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Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira posed as a child in need for more than 15 years, Brazilian prosecutors say.
Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira acknowledges posing as a child, her lawyers say, but denies committing fraud. Her case has transfixed Brazil.
When police arrived to arrest the suspect, the woman at the door insisted there must be some mistake. The girl she had taken into her home was only
12, she said.
In her room, Gabriele sat on her bed eating lunch. She was surrounded by dolls and hand-drawn pictures.
“Amanda,” local police chief Rodrigo Gusso said, a name that was new to the girl’s hosts. “The charade is over.”
In the 14 months that she had lived with the couple in Joinville, Brazil, she spoke in a high-pitched, childlike voice. Now, at the sight of Gusso and two fellow officers, she stood, smoothed her heart-print shorts and dropped her tone to an adult register: “Should I come with you?”
Gabriele was, in fact, Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira, a 37-year-old woman who had posed as a child in need for more than 15 years, to live off the kindness of strangers in what investigators described as “an elaborate fraud”.
Now she’s facing charges of fraud and identity theft in Brazil’s Santa Catarina state, an indictment alleging fraud in neighbouring Paraná state, and investigations in other jurisdictions. A court in Santa Catarina ordered a mental health evaluation and found her competent to stand trial; the proceeding opens on Wednesday (Thursday NZT).
Oliveira, through her lawyers, declined to be interviewed.
She acknowledges posing as a child, her lawyers say, but denies wrongdoing. One of her lawyers, Lúcio Sousa, said the defence has “all the evidence” showing that Oliveira caused no financial loss to her alleged victims in Santa Catarina.
“She admits that she invented an identity,” Sousa said. “It was the way she found to survive. But she has been a vulnerable person for more than 20 years. She has lived on the streets, and there has been no allegation that she obtained any financial advantage, or committed robbery or theft, which, in theory, means the elements of fraud have not been established.”
Oliveira’s case has transfixed Brazil, where it has been covered by national newspapers, featured on prime-time news and debated on call-in shows and social media. On Instagram alone, her story has generated 194 million views.
“This is a huge number, on par with the biggest political news stories in Brazil,” said Pablo Ortellado, a professor of public policy and management at the University of São Paulo, who developed the count.
Ortellado, whose research interests include social media activity and its effects on politics, policy and society, said the story drew so much attention “because it’s so unusual”.
