The mystery woman at the centre of the hit podcast Finding Samantha has made contact with the RTE team behind it.
Samantha Azzopardi - known as the GPO girl - got in touch with presenters through third parties and using Facebook messaging and Zoom calls.
The international fraudster - found wandering outside Dublin’s GPO in 2013, distressed, refusing to speak and assumed to be an abandoned teenager - has tried to convince them she is not as guilty as thought.
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Australian Azzopardi (33) claims details of her complicated history as a fraudster have been misreported.
One of the podcast’s presenters, Nicoline Greer, told the Daily Star: "We approached her and gave her the opportunity to tell her story because we’re very aware that a lot has been said about her - yet so far, she’s said very little.
"She has refused to talk to us directly but instead has persuaded others to get in contact with us to try to muddy the waters a little.
"But it seems clear that these people don’t really know her full story. Her story is highly complex and confusing.
"It seems to be a slightly clumsy attempt to see if she can get us to rethink her guilt, and that perhaps she’s been wrongly represented.
"She has implied that records have been mixed up and that not all the activities she’s reported to have engaged in were actually her."
Podcast producer and presenter Sharon Davis said: "For someone who has spent her life trying to avoid the media, and who depends on not revealing her true identity, I was amazed she started to engage with me online, not as some fictitious character, but as herself."
Azzopardi has racked up over 100 convictions for misrepresenting herself, and is thought to have assumed over 100 identities in the past 16 years.
She first came to the public’s attention in Ireland when she was found by Gardai at the GPO a decade ago.
Authorities here thought she was about 14 years old and potentially the victim of sex trafficking.
Her identity remained a mystery for almost a month until the truth came out.
In fact she was a serial fantasist with a penchant for assuming fake identities, often that of a young teenager.
She was deported back to Australia and it’s thought she cost the state here around 2,000 hours of garda time and €350,000 in services.
Her story is now the focus of the RTE Doc on One podcast Finding Samantha that has been downloaded almost one million times since its launch six weeks ago.
Listeners have tuned in from 100 countries and the series claimed number one spots on Spotify and Apple, a first for an RTE podcast.
At least one doctor claimed Azzopardi suffers from Pseudologica Fantastica, which is pathological lying, in order to impress others.
Greer added: "The thing with Azzopardi is that her deceptions aren’t harmless."
The sixth podcast is out today.
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