Andre Rebelo was drowning in debt – information that he hid from his influencer girlfriend – so he came up with a shocking plan to make money that ended in a brutal tragedy
They were a couple with a seemingly enviable life. It was 2020 and Andre Rebelo was a crypto currency trader and his girlfriend of several years was social media influencer and model Gracie Piscopo, who had more than one million Instagram followers.
They had a son together and shared their glamorous lifestyle with their fans online. Rebelo and Gracie lived in a rented luxury home in Perth, Australia. They enjoyed lavish overseas holidays and drove expensive cars.
Rebelo had been a supermarket delivery driver, who everyone believed had built his wealth from crypto trading, but he was hiding a secret. He had told everyone he was coming into $500,000 due to the success of his business, but that was a lie. In reality, after trading for around three years, he was $100,000 in debt and struggling to provide what was needed to keep up the appearance of his extