TV | Lies, aliases and a viral deception: Inside the Bad Nanny scandal

Samantha Cookes

Carrie Jade Williams appeared on social media in 2022, telling her ‘heart-wrenching’ story of living with the degenerative Huntington’s disease.

Her emotional videos and pleas for understanding struck a chord with many people. But when one of these posts went viral, questions started to be asked about the truthfulness of Carrie Jade Williams’ story.

Before long, some social media ‘sleuths’ discovered that ‘Carrie Jade’ wasn’t this person’s real identity. And much else of what they uncovered was even more shocking.

Bad Nanny is a new two-part series which tells the story of the real person behind the name Carrie Jade – a serial con-artist with multiple assumed identities.

The series features interviews with the online investigators who discovered that the woman’s real name is Samantha Cookes and that that she wasn’t just faking illness but had a hidden past, filled with deception and troubling claims dating back more than a decade.

Samantha Cookes had also posed as a nanny, often for vulnerable families, as well as a child therapist and even a surrogate mother, all while hiding her true identity.

The series hears from the victims who were conned by Samantha’s fraudulent identities and scams across the UK and Ireland. Some of them had welcomed her into their homes, including a couple from North Yorkshire who talk for the first time about how Samantha posed as a surrogate mother to defraud them of their savings.

A mother of three tells the programme how she believed she was hiring a ‘Mary Poppins-like au-pair’ at their home in County Offaly. She explains how Samantha (using the alias ‘Lucy Hart’) offered a desperately-needed childcare solution, before disappearing and leaving an ominous note that left her fearful for her children’s safety.

Bad Nanny also includes three women from Dublin who describe how Samantha posed as a therapist for children with additional needs under the alias ‘Lucy Fitzwilliams’. They tell how ‘Lucy’ earned their trust by seeking donations for a women’s refuge and collecting money for a bogus trip to Lapland. When they discovered that ‘Lucy’ wasn’t who she said she was, she fled.

A neighbour and Samantha’s landlord explain how she moved to County Kerry where she adopted another identity: as a terminally-ill author with only months to live. She received support, sympathy and even financial aid, including welfare payments from the Irish state.

Through first-person testimony from Samantha’s victims, the UK police, those who knew her and the social media ‘sleuths’ who exposed her, the series shows the making and unmasking of a modern-day imposter.

Bad Nanny is co-production for BBC Northern Ireland and RTÉ produced by Alleycats TV. It will be available to watch now on the BBC iPlayer and RTÉ Player.

The first episode will air on BBC One Northern Ireland on Wednesday 14 May at 10.40pm.