Samantha Cookes

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Samantha Jade Cookes (born 1988 in Gloucestershire, UK) is a serial fraudster with multiple criminal convictions. First convicted in the UK in 2011, between 2014 and 2024 she perpetrated multiple scams in Ireland under the pseudonyms Carrie Jade Williams, Jade O'Sullivan, Jade Cooke, Rebecca Fitzgerald, Lucy FitzWilliams, and Sadie Harris. Often posing as a nanny or children's therapist, Cookes gained the trust of unsuspecting families, before fleeing when her deceptions were uncovered. In 2020, posing as a writer with Huntington's disease, she won the Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize. Two years later, she appeared on social media platform TikTok, where her claims of being discriminated against because of her illness went viral. An investigation into these claims by Vice World News led to the exposure of her many other scams. After repeatedly evading Gardaí, in July 2024 she was arrested in Tralee, Ireland for welfare fraud, deception, and theft. Remanded in custody for ten months, in March 2025...

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