Julia Faustyna became an internet celebrity earlier this month when she claimed to be Madeleine McCann, the three-year-old girl who was abducted from her bed in Portugal in May 2007 while on vacation with her parents at a resort.
Julia initially posted the claim on Instagram before releasing TikTok videos. She now has over one million Instagram followers.
Julia is an aspiring model, making some people suspicious. Could she be the real Madeleine?
On Instagram, she wrote, “I started doing my own research, I discovered what happened to Madeleine McCann and I connected the dots, I need to know the truth. I need [a] dna test and I need to talk with Madeleine’s parents. Help me!”
The parents of the missing girl, Gerry and Kate McCann, have consented to undergo a DNA test to discover if they are linked to Faustyna, according to sources quoted by The Daily Beast.
On May 3, 2007, their daughter was last seen napping next to her twin two-year-old siblings while on vacation in Praia de Luz.
Madeleine, who if alive would be 19 years old, is thought to be deceased. It is assumed she was killed the night of her alleged abduction.
Faustyna says she is a 21-year-old musician and hopes to be a successful model.
She has briefly discussed her personal life. She says she attended school irregularly as a child.
Faustyna claims she cannot recall large sections of her early childhood, is uncertain of her age, and has never seen her birth certificate. She says she doesn’t remember most of her upbringing but can remember holidays in a hot place and a beach. She says she can’t remember her family in her memories.
Faustyna is originally from Poland and presently resides in Germany.
There is no proof that Faustyna is the missing British child but there are some strange similarities. A few months ago, the 21-year-old reportedly learned that she could be the missing Madeleine from her grandmother.
She has posted about similar physical characteristics between little Madeleine and herself, including a brown mark seen on the iris of each girl. She believes their faces when young are similar, and posted photos on Instagram of her and Madeleine to compare. She has a mark on her cheek in the same place as Madeleine, as seen in photos.
Faustyna also claimed that she is suspicious of her parents because she has never seen images of her mother while she was pregnant.
She posted on Instagram a police artist’s depiction of a man who witnesses saw carrying away a small child in the Portugal resort area where Madeleine’s parents were staying, on the night she vanished. She wrote that she recognized the man and he resembled her “abuser.”
Faustyna said she was victimized by a “German pedophile” without providing further details.
Francisco Marco, a private investigator with ties to the Madeleine McCann case, expressed skepticism about her statements, stating that it doesn’t make sense to him.
Faustyna is not the first girl to claim she is Madeleine.
In 2017, a young university student in Manchester claimed to have the same brown spot on her iris and a similar mole on her thigh.
Another was a girl who lived in Rome but said she was British. Her claims were also spread on social media.
Both claims turned out to be bogus.
Faustyna’s family has reportedly refused to take a DNA test to solve the mystery. Her mother says she has proof that the girl is her biological daughter. That remains to be seen.
