her I didn't know and she told me there were 28 people, 13 Caucasians. She said I needed to be more aware of my surroundings."
Annika Decker was always aware of her surroundings because she had been on the move constantly since she was a little girl. Annika explained to Emily that she was born of royal Swedish blood and that she had been kidnapped by Interpol agents when she was a child. Annika said her keepers had been taking her to one place after another ever since to make sure she stayed off the radar. It was a ridiculous story and Emily was understandably skeptical.
That is until one day she received an email from a man with an Interpol.com email address. The man writing to Emily seemed to know everything about her. He included her California address and the names of her parents and friends. And the man knew that Emily was currently Annika's companion because he was Annika's keeper. In the email, the man warned the girls that they were both in danger, that somebody was following them, and that they should leave Sydney as soon as possible.
I was terrified. I've never felt so scared. They sent me some documents and we went down to RMS. I got a new ID. My name was Amy Fisher. I was freaked out. I thought, this is real. It was very real. Emily and Annika packed their bags and traveled north to Brisbane as instructed. They rented a room together and for a few days life was back to normal. And then one night, Annika woke Emily up, complaining about a headache.
Her friend appeared to be in so much pain that Emily called an ambulance. She later spoke with news.com.au about that night and how Annika's behavior grew increasingly odd. "When the ambulance arrives, she tells doctors she's 14 and that I'm her sister. I didn't know what to say, so I went along with it." Police questioned Emily Bamberger at the hospital. They even accused her of kidnapping Annika. Emily tried to drop hints to the cops that she might be in danger.
Instead, she was arrested and charged with fraud for being in possession of a fake ID. She told reporters that she spent two nights in jail and was fined a lot of money. When Emily was released from jail, she was surprised to find Annika waiting for her. "She escaped from the hospital and met me with her catheter still in her fucking arm." Annika told Emily that there was a safe house in Campbelltown, outside of Sydney, where they could hide out for a few days.
Later that night, the two girls boarded a plane and fled Brisbane. The safe house in Campbelltown was some kind of cabin behind a main residence which the girls were not allowed to enter. There was no Wi-Fi or phone service. Emily had no way of contacting her family back in the States to let them know where she was or that she was alright. After spending eight days in seclusion, Emily Bamberger's tourist visa had expired.
She knew that Australia would not renew it because of her recent criminal activity, so she fled to New Zealand to apply for another. When Emily returned to Australia, she was detained and deported back to the United States. All of her belongings were left behind with Annika Decker. When her plane landed in America, while waiting for her connecting flight, Emily checked her phone.
There was a message from Annika warning Emily that someone in America was trying to kill her and that she should return to Australia as soon as possible. Emily ignored the message and continued home to San Francisco where she had another message from Annika waiting for her. This time it was an offer to meet her in Canada. Annika told Emily that Interpol had put out an alert that California was going to have some kind of an attack. She told Emily that she had already purchased the airfare for her
All she needed to do was get on the plane. So she did. Completely terrified, Emily flew to Calgary to meet Annika. When the two reunited, Annika gave Emily what she called a tracking device and a pair of earrings that supposedly contained GPS. Emily agreed to keep the devices on her since it was for her own safety. But then something happened that made her question everything.
A random person in Calgary, after finding out that Annika was from Sweden, tried communicating with her in her native language. Annika was unable to respond. Emily Bamberger told news.com.au that it was at that moment that all of a sudden, everything and nothing made sense all at once. Quote,
Emily boarded a plane and flew back to San Francisco. She never spoke to Annika Decker ever again. And until she shared her story with news.com.au, Emily said she had not told anyone about the encounter. I knew I couldn't tell anyone because, well, how dumb can I sound? I also knew nobody would believe me. I lived with a psychopath for four months.
Emily said at the time she felt like she was just helping another human being, but she ended up just feeling betrayed and embarrassed and naive. She says she hasn't really been able to trust anyone since. Why would somebody do this? Emily Bamberger has since moved on from her crazy summer with what she's referred to as an Australian psychopath. But one day, curiosity got the best of her.
