Overview

• Bad Nanny premiered on BBC One on July 8, 2025, unveiling Samantha Cookes’s long-running deception across the UK and Ireland.
• Cookes posed as a nanny, child therapist, surrogate mother and disability activist to defraud families with disabled children of deposits, donations and savings.
• Between 2020 and 2024 she falsely claimed to have Huntington’s disease, unlawfully receiving €60,334 in welfare payments.
• Her identity was unmasked after a TikTok post went viral in late 2022, prompting VICE World News to investigate her decade-long fraud.
• Now serving a three-year prison term in Limerick Prison, her case has renewed calls to strengthen identity verification in childcare, therapeutic services and welfare systems.