A 38-year-old woman posed as a 12-year-old for 14 months, using baby bottles and dummies, and her defense: ‘I did not intend to scam anyone’
Her lawyers call it a "survival strategy."
Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira, a 38-year-old Brazilian woman, has been sentenced to a year and a half in prison for fraud. According to Daily Mail, she convinced a couple in southern Brazil that she was a 12-year-old girl, and lived with them under that false identity for 14 months. The case began at an evangelical church in Joinville, where Oliveira introduced herself as an 18-year-old named Gabriele looking for work.
A pastor at the church made the introduction, and the couple offered her a place to stay after feeling sorry for her situation. Her story grew more elaborate from there. She eventually told the couple she was actually 12, and said she had fled abuse in a state thousands of miles away, claiming hormone supplements forced on her as a child explained her adult appearance.
The couple believed her account completely. Oliveira lived as their daughter for the next 14 months, adding new lies as time went on, including that she was severely autistic. She began drinking from baby bottles and sucking on dummies, and convinced the couple to pay for a course of weight-loss drugs.
She played the part all the way down to baby bottles
A relative of the couple eventually grew suspicious of her age and raised the alarm. Online research turned up a 2023 report describing a similar scheme run in Rio de Janeiro by someone named Amanda. The person identified in the report was Oliveira. Her composure broke as soon as officers walked into her bedroom, and she began responding to them in her own natural voice.
She later admitted to investigators that she had run the same scheme for at least 15 years across several Brazilian states. “It is clear that I deceived people; I lied. But I did not intend to scam anyone,” she told police. Court records show she posed as a child in nine different Brazilian states, including Parana, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paulo.
Her conviction falls under Article 171 of Brazil’s Penal Code, the country’s core fraud statute, which criminalizes obtaining an illicit advantage by deliberately deceiving or misleading another person to their financial detriment. The base penalty is one to five years in prison plus a fine, and the specific 18-month sentence handed down in this case sits toward the lower end of that range.
A judge in Santa Catarina also rejected her lawyers’ argument that she was mentally ill and therefore not criminally responsible, ruling that her actions were deliberate and conscious. That defense rests on Article 26 of the same code, which exempts a defendant from punishment only if a mental illness left them completely unable to understand that their act was illegal or to control their behavior accordingly. Partial impairment can reduce a sentence by up to two-thirds, but it does not clear a defendant entirely.
Her lawyers say they plan to appeal, arguing she was using a “survival strategy” shaped by a childhood without love or affection. Prosecutors said prison time was warranted given the financial and psychological toll on the family that had taken her in.
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