She opened Google in her web browser and searched the name Aurora Hepburn, which was one of the aliases Annika Decker had used in front of her. This is what she found. "Cowgirl Police Service have charged an Australian woman with mischief after claiming she was underage victim of sex trafficking and exploitation."
At approximately 4 p.m. on Tuesday, September 16th, 2014, a woman walked into a Northeast health center and made claims she was a 14-year-old who was a victim of an abduction and prolonged sexual assault. Using a false name, Aurora Hepburn, the woman told investigators she'd endured years of violent sexual abuse and torture.
For several weeks, investigators and health care workers spent countless hours working on the alleged victims to establish the extent of her abuse and provide services for her recovery. Samantha Lindell, as a party, 26, originally of Sydney, Australia, is charged with public mischief to mislead police officer. Stop me if you've heard this one.
In September 2014, Samantha Azapardi walked into a Calgary health center in a distressed state. She told the staff her name was Aurora Hepburn and that she was 14 years old and that she had been kidnapped. She told them that she had "endured years of violent sexual abuse and torture." Of course, none of those things were true, but the Canadian authorities, just like the Irish police before them, spent an enormous amount of resources investigating the case.
In fact, that's how Azza Party was ultimately identified. Calgary police were tipped off that the case sounded awfully similar to one that occurred in Ireland almost one year prior. Since Samantha refused to cooperate, it was never determined how she had made it into Canada, but authorities would later find out that she had come through Ireland. After her friend Emily Bamberger was deported, Samantha decided that she wanted out of Australia as well.
So the GPO girl returned to the scene of one of her most infamous schemes less than six months since it had occurred, this time as an au pair for the Fitzgerald family and their two sons, who were led to believe that the con woman was an 18-year-old girl named Indy O'Shea. The Fitzgeralds said that other than a few strange incidents, they had got on brilliant with Indy before she disappeared unexpectedly.
When the family looked through the belongings Indy had left behind, they found paperwork that revealed her true identity. The Fitzgeralds were horrified to discover who it was that they had actually welcomed into their household and trusted with their children. In Canada, Samantha Azzopardi was charged with public mischief related to misleading an officer, to which she pleaded guilty.
She was sentenced to two months in jail and was given credit for the two months she had already served. She was placed on a guarded flight back to Australia. Like most of her crimes, no motive was ever determined. But maybe, just maybe, Samantha as a party had finally learned her lesson this time. Don't hold your breath.
He was signed as a role player and has more than exceeded expectations. To be able to hold my own against these guys is great and I'm relishing every match-up that I get. The last few months, a whirlwind ride for Tom Jervis. Just after the seven-footer decided to put work before basketball, the Wildcats came knocking. His last chance to play NBL at age 26, irresistible. His career on the rise, so too off-court. Over the weekend, he and girlfriend Jazzy became engaged.
Tom Jervis had almost given up the dream of playing professional basketball. In June 2013, after being overlooked for a roster spot again by every team in Australia's National Basketball League, Tom left the sport behind to begin a new career of selling radiators to Western Australia mining companies.
Two months later, the Perth Wildcats came calling. Tom signed a one-year contract with the team and made the most of his opportunity. He played in every game that season and led the Wildcats to their sixth championship in franchise history. The National Basketball League awarded him its Rookie of the Year honor. Tom Jervis had become a household name. Tom Jervis had also become the head of his very own household.
In May 2015, he married his longtime partner, a former lawyer named Jazzy McNeil. A little over a year later, in August 2016, the couple welcomed their first child into the world, a baby girl named Clementine. That same year, Tom switched teams and the family moved to Brisbane. Two years later, in 2018, Tom Jervis re-signed with Perth. That's the nature of the business.
But this time, instead of uprooting the family again, Jazzy and Clementine would remain in Brisbane while Tom traveled for work. For additional help in caring for their two-year-old daughter, the Jervises decided to hire an au pair who could be on hand at all times. After the initial round of interviews with applicants they found on the internet, the Jervises decided to hire a young girl named Harper Hernandez.
