Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira will spend a year and half in jail after leeching off the kindness of a couple she deceived into caring for her being a disadvantaged minor, and lying to explain her grown-up appearance

Claiming to be 12, the 38-year-old pretended to be handicapped and to have the mental age of a child, going as far as drinking milk from bottles and sucking on dummies

Oliveira attending services at an evangelical church in Joinville, southern Brazil presented herself as Gabriele, an 18-year-old seeking work

Living in with a kind family who offered her shelter, she later reduced her age to 12, claimed to be severely autistic pre-teen, only looking 40 because her dad forced her to take hormone treatment early

When a relative of the host couple researched and exposed Oliveira’s record of age scams she was arrested and prosecuted for fraud

Oliveira after her arrest admitted to multiple age fraud scams across 9 states in Brazil spanning over 15 years

The jury rejected her mental illness for and convicted for ’emotionally kidnapping’ the couple who took her in

Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira, 38, leeched off the kindness of the couple by convincing them to care for her, and lying to explain her grown-up appearance. eventually admitted the elaborate ruse and admitting to a life of serial life affecting several victim families – leading to her eventual conviction

A 38-year-old Brazilian woman has ended up in jail for extreme and elaborate age deception scam with the aim of fleecing kindly people who fell for her web of lies.
Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira was convicted for leeching off the kindness of the couple by convincing them to care for her, and lying to explain her grown-up appearance.She has been jailed for ’emotionally kidnapping’ a couple who took her in.
At nearly 40, Oliveira claimed to be a 12-year-old girl. She pretended to be handicapped and to have the mental age of a child – even drinking milk from bottles and sucking on dummies. 
After the extraordinary ruse was uncovered she faced prosecution. She has been sentenced to a year-and-a-half in prison at the conclusion of the fraud case that caught national attention in Brazil ended in her conviction.

Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira, She has been jailed a year and half in jail. The 38-year-old woman pretended to be a 12-year-old girl to exploit a couple’s kindness – and said she had spun the same lies to a number of families over a span of 15 years

This particular schemes began with Oliveira attending services at an evangelical church in Joinville, in the south of Brazil.
Here she presented herself as an 18-year-old called Gabriele, and said she was seeking work.
The pastor introduced her to the couple who, in a humanitarian gesture invited Oliveira to stay with them for a while.
However, overtime the exaggeration in her biography worsened. She eventually told her hosts she was actually a 12-year-old girl.
That she had fled from abuse thousands of miles away in the northern state of Para.
Her explanation for looking like a 40-year-old? Her father had forced her to take hormonal supplements in early childhood, she claimed.
Her sympathetic hosts bought the story and for the next 14 months, Oliveira lived as their daughter and spun ever-more elaborate lies, including her claim of being severely autistic. 
Her regression grew alarming as behaviour became increasingly akin to that of a baby, to the point of using baby bottles and dummies. She even managed to convince the host couple to pay for a course of weight-loss drugs.
The alarm was eventually raised by a relative of the couple, who were convinced that Oliveira was older than she claimed.
Through research online, she found reports from 2023 of someone called Amanda who had run a similar age deception scam in Rio de Janeiro.
The research proved the fraudster was the same woman who now known to be Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira.

Serial professional scam artiste buttressed her con by claiming her father forcing to take hormonal supplements from a young age was responsible for her look at least three decades older. However as she was arrested she owned up to her con

Exposed, the fraudster was taken into custody without drama. When police arrived and entered her bedroom, Oliveira dropped the act immediately, addressing the officers in her normal, adult voice.
She would go on to admit to her deceit. She confessed that she had been working the scam across several Brazilian states, spanning over 15 years.
‘It is clear that I deceived people; I lied. But I did not intend to scam anyone,’ she told police.
Court records show she had pretended to be a child in nine different places: Parana, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Goias, Ceara, Rio Grande do Sul, Sao Paulo, Rio Grande do Norte and Mato Grosso do Sul.
A judge in Santa Catarina rejected Oliveira’s defense that she was mentally ill and therefore not criminally responsible, concluding that she had acted deliberately and consciously.
Oliveira’s lawyers argued at trial that their client had just been seeking the love and affection she was starved of as a child.
They told the court that Oliveira had done nothing more than adopt the ‘survival strategy’ of a deeply troubled woman.
They have signaled their intention to appeal the judgement.
Meanwhile, prosecutors insist jail time was warranted, considering the financial and psychological damage Oliveira had inflicted on her victims.