Anne Genduso: She told everyone she was 12, and she lived with a

foster family for more than a year.

The problem?

She was really a 37-year-old woman.

Welcome to Nothing Felt Wrong, where we share stories about scams, deception,

and manipulation, and how ordinary people get pulled into situations that feel

believable until suddenly they don't.

I'm Anne Genduso, and if you're fascinated by deception and human behavior, come take

a seat next to me at the Side Eye Society.

Today's story is about a woman in Brazil whose story has

captivated the entire world, just maybe not in the way she hoped.

For years, Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira lived free of rent payments,

grocery costs, and utility bills, all thanks to the compassion of others

who wanted to help a vulnerable child live a stable, happy life,

Until she got convicted of fraud.

So how does a grown woman fool so many people into believing

she was a child, and for so long?

Let's dig in together.

When the girl arrived in her new home in Santa Catarina it seemed like

this would be a welcome start to the next chapter in her turbulent life.

She was on her way to stay with her new foster family, located in the largest

city in the southern Brazilian state.

And at just 12 years old, the girl calling herself Gabriele appeared

to have already endured more hardships than most children her age.

In her high-pitched voice, she told people she'd been abused.

She also explained she had autism and she'd been forced to take

hormones at a young age, and she had other health problems.

And on top of it all, her family had abandoned her.

So the foster family stepped in to help.

They formed a close bond with the girl, treating her as

if she were their own child.

They gave her a room fully decorated with toys.

They threw her a birthday party celebrating her twelfth birthday,

and they took care of all of her health needs, even paying for

treatment with weight loss medication.

And Gabriele often acted much younger than twelve.

She drank from baby bottles, used pacifiers, and even slept

with a child's comfort object, kinda like a woobie or a blankie.

But considering the traumatic childhood she described, perhaps

that didn't seem so strange.

Despite having a safe, stable home life now, it seemed the girl's troubled

past still affected her daily life.

She asked her foster parents not to enroll her in school or begin a formal

adoption process, worried that her abusive father might find her that way.

So the family did what they thought would be best to keep everyone safe,

and for a little more than a year, all seemed well in their new family.

But the foster parents had no idea that their entire world together

would soon change because Gabriele wasn't really Gabriele, and she

certainly wasn't 12 years old.

She was actually Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira, a woman in her late 30s.

In June 2026, the girl's comfortable life with her foster

family came to an abrupt end.

You see, not everyone was fully convinced she was who she said she was.

A relative of the foster family felt like something was off and they

questioned if she was really a child.

First, the relative referred to as an aunt brought her suspicions to the

foster father but he didn't believe Amanda could be deceiving them.

So she turned to the internet searching online for adults

pretending to be children.

And she found the evidence she needed and she sent a photo to the couple.

This time The man believed it and he contacted the local authorities.

Police began investigating.

On June 2nd, 2026, Police Chief Rodrigo Gusso went to the family's home, where

Amanda was arrested on suspicion of fraud and using a false identity.

And almost immediately, Amanda dropped her ruse.

According to The Washington Post, at the sight of police officers in her room,

she stood, dropped her voice to a lower register, and asked, " Should I come with

you?" Amanda wasn't accused of stealing huge sums of money from the family.

In fact, investigators said she wasn't receiving money from them directly.

But that didn't mean she wasn't benefiting from the deception.

And this wasn't the first time she'd done it.

Amanda's history of deception seems to span nearly her entire adult life.

So for purposes of this story, we won't go through each and every one because

it would literally take all day, but let's look at some of the highlights.

One particularly elaborate deception unfolded in 2021.

Amanda joined an online prayer group in Parana, this time calling

herself Emily and claiming to be a 13-year-old girl with terminal leukemia.

Members of the group Became deeply invested in the sick child they

thought they were supporting.

One of them, a teacher named Tatiana da Silva Lima, later told The Washington

Post that Emily claimed her mother had died in a car accident, she'd

been assaulted in the hospital, and one of her arms had been amputated.

Tatiana organized prayer vigils for the girl.

She registered as a bone marrow donor, and she even sent her money.

And when Emily announced that she'd beaten cancer, Tatiana did something

to permanently commemorate the girl she'd spent so much time praying for.

She had Emily's name tattooed on her wrist.

But eventually members of the group began noticing things that didn't add

up, so they contacted hospitals looking for Emily, but there was no Emily.

And that was far from the only time Amanda had allegedly done something like this.

