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”.
“She is a woman who did not look 25, let alone 12, yet managed to deceive a family,” he said. “That unusual and implausible nature sparks immense interest and curiosity.”
Police in Santa Catarina say Oliveira told her hosts, a middle-aged couple, that she was a preteen runaway fleeing abuse. Eager to help, police say, they gave her a room, fed her, and bought her clothes and toys.
The couple, who have not been publicly identified, declined a request to be interviewed.
‘There was a certain void in me’
Oliveira told investigators she “wasn’t trying to scam anyone”, according to court filings.
“Of course I deceived people, I lied,” she said, according to police. “But I didn’t intend to scam anyone.” Instead, she said, she wanted to experience the attention, affection and protection she never received growing up. “There was a certain void in me, a need to have that kind of care,” she said, according to police. “So I always sought it out.”
Gusso arrested Oliveira in June. “What struck me the most was her ability to deceive so many people for so long,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post. “Her strategy was to target small shelters, churches and religious groups, where people’s instinct to help is the very thing she exploited.”
Impersonation scams for financial gain are common. The accusations against Oliveira stand out because her alleged goals were simply room, board and attention.
In November 2020, Oliveira appeared at a shelter for children as Julia, a 12-year-old fleeing an abusive father who dabbled in the occult and forced her into prostitution, shelter staff members say. She explained that she looked like an adult, shelter staff say, because her father had forced her to take hormones.
“The story was remarkably elaborate,” Andreia Ramos, the shelter’s director, said in an interview. “She had no documents or identification, but the horrors she described were so convincing that we believed her.”
A paediatric examination a week later confirmed that Oliveira was an adult, Ramos said. Oliveira abandoned the persona, the director said, and left the clinic. “I never saw her again.”
Psychologists say victims of fraud may overlook inconsistencies in a false story because believing can reinforce a desired image of themselves as caring and compassionate.
In March 2021, Oliveira resurfaced in an online prayer group as Emily, a 12-year-old with leukaemia, according to group members. They say she told them she had lost her mother in a car crash, had been sexually assaulted in the hospital and had an arm amputated. She wore a mask during video calls and refused visits in person.
Tatiane da Silva Lima, a teacher then grieving the death of her pregnant sister-in-law from coronavirus, says she organised prayer vigils for the girl, registered as a bone marrow donor and sent her money. When Emily announced she had beaten cancer, Lima had her name tattooed on her wrist.
Eventually a group member noticed her supposedly amputated arm was intact. Lima called the hospital. There was no Emily.
Lima said she “truly loved” the girl. “She manipulated us into becoming both characters and spectators in her stories,” she told The Post. “I devoted myself to her for 10 months, in which she became the cancer in my own life, because I put everything else aside to care for her.”
Lima and other group members filed a report with police in Paraná, according to their attorney, Caroline Rangel, but it was not investigated. After Oliveira’s arrest in Joinville, police revisited the complaint, leading to the indictment there.
In mid-2023, a girl named Maria Eduarda, or Duda, contacted the Hands that Bless with Love Institute, an organisation in Rio de Janeiro state that works with vulnerable children. She said she had autism and was escaping abuse, the institute’s president Viviane Henriques said. Henriques called a friend, who rented a small house for her in Nova Iguaçu and made her part of the family.
“She wore a hooded sweatshirt at all times, spoke in a childlike voice and never looked at me directly,” Henriques said. “But I got intrigued when I mentioned contacting child protection authorities and she panicked, saying her father would find her and begged me not to.”
Doubts began to grow. Names in her stories could not be found online, Henriques says. She contacted the police. Investigators found Duda was an adult. Her phone contained searches for “how does an autistic person behave” and “how to draw as if you were a victim of abuse”, local police chief Mônica Areal said.
Henriques says she grabbed Oliveira’s arm. “Who are you?” she asked. “Why did you do this to us?”
Oliveira was charged with fraud and identity theft, Areal said, but was released after a hearing as a first-time offender.
Oliveira’s lawyers in Santa Catarina asked the court for a mental health evaluation. The evaluators found signs of possible psychological disorders but concluded that Oliveira understood her actions.
The defence team then commissioned an independent evaluation that diagnosed borderline personality disorder, dependent personality disorder and depression. Judge Rogério Manke declined to consider it and allowed the case to proceed.
At the Joinville police station, investigators say, Oliveira gave her real name and date of birth – she would turn 38 in a week – and said she was adopted as an infant by a security guard and a nurse in Ceará, one of Brazil’s most impoverished states. Her statement was “extremely coherent”, Gusso said. During questioning, investigators said, she said lying had become her way of life.
In 2010, when Oliveira was 22, she told authorities that she was 12 and accused her adoptive father of sexual abuse, according to records kept by the Federal District’s Programme for the Protection of Children and Adolescents at Risk of Death. At the time, her family and witnesses denied the allegations.
After her arrest in Joinville, police say, she told investigators she had suffered emotional neglect as a child. She dropped out of school at 12, she said, left home at 18 and had no contact with her parents since. She told investigators she felt she never had a childhood.
“She seeks attention,” Sarita de Paiva, another of her lawyers, told The Post. “She told me that if she said she was a woman, people would not take care of her.”
Police say Oliveira asked the Joinville couple not to enrol her in school or begin a formal adoption process – her abusive father, she said, might find her.
A relative of the couple grew suspicious, police say. She searched online for adults pretending to be children, found Oliveira’s arrest in Rio, and sent a photo to the couple. The man went to police. Investigators compared the details of the Joinville and Rio cases and arrested Oliveira.
Oliveira arrived at the station in silence. June 2 in Santa Catarina was a chilly late autumn day. She wore only the heart-print shorts and a T-shirt.
The woman who had hoped to adopt her asked if she could get her a sweatshirt, saying: “She might be cold.”