A woman who harassed the family of Madeleine McCann and claimed to be the missing girl has been sentenced to six months in prison.

Julia Wandelt, 24, from Lublin in Poland, was found guilty this morning of harassing the McCann family by sending emails, leaving voicemails, and turning up at their home in Rothley in Leicestershire, between June 2022 and February this year.

The judge told Wandelt her “pestering” and “badgering” of the McCanns was “unwarranted” and “unkind”.

She told the defendant: “They were entitled to refuse to engage with you, particularly in the sad circumstances in which they live with the disappearance of Madeleine.

“They have suffered from that disappearance of their young child for many years, they are entitled to their privacy and to get on with their lives in the best way they can and to decide with whom and with whom not they will engage.

“Your constant pestering, badgering and eventually attendance at their home address on a dark evening in December was unwarranted, unkind, and as the jury have now found, criminal.”

Madeleine was nearly four when she went missing in the Algarve on May 3 2007Madeleine was nearly four when she went missing in the Algarve on May 3 2007Credit: ITV Central

Madeleine went missing in Portugal in 2007 and the case has never been solved.

Julia Wandelt was told that she was convicted of a “summary offence” which meant she could only be jailed for six months.

Mrs Justice Cutts told her: “You have served more than that in the time that you have been on remand awaiting your trial.

“It’s a sentence I impose on you today.”

She was also made subject of a restraining order against Kate and Gerry McCann because she poses a “significant risk of the harassment of the McCanns in future”, her trial judge has said.

She has been served with a notice of deportation which means it rests with the Home Secretary to decide the next steps, not the trial judge.

Julia Wandelt has been claiming to be Madeleine McCann for almost two years. She said she first started to believe she was Madeleine in June 2022.

She started posting on social media in early 2023, comparing photos of herself as a child to Madeleine.

Her posts went viral, and on 27 March 2023, she appeared on the popular American talk show “Dr Phil”, where she repeated her claims.

The Crown put forward “unequivocal scientific evidence” from a forensic expert that shows Wandelt does not match Madeleine’s DNA profile, and she has no familial link to the McCanns.

Wandelt told Leicester Crown Court she had childhood memories of being with the McCann family, including playing ring-a-ring-a-roses and feeding Madeleine’s younger brother Sean, as well as memories of being abducted and abused.