Just before she came to the foster family, she had been using a different

manipulation playbook throughout Brazil.

According to Metropolis, in 2023, Amanda allegedly convinced two women in Nova

Iguaçu, Rio de Janeiro, including a former city councilwoman, to pay for her

housing and personal expenses, including clothes, food, and hygiene items.

And the story she told may seem familiar.

Metropolis reported that Amanda said she was a 12-year-old named Maria

Eduarda who had fled the northeast to escape exploitation and ongoing

abuse from her parents, who had also practiced witchcraft on her.

In an effort to explain her older appearance, she told the woman

her parents had given her hormone injections since she was four years

old, but the story quickly unraveled.

Because of her reported sexual exploitation, Amanda was taken

to the police, and from there, an investigation revealed she

was actually a woman in her 30s.

But getting caught didn't deter Amanda.

She continued deceiving people in shockingly similar

incidents throughout 2023.

According to the Diário de Pernambuco , Amanda was taken in that

year by at least three facilities that were part of the Recife City

Hall's Social Assistance Network, including a shelter for teenagers.

Like before, she presented herself as a child who was twelve years old.

A psychologist who had treated her in the social assistance network

told the newspaper that the team never believed she was a minor.

" She would carry a teddy bear under her arm."

She said she had suffered sexual abuse and that she had needles all over her

body," the psychologist recounted.

While Amanda demonstrated childish behavior, the psychologists said that

they perceived traits of an adult woman, and it seemed her behavior

was a performance, not genuine.

She said Amanda became particularly evasive and irritated when they tried to

help her obtain identification documents, which raised even more suspicion.

They wondered if she may have been trying to hide her identity

after committing a crime.

At one point during her time in Recife, Amanda was taken to police

because of the inconsistencies in her story during the admission

process at one of the facilities.

However, she was released after processing.

And after trying another facility in the network, which quickly uncovered

she was the same individual from before, she finally left on her own.

After Recife, in September 2023, Amanda made her way to Florianopolis, Santa

Catarina She showed up at a children's hospital claiming to be a 13-year-old

named Carolina da Silva Bastos.

She complained of severe abdominal pain, and this time, at least

that part of her story was real.

Hospital imaging revealed multiple needles inside of her body, but

it's unclear how they got there.

And this wasn't the first time needles had been found in Amanda's body.

According to Brazilian news outlet G1, back in 2010, Amanda walked into

a women's police station in Fortaleza and claimed she was 12 years old even

though she was actually 22 at that time.

She accused her parents of sexually abusing her and said they'd

inserted needles and other objects into her body during what she

described as black magic rituals.

And here's where things get especially strange.

An X-ray taken at the time really did show needles as well

as a key inside Amanda's body.

Her parents denied the allegations, and they presented a birth

certificate proving Amanda's true age.

Investigators also interviewed neighbors and witnesses, whose accounts reportedly

conflicted with Amanda's story.

But one mystery remained: how those objects actually got inside Amanda's body.

According to G1, that was never established

Needles were also a part of Amanda's story in 2017.

That year, Amanda was taken in by a social assistance project in Belo

Horizonte, this time presenting herself as a teenager named Karol.

According to the director of the organization, Amanda arrived with around

200 wounds from needles on her body.

She claimed she'd escaped sexual exploitation and had been

tortured with sewing needles.

And once again, the injuries appeared to be real, but how they got there and who

was responsible for them remained unclear.

So by the time Amanda showed up at the Children's Hospital in

Florianopolis in 2023, this was the third time needles had surfaced in

her story over more than a decade.

But that didn't stop her.

In August 2024, Amanda was in Goiania, Goiás, once again presenting herself as

a child who'd been abused and exploited.

This time authorities quickly discovered her true identity and Amanda was arrested.

But within months another chapter began.

Amanda had spent years presenting herself as a vulnerable child to

people and organizations across Brazil.

But when she arrived in the community that would eventually connect her with

the family from the beginning of our story, She did something different.

This time, she presented herself as an adult, kind of-- legally an adult anyway.

According to the police investigator who handled the case, Amanda

approached members of an evangelical community looking for a job.

She reportedly said she was eighteen years old and had experience baking,

so the community helped her find work.

But after Amanda reportedly became ill on the job, her story suddenly changed.

Now, she said she wasn't an adult after all.

She was actually a child running from an abusive family, and she needed help.

So the community rallied to get her the support that any child in that

situation would need, and they connected her with the Joinville foster family.