This is Jazzy Jervis in conversation with Gareth Parker on radio station 882 6PR. We found her through an au pair's Facebook group, one of the big Australian ones, because we needed an au pair when Tom signed a contract back in Perth. We were living in Brisbane at the time, and she said that she was currently living in Melbourne, and so all of our interviews were conducted via FaceTime. Harper Hernandez was 17 years old.
She said her father was a pilot. Her mother was a lawyer in San Francisco. She had gone to boarding school in Dubai. She was well-traveled and well-mannered, had previous experience working with kids. Harper Hernandez was exactly what the Jervises were looking for. She was great. We had no concerns at all. Clementine loved her. They got on really well, great around the house, did everything that we asked.
Harper lived with the family in Brisbane for more than six months, and everything was working smoothly. She had no trouble blending in with the family, and most importantly, Clementine seemed to love her. Although Jazzy did think it was kind of weird that Harper requested not to be in any photographs. Then one day, Jazzy Jervis received a message on Facebook from a woman in Melbourne, asking the Jarvis' if they had someone named Marley.
that worked for them.
In April 2019, that woman's daughter, who was 12 years old at the time, responded to a classified ad on the website Gumtree for a voiceover role in an upcoming Pixar film. The girl was contacted by a talent scout from United Talent Agency named Marlee, who offered the hopeful actress an all-expenses-paid trip to Sydney for an audition.
But when the young girl arrived in Sydney, she discovered the audition to be a bit unconventional. Marley instructed the teenager to go to a variety of different locations around the city while remaining in character. For one of these assignments, the girl was told to walk into the offices of Centrelink, the Australian government department in charge of social welfare payments, to hand the staff a note that said she had seen a ghost.
The girl had completed a similar task earlier in the day at the Royal Children's Hospital. At one point, Marley made the girl provide a fake ID and fake birth certificate to the legal aid office. Meanwhile, it was Marley's generosity that caught the attention of the girl's stepmother. She had been showering the young actress with expensive clothes and gifts. The stepmother later told news.com.au, "...that's when I knew something wasn't right and felt straight away that it was grooming."
Fortunately, the 12-year-old returned to Melbourne unharmed, but she never heard back about the audition. United Talent Agency later confirmed that they had no record of having ever employed a woman named Marlee. Very strange, or maybe not, because something similar happened to another young girl from Sydney a few months prior. A woman named Coco, claiming to work for a modeling agency, reached out to a 13-year-old girl named Georgia on Instagram.
Coco offered to fly Georgia, her mother Mel, and her sister Tiarna to Melbourne for modeling and acting training. The family accepted the invite only to find the actual training a bit bizarre. The first red flag happened on the train when Coco told Georgia that she was not allowed to sit anywhere near her. Next, Georgia was asked to start conversations with strangers on the street to tell them that her sister had died.
Coco also made the girl physically clean her stash of international coins. Welcome to the entertainment industry. George's family found the whole weekend to be incredibly odd, but it's not like this was something any of them had ever done before. For all they knew, this was the way the industry worked. But their suspicions peaked when they discovered that the motel room they were staying in had not been booked under their names, nor had it been booked under Coco's name.
The motel room that Georgia and her family were staying in was booked under a name they had never heard before, Jazzy Jervis. Georgia's mother, Mel, decided it was time to confront Coco, and Georgia's sister, Tiarna, decided to secretly record it for your listening pleasure. Here are the highlights. Mel starts off by asking Coco, Who is Jazzy? I'm really excited. I've got some questions I'd like you to answer me. Who's Jazzy? My sister.
Is it? Yeah. But why did she check into this motel? Because... Charters? Yeah. After that question goes nowhere, really. Mel then asks Coco why Georgia was forced to clean her currency. Oh, okay. And I have a question also. Why did you get Georgia to wipe down money and you grabbed it with a cloth? It had sticky honey on it. She said it had nothing on it. And I touched that money. It didn't have anything on it.
Were the coins sticky or not? We're living in an era of alternative facts. The confusion over the names had made the man working the front desk of the motel concerned. He told George's family that they needed to leave the motel and he would have to call the cops.
