When a young girl’s parents were murdered, her relatives provided her closest friend a place to live, but it found out she was harbouring a deadly secret.
Hope was only 15 years old when she met Emily Sciberras, also 15, at a local community college in Perth, Australia, in 2011.
Hope claimed she struggled to establish friends in her new area after moving from New Zealand, but that all changed when she met Emily.
The two adolescent girls became friends, and Emily, a champion gymnast from Russia with a professional Facebook profile with thousands of likes, would frequently visit Hope’s house.
‘My brothers treated her like she was another annoying sister, which I guess in a way she probably was,’ Hope tells the programme makers of Paramount Plus docuseries Con Girl.
Emily stated that her parents had divorced and that she had a twin sister, Chloe, who was living with their mother in France. Meanwhile, her father worked as an Interpol agent in Sydney.
Emily’s family decided to spend Christmas together, so the college student travelled to France.
Hope was ‘gobsmacked’ when an essay published on her professional gymnast social media page documented the deaths of all her loved ones shortly after Emily departed Australia.
Hope explains: ‘The article stated that her parents had passed away in a double murder-suicide, with her Dad killing her twin sister, mother and then himself.
‘We were shocked. We found out that she had discovered the bodies. And I remember being gobsmacked, like her family’s gone, like you want to help her. She was 15.’
Emily claimed she moved to Florida to live with a family friend, a judge, but she kept in touch with Hope and her mother.
‘As time went on, my parents made the choice to offer to adopt her and make her a part of our family,’ Hope adds.
‘Mum and Dad were already treating Emily as if she were one of their own children. I was overjoyed to finally have a sister who was also my best friend.’
While the adoption procedure looked to be underway and Emily moved into Hope’s family home, she began to make odd claims, including that she was conceived using a sperm donor.
Emily’s situation grew more unique when she enrolled at another high school and provided them with a birth certificate that officials suspect was ‘forged.’
‘At this point, Dad is really concerned. ‘A lot of warning bells are going off,’ Hope says. He calls the judge in Florida and speaks with his receptionist, who informs him that the judge has not emailed Australia in three years.
‘At this point, everything is coming apart…’ Emily is not who she claims to be, according to the lawyer who contacts my parents.’
Emily was actually Samantha Azzopardi, a 23-year-old woman, and her entire past was a ‘elaborate fiction.’
‘I was upset at the moment,’ Hope admits to the producers. I was furious, and I felt misled.
‘I think it’s heartbreaking when you try to do your best and assist others and have it all thrown back in your face, like it is.’
As shown in Con Girl, Azzopardi is a serial fraudster with over 75 identities and dozens of victims spread over three continents.
Among her various impersonations, the now 34-year-old has claimed to be a model scout and the kid of secret spies.
She was sentenced to 17 months in jail after masquerading as a 14-year-old abuse victim from France in 2022, but her sentence was subsequently reduced to 14 months on appeal.
She was freed from jail in December 2022, having already fulfilled her sentence.
All episodes of Con Girl are available from Wednesday February, 22 on Paramount Plus.
Source My Celebrity Life.