And when you look at these stories together, there's a pattern.

Amanda didn't just create a false identity.

She created scenarios designed to make people want to protect her.

She was abused, abandoned, sick.

She was being exploited.

And when something about her story might raise questions, she

seemed to have an explanation ready before anyone even asked.

Her older appearance?

She'd been given hormones.

No school or adoption paperwork?

Well, her abusive father might find her.

Suspicions that could have exposed her deception became

part of the story supporting it.

And Amanda's extensive history of lying raised even more questions.

Why would a thirty-seven-year-old woman spend years pretending to be a child?

What did she get out of such a large scale deception?

And did she even care about the people who helped her that she

hurt and defrauded along the way?

Police and prosecutors were determined to find out So one thing that struck me

while we were researching this case is just how quickly the Brazilian judicial

process moved, especially compared with the pace many of us are used

to seeing here in the United States.

After Amanda's arrest in June 2026, the Santa Catarina court ordered a

forensic mental health examination.

But the question wasn't simply whether Amanda was mentally fit to stand trial.

The examination would help determine whether a mental disorder had affected her

ability to understand what she was doing or control her actions at the time of the

alleged crimes potentially reducing or eliminating her criminal responsibility.

The official Polícia cientifica examiner diagnosed a condition consistent with

antisocial personality disorder while finding no impairment in her ability

to understand the illegality of her conduct or control her behavior.

The report concluded she understood what she was doing and reportedly

observed manipulative behavior and an absence of guilt or remorse.

According to The Washington Post, Amanda admitted to the police,

quote, "Of course I deceived people. I lied," end quote, but maintained

she hadn't intended to scam anyone.

Police Chief Rodrigo Bueno Gusso described what Amanda had done to the family

as holding them emotionally hostage.

quote, " It was a family in a good financial situation, so she lived

a very good life as a teenager."

End quote.

He told Brazil media outlet G1 Quote, "During the time she was with the

family, she didn't receive money directly, but they provided her with

the best of everything." End quote.

But the defense team disagreed and they decided to conduct

their own investigation.

They hired a forensic psychiatrist and a legal psychologist from São Paulo.

And while Amanda was incarcerated, they interviewed her

extensively by video conference.

In the end, they produced a sixty-six page private expert report which proposed

psychiatric diagnoses for Amanda: borderline personality disorder, dependent

personality disorder, and depression.

The case was quickly brought to trial in August 2026.

The court ordered that the case would be under judicial secrecy,

which means the court records weren't available to the general public.

The Judicial Secrecy Order also protected the identity of the foster family, which

I'm sure they appreciated considering that their lives were completely upended after

Amanda's deception.

So what we report next comes from the court's official statement along with

media interviews held with police, lawyers, and others involved in the case.

On August 19th, 2026, media reports indicate the court heard from the couple

who took Amanda in, another relative appearing for the prosecution, the

civil police officer responsible for the investigation, and two defense experts,

a psychologist and a psychiatrist.

It seems Amanda also testified herself.

And during the trial, one of the biggest disputes centered on those

two very different assessments of Amanda's mental state and criminal

responsibility, and they came to substantially different conclusions.

The defense experts say that she suffered from severe childhood

emotional neglect, and her behavior was an attempt to get the parental

care she never received as a child.

According to The Washington Post, Amanda told investigators that

she'd dropped out of school at 12, left home at 18, and hadn't been

in contact with her parents since.

She said she'd felt she never really had a childhood.

One of her lawyers, Lúcio Sousa went on to say, quote, "She admits that she

invented an identity. It was the way she found to survive. 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."

End quote.

The prosecution naturally disagreed and sought conviction.

They pointed to evidence from a seized cellphone, victim and witness

testimony, and Amanda's own admission that she had used a false name and age.

They also argued that a financial loss had occurred constituting fraud

and that Amanda's own statements to police supported that argument.

They pointed to police questioning during the interrogation when police asked what

she received from the foster family.

Amanda reportedly answered, quote, " Just food, clothes, a place to

sleep, things like that," end quote.

But those things come with an associated cost.

They argued that housing, food, transportation, medication, and other

expenses constituted an economic benefit and they were obtained through deception.

In other words, Amanda had committed fraud.

Ultimately, the judge agreed.

On August 20, 2026, Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira was convicted of fraud

and false identity by the Court of Justice of Santa Catarina in Brazil.

A press release explaining the court's decision said the court found

Amanda took financial advantage of her foster family since they fully

covered her living expenses during the 14 months she lived with them.

