Brazilian con artist, 37, posed as 12-year-old autistic abuse victim to con family into adopting her
A nearly middle-aged con artist left a loving family in Brazil devastated after she posed as a desperate 12-year-old abuse victim in need of adoption, according to Brazilian authorities.Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira, 37, allegedly posed as an autistic little girl named Gabrielle — drinking from a baby bottle, using a pacifier, sleeping with a comfort cloth, and even faking night terrors to sell her sick charade to a Santa Catarina family she made fall in love with her over 14 months, Brazilian investigators said.“I was deceived by a woman who claimed to be a 12-year-old,” said one of the conned family members in Portuguese, according to regional outlet Jornal Ipanema, which didn’t identify the victim.“I gave her affection, love, and food.There was no way I could suspect anything,” they added.Oliveira allegedly kicked off her scheme by walking into a church in Joinville, Santa Catarina, and introducing herself to a pastor as a runaway child named Gabriela who had fled an abusive home in Pará.The congregation then began supporting her financially and eventually connected her with a local family, who took her in and grew to love who they thought was a vulnerable child in need.Over the course of the next 14 months, Oliveira had the family actively adopting her, and allegedly played on their kindness and sympathy — getting them to pay for her medications and even plan her a 12th birthday party.She convinced the volunteers and the families she conned that the reason she looks nearly 40 years old in the face is due to experiencing violent abuse and forced hormone treatments in her childhood that aged her prematurely, which most just believed, according to VICE.However, the scheme unraveled when a relative grew suspicious and decided to search online for similar cases.
The family member quickly discovered that the little girl whose 12th birthday they were preparing to celebrate was, in fact, a 37-year-old woman tied to a string of nearly identical cons in r...