If you listen to true crime podcasts, then you’ll definitely have heard of Finding Samantha.
The RTÉ podcast was one of their most popular as it detailed a truly stranger than fiction case.
And now the story will be brought to the small screen.
Australian con artist Samantha Azzopardi created more than 100 false identities since she embarked upon her career of fraud and deception as a 14-year-old girl in Brisbane.
The gripping seven-part series has been one of RTÉ Documentary on One’s most successful ever podcasts, drawing in millions of listeners from more than 100 countries since it’s release in 2023.
Both the podcast and upcoming TV adaptation start in 2013, when a distressed 14-year girl was picked up outside the General Post Office in Dublin city centre.
Swiftly nicknamed ‘The GPO Girl’ by the media, the teenager appeared to be too traumatised to speak. She was duly taken to a children’s hospital by the Gardaí, who assumed that she was a victim of child trafficking. However, after an intense month-long investigation into her identity produced no leads, the police released a photograph of the mute teenager.
That resulted in an astonishing call from the other side of the world, which revealed that ‘The GPO Girl’ was, in fact, a 25-year-old Australian called Samantha Azzopardi, a sophisticated serial con woman — and a psychological enigma.
We can’t wait to watch this one!