Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira is 38 years old. For 14 months, a family in Brazil fed her, dressed her, and cared for her as a 12-year-old daughter.
They gave her baby bottles. They bought her pacifiers. She played with toys like any girl, and no one suspected anything until a family member found something strange: reports about her in other states of the country, under other names. When the family called the police, Amanda confessed that she was from Ceará, not Pará, and that everything—the name, the age, the story—was a lie.
It wasn’t the first time. In 2017, she pretended to be ‘Karolina’ in Belo Horizonte. During the pandemic, she was ‘Emily,’ a teenager with terminal leukemia. Investigators linked her to similar scams in at least seven Brazilian states. A court in Joinville, Santa Catarina, sentenced her to one year, 10 months and 28 days in prison for fraud and false identity.