The release said that evidence presented in the case determined that

she acted consciously with intent to deceive the victims and obtain

material benefits due to the fictitious identities she created and maintained.

The court also considered the emotional impacts on the family

when making the decision.

As a result, Amanda was sentenced to one year, six months, and 10 days in prison,

plus four months and 18 days of detention under an initial semi-open regime.

But what does that mean exactly?

In Brazil, an semi-open regime is a step down from the traditional

closed prison like many of us think of in the United States.

Instead, people are typically housed in a lower security facility, like an

agricultural or an industrial colony where they can work during the day, and

in some circumstances may be allowed to work or study outside the facility.

But that doesn't mean Amanda's about to walk out of prison.

The judge maintained her preventative detention and ruled she cannot

appeal the conviction while free.

It seems those appeal efforts are already underway at the time of this recording.

Amanda's legal team have announced plans to challenge the ruling and

will continue their efforts to prove her innocence But Amanda's legal

troubles are only just beginning.

In addition to this conviction, Paraná Police are pursuing a

separate fraud case against her.

Remember the girl Emily who was supposedly dying of leukemia?

Yeah, that's catching up to Amanda.

And there are ongoing investigations in other jurisdictions.

I'll be keeping a close watch to see what happens in other courtrooms and

will report updates as they come.

Amanda Maria Souza de Oliveira allegedly spent the majority of

her adult life deceiving people.

And arresting officer Gusso told The Washington Post that he was struck

by her ability to do so for so long.

He said, quote, " Her strategy was to target small shelters, churches and

religious groups where people's instinct is to help the very thing she exploited."

End quote When compassion is weaponized, it's easier to get people to explain

away small signs that something's wrong or even glaring red flags like

a significantly older appearance because the victims genuinely

want to help someone who needs it.

Someone who's vulnerable.

It's an ingrained part of their value system and prey on that.

They turn compassion into their victim's biggest vulnerability.

Today's story wasn't about whether or not Amanda was guilty of deception.

Amanda openly admitted she lied about her identity and deceived those

around her for years while pretending to be a child, and even when she

had been caught, she didn't stop.

She simply moved on to the next place with a new identity and a new story in tow.

Today's story was about whether or not her actions resulted in legal fraud.

Amanda maintains that she didn't intentionally defraud anyone financially,

but while she may not have intended to defraud people, the court ruled otherwise.

Her foster family spent cold hard cash on feeding her, getting clothes,

buying toys to play with, providing trips to the doctor and medications

to keep her healthy, giving her a warm, stable place to stay.

And that's not to mention the emotional investment they made, the love they

gave to a girl that they treated as their own daughter for more than a year.

They opened their hearts and their home to what they thought was a vulnerable little

girl needing help, only to discover she was a fully grown woman who may have known

exactly what she was doing all along.

I can only hope that the couple is able to heal from this awful experience

and continue to support children who really need it, because there are

so many out there Look, Amanda may have genuine psychological issues,

and it's heartbreaking to think that someone felt like they needed to go

to the extreme of pretending to be a child just to make up for love they

didn't receive when they were younger, if that's really what happened.

We don't know.

Was her deception a good faith attempt to get love and

affection even though misguided?

Or was that just a convenient excuse for her to use while trying to get

out of trouble once she was caught?

We may never fully know if this was an instance of compulsive identity

fabrication, cold calculated fraud or maybe even a combination of

the two because the only person who truly knows the intent behind

her actions is Amanda herself.

But regardless of what she intended, it's never okay to inflict financial

and psychological harm on others.

And in this case Brazil's legal system agrees.

All right, side-eyers.

Thank you so much for joining me today for this truly outrageous story.

Please do me a favor and like and subscribe, or if you're

listening on a podcast app, please leave a rating and review.

That way, you'll never miss a thing, and you'll help more side-eyers find

the show so they can start spotting deceptive tactics before it's too late.

Let's leave you with this week's side eye question: What would you do if you

were in the Foster family situation?

Would you have questioned a little girl's story that she was given

hormones from an abusive family?

Drop your response in the comments and let me know what you think.

And I'll leave you today with this reminder: You can be

compassionate while still holding boundaries to protect yourself.

So if something feels off, don't just brush it aside and listen to your gut.

I'll be back again next week, and until then, keep your side eye sharp

because nothing felt wrong until it did.

You can find all the resources for this story in the show notes.