Con artist Samantha Azzopardi first became known to police when she was just 19, when she was caught using false Medicare cards.
Soon after she posed as a student named Dakota Johnson – also the name of the famous Hollywood actress – and enrolled in a Brisbane high school.
There she went to classes, forged friendships and told people she had been abused by her family.
When she attempted to enrol in a second school, her reference letter was found to be a fraud and she was rejected.
Born in Sydney’s Campbelltown in 1988, Azzopardi’s next fraud was to pose as a 14-year-old trafficking ring victim when she was discovered wandering the streets in Ireland in 2013.
A year later she popped up in Canada, claiming to have been abducted by a cult.
In 2016, she enrolled in the Good Shepherd School in Marrickville, NSW, claiming to be 13-year-old Harper Hart.
When her deception was discovered, she was jailed for a year. But it didn’t take her long to return to her strange, scamming ways.
The adult Azzopardi was so convincing as a young orphan she was in the process of being adopted by a family until they became suspicious of her story and alerted police.
In 2019, she became a Melbourne couple’s au pair and took their children to a Bendigo mental health unit claiming to be a 14-year-old who’d been abused.
The 37-year-old conwoman was jailed again in 2023 and she pleaded guilty to obtaining more than $20,000 in accommodation, specialist care, clothing, medical costs and vouchers from charities who help victims of domestic violence. At the time, Azzopardi was posing as a 17-year-old sex trafficking victim from Belgium.
WANNABE 007
Known for “dressing like James Bond”, conman Hamish McClaren is currently serving a 16-year jail sentence after defrauding $7.6 million from 15 people – including close friends, girlfriends and even fashion designer Lisa Ho.
Despite having no formal financial qualifications, McClaren, 51, claimed he was a practicing barrister and funds manager who was a graduate of Harvard Business School. In fact, he made his money by encouraging his victims to pour money into fake investment schemes that promised a high return. However, instead of investing the funds given to him, he used them to help support his lavish lifestyle.
That lifestyle included being a regular at celeb-packed Sydney parties and his beachside mansion.
After pleading guilty to 18 charges, McClaren was jailed in 2019 with his victims still owed $5.4 million.
Police were unable to locate what much of the cash had been spent on and where it was located. Acting judge Colin Charteris said, “Even James Bond would have trouble spending $900,000 a year.”
McClaren is eligible for parole in 2029. The created of Who The Hell Is Hamish? podcast, Greg Bearup, says the conman was “incredibly convincing”.
ROYAL RORT
Anthony Gignac, now 56, started his conman career as a teenager when he claimed to be the son of a billionaire Saudi arms dealer and began racking up credit card debt under a false name.
Gignac was actually a former Colombian street kid who was adopted by middle-class American parents and brought up in Michigan.
As he got older, he regularly passed himself off as a Saudi prince, convincing people to part with cash, expensive items and running up more credit card debt.
In 2017, he pretended to be a member of the Saudi royal family and entered into discussions with developers to invest $610 million into a luxury hotel on Miami Beach, promising to make them five times their initial investments when the company was publicly listed.
He scammed about $12 million until they started to investigate his credentials and alerted the FBI. He was arrested in 2019, and pleaded guilty to impersonating a foreign diplomat, aggravated identity theft, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He was jailed for 18 years.
FAKE DOCTOR
Dalya Karezi, the “TikTok doctor” racked up 15 million views and 1.5 million likes on the social media platform for her health advice about serious issues such as ovarian cancer, COVID and contraception.
There was only one catch – she wasn’t a doctor.
Despite giving her advice while wearing scrubs and a stethoscope around her neck, Karezi didn’t have the doctors MBBS degree she claimed to – or the Masters of Reproductive Medicine or the obstetrician-gynaecologist qualification she talked about.
After being discovered, the 30-year-old Australian told the court that her lie had snowballed when she told a woman she was trying to impress that she was studying medicine.
“I regret my action and understand now that it is a serious offence that could have caused harm. My intentions were never to harm anyone,” she said.
In October 2023, Karezi pleaded guilty to charges brought by health regulator Ahpra.
She was sentenced to a community corrections order and ordered to pay legal costs of $13,300.
CHARITY SCAMMER
When UK teenager Megan Bhari was diagnosed with a brain tumour, she and her mum Jean O’Brien set up the Believe in Magic charity to grant wishes to other seriously ill children.
At least that’s what the world thought – including celebrities such as the band One Direction, which publically supported the group.
At the height of the charity’s success in 2015, Jean announced that Megan’s brain tumour had worsened and they needed to raise $230,000 for emergency life-saving treatment in the US.
Charity supporters donated the money in less than 48 hours.
However, followers became suspicious, questioning details about Megan’s treatment after she was spotted out and about looking healthy.
Many people believed it was a scam, and in 2017, the Charity Commission opened an investigation and found that nearly $200,000 was unaccounted for.
But then in 2018, Megan, 23, died.
An inquest showed she didn’t have a brain tumour, but an abnormality of the rhythm of the heart due to fatty liver disease.
Experts and family members have alleged their mother Jean possibly had Munchausens by proxy, or facticious disorder, but she has never been charged and has denied this.
“I loved and cared for my daughter,” she said.
“Suggesting I might have harmed her in any way at all is absolutely sickening.”
ART WORLD FRAUDSTERS
German husband and wife Wolfgang and Helene Beltracchi duped the art world for more than 30 years by painting fakes and selling them for seven-figure sums.
Wolfgang painted hundreds of pictures in the style of such masters as Max Ernst and Andre Derain, which Helene then sold.
The couple didn’t lead a flashy lifestyle, but their scam allowed them to pursue their love of art and for Wolfgang, 75, to hone his talent.
The couple were found out when Wolfgang used titanium white paint, which didn’t exist at the time of the copied artist.
In 2011, Wolfgang was sentenced to six years in prison, while Helene was sentenced to four years.
These days, it’s reported that Wolfgang makes “millions” from selling his original paintings and giving talks about how he duped art experts.
PSYCHIC SACRIFICE
Rose Marks’ Astrology Life stores on the US east coast offered fortune-telling but its customers were frequently told the best way through their troubles was to hand over cash.
Scams including telling clients they could get rid of curses by temporarily sacrificing their money and paying for expensive watches to “turn back time and bring love back”.
Marks and her family were found to have scammed nearly $40 million from people looking for hope or solace.
In 2014, Marks, then 62, was convicted of 14 counts of fraud and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Eight members of her family, including her sons, daughters, sister and granddaughter were also convicted of conspiracy to commit fraud due to a years-long federal investigation named “Operation Crystal Ball”.
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