In the recording, Mel and Tiarna repeatedly ask to see Coco's driver's license to confirm her identity. Coco refuses to comply. I feel like I'm now being interrogated. Yeah, because that's how I... Because we're about to get police caught on a thing search. So we're just concerned why our things are getting searched. Can I go talk to you? Do you have any ID?
Eventually, Coco grabs her things and leaves the room. So do you have our tickets to get home now that you're walking away? And where are they though? But could you email them on the spot? Because what if we are stuck here with a sick baby?
Georgia, Mel, and Tiana made it back to Sydney safely. One of the first things they did was contact Jazzy Jervis, who was able to confirm from photographs and a cell phone number that Coco and Harper Hernandez were the same person. But Coco, Harper, Marley, whoever this woman was, no longer worked for Jazzy Jervis.
Tom and Jazzy had let her go a few months earlier, after they had received other concerning messages. We've even had someone come forward to say that she left our daughter with them for three hours in the middle of Melbourne city and this was a complete stranger. The Jervis family told Harper Hernandez that her services were no longer needed and Tom gave her a ride to the airport so she could return to Perth, but apparently she never did and apparently she had stolen Jazzy's identity.
When the story made the rounds in Australia, it did not take long for the media and the public to identify Coco and Marley and Harper Hernandez as 31-year-old Samantha Azzopardi, the nation's favorite schoolgirl con artist, was up to her old tricks again. In fact, the name Harper wasn't even an original alias.
Samantha had used the name Harper Hart in 2016, immediately after her return to Australia following her Canadian incident, to pose as a 13-year-old girl to enroll in a Sydney school. Like usual, Harper Hart had claimed to be a victim of sexual assault and human trafficking. She said she was enrolled in the United States' Witness Protection Program.
But when police tested the fingerprints on one of the school assignments she had turned in, they were a perfect match to Samantha as a party. For that incident, Samantha pleaded guilty to charges of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception and was sentenced to a year in prison. She became the Jervis' au pair a month after her release in June 2018. After her latest scams were revealed, Samantha as a party was quiet for a few months. But that doesn't mean she wasn't busy.
she went back to work as an au pair and of course we all know how that story ends at first glance it looks like a student in school uniform wearing a sun hat but this is 31 year old samantha as a party carrying a 10 month old baby girl that isn't hers neither is the four-year-old girl walking closely behind police allege both children had been stolen
On November 1st, 2019, Samantha Azzopardi was arrested in Bendigo for kidnapping. She had used forged documents to gain employment as an au pair for a couple in Pasco Val two weeks earlier. Samantha told the couple that she was taking their children to Geelong for the day, but instead was spotted in a headspace mental center in Bendigo, 175 kilometers away.
Police caught up to Samantha in the cosmetic section of a Meijer department store. She was dressed head to toe in a schoolgirl's uniform, using one arm to balance the baby on her hip while sipping out of a carton of milk with the other. The couple's older child was following closely behind, accompanied by an unidentified woman. Samantha was arrested and in her possession were Jazzy Jervis' driver's license and passport.
The Pascoe Vale couple's children were returned unharmed. For the past two days, Azapati was due to face court here in Bendigo, but failed to do so because she was taken to hospital. The court heard the 31-year-old refused to let police photograph her as well as take a DNA sample. A magistrate has since granted an application, forcing her to comply.
At her court hearing on November 20, 2019, Samantha Azzopardi was formally charged with more than 50 offenses, including four charges of stealing a child, two of which occurred in the prior year, 26 counts of obtaining property by deception, and 19 charges of possessing identification and intending to use it to commit an indictable offense. Samantha Azzopardi's next court date is scheduled for January 9, 2020.
Hopefully, she will finally get the help that she so desperately needs. Stay tuned. Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard. Special thanks to Olivia Lind for lending her voice to this episode. Olivia hosts a fantastic podcast called Flat Rock that explores the 1969 murder of a 12-year-old girl named Kathy Jones. I highly recommend it. Go check it out.
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