Samantha Cookes: ‘I used to be scared con-artist would abduct my kid’

A serial con-artist who posed as a kid therapist and scammed households out of cash for a pretend go back and forth to Lapland left other people terrified, considered one of her sufferers has mentioned.

Samantha Cookes used more than one identities – together with a nanny, an arts instructor and a surrogate mom – to con households in the United Kingdom and Ireland between 2011 and 2024.

Over the years she has been convicted of more than one offences and was once sentenced to a few years in jail previous in 2025 for social welfare fraud.

Now her sufferers have instructed a brand new documentary by means of the BBC and RTÉ about their ordeal with the serial scammer – together with one mom who was once so taken with her nine-year-old’s protection that she slept with a hatchet beside her mattress.

Dublin girl Lynn McDonald instructed the filmmakers that Cookes, who was once born in Gloucestershire, England, had advanced a bond of consider together with her daughter Ellie once they met in 2016.

But that bond unravelled after she and others found out she was once a rip-off artist.

Cookes, now 36, later fled, leaving Lynn frightened “she would come back in the middle of the night and take my child”.

Lynn first met Cookes, who she knew as Lucy Fitzwilliams, in 2016.

She was once offered to the scammer by means of a chum when she was once experiencing a troublesome time and wanted extra strengthen.

Lynn’s more youthful daughter, Daisy, was once born in 2013 with Rett syndrome, an extraordinary genetic dysfunction that is affecting mind building, leading to critical psychological and bodily incapacity.

In her guise as a kid therapist, Cookes got here two times per week to offer Ellie, Lynn’s older daughter, one-on-one time.

“There was definitely a bond of trust. Ellie was trusting her with her secrets and her worries,” Lynn mentioned.

“I don’t think anybody, when they meet her, knew what’s really underneath that skin.”

Hillery Geelan, some other mom from Dublin who was once deceived by means of Cookes, mentioned: “She finds your weak point and your weak point is always going to be your children.”

She mentioned she was once “desperate” for lend a hand together with her son Rhys, who has autism, and had “nowhere else to turn”.

Cookes earned the households’ consider, searching for donations for a ladies’s shelter and accumulating cash for the faux Lapland go back and forth.

Lynn paid a deposit of £400 to Cookes.

However, her behaviour across the go back and forth was once beginning to lift suspicions.

“Each one [of us] had involved other people, and each one of us who had involved other people had to collect the money,” Hillery mentioned.

“We started Googling how many seats were on airplanes but, by the sounds of it and the amount of people that we were involving, we had personally sold at least five airplanes.”

In the top, the ladies found out there was once no Lapland go back and forth and no ladies’s shelter – even though they’d given Cookes donations of meals, garments and cash.

When Cookes realised the households knew she was once a scammer, she fled.

Hillery mentioned the households “lived in fear for a very long time” whilst Lynn recalled that Cookes had requested her to signal a consent shape for the Lapland go back and forth.

She didn’t signal it however the shape, which might have allowed Cookes to take Ellie in another country with out Lynn, raised her fears that the scammer will have attempted to abduct her daughter.

“When you discover that Lapland isn’t happening… you question: ‘Why did she want consent to take my child abroad?'” Lynn mentioned.

She mentioned when Cookes fled, it left her afraid as no person knew the place she was once.

“We had police circling our area, our home was on red alert, I had to have cameras put up around my home,” she mentioned.

The BBC put all the allegations to Cookes, however she didn’t reply.

Cookes’ tale started to resolve additional when she gave the impression on TikTok in 2022 below the title Carrie Jade Williams, giving an account of allegedly residing with the degenerative Huntington’s illness.

She gained strengthen or even monetary support, together with welfare bills from the Irish state.

When considered one of her posts went viral, some social media sleuths found out that Carrie Jade was once now not her actual identification and she or he was once faking her sickness.

Women suffering from her scams throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland arrange a WhatsApp crew referred to as Scammed by means of Samantha.

“We’ve stopped talking about her and now we talk about ourselves,” Hillery mentioned.

Bad Nanny can be to be had on BBC iPlayer from Monday 12 May and the primary episode will air on BBC One Northern Ireland on Wednesday 14 May at 22:40 BST.