A Brazilian woman who posed as a 12-year-old girl and was adopted by a family has been sentenced to prison for fraud and false identity.
Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira, 38, from Brazil, was sentenced to one year, 10 months and 28 days in prison by a court in Joinville, a city in northern Santa Catarina state in southern Brazil. The court found she created a fictitious identity to deceive a family into taking her in for over a year, providing her with food, medication, and accommodation.
To maintain the deception, Oliveira behaved like a child by using baby bottles, pacifiers, and playing with toys, the court heard. She initially approached the family saying her name was Gabriele and that she was 18, looking for work. After gaining their trust, she claimed she was 11 and had suffered abuse and abandonment, along with various health problems. She told the family her adult appearance came from allegedly being forced to take hormones during childhood.
The unsuspecting family paid for Oliveira’s weight loss treatment using the prescription drug tirzepatide and threw her what they believed to be a 12th birthday party. The judge ruled that her fraud allowed her to obtain “the full cost of her own subsistence” while living with the deceived family. The court also found that Oliveira acted consciously “to induce and maintain the victims in error” to obtain material benefits.
The scheme began to unravel when a suspicious relative found reports about Oliveira in other Brazilian states online. The family contacted police, and Oliveira was arrested on June 2. During questioning, she admitted to police that she was from Ceara, not Para, and revealed she had lied about her name and age.
Following her arrest, investigators linked Oliveira to seven other alleged scams in at least seven Brazilian states. In a 2023 case in Nova Iguacu, she allegedly posed as a 12-year-old girl named “Maria Eduarda,” convincing a former city councillor and the head of a social project for vulnerable children to support her and even rent and furnish a home for her. Police revealed she inserted up to 100 needles into her own body to corroborate her story of abuse.
Nutritionist Renata Magalhaes, an alleged victim from Rio de Janeiro in 2023, said Oliveira used the name Duda when they met. Magalhaes claimed Oliveira again said she was an autistic teenager who had suffered abuse.
“Her phone was full of searches. She researched how an autistic person behaves and how to make drawings to move evangelical people,” Magalhaes claimed.
“I have seen many people laughing and making jokes on the internet, but she is a fraudster, a narcissist, a dangerous woman. She is a person who puts on a character like a coat and creates a totally fake narrative.”
Investigators also found Oliveira allegedly used a false identity during the Covid-19 pandemic, going by the name Emily and claiming to be a 13-year-old girl suffering from terminal leukemia. At that time, she would have been around 32 years old. One woman claimed to have gotten “Emily” written on her wrist after bonding with the “child.”
Oliveira has previously addressed her actions in statements to media.
“It is clear that I deceived people, I lied. But I did not intend to scam anyone,” she said.
Her defence has maintained that her false identity was a “survival strategy” rather than deliberate fraud.
“It was the way she found to survive. But she has been a vulnerable person for more than 20 years,” her lawyer, Lucio Sousa, said.
Her defence has rejected the conviction.
In the viral moment that first drew international attention, Oliveira’s case became widely known after her June 2 arrest in the Pirabeiraba district of Joinville, where she had been living with the family for approximately 14 months. Detective Rodrigo Bueno Gusso stated that Oliveira persuaded the family not to enrol her in school by claiming her abusive father would find her. She consistently avoided discussions about official adoption procedures and never had identification documents on her. The family had developed an emotional bond with her and treated her as their own child, even considering formal adoption.
Oliveira’s defence team is expected to appeal her sentence as she serves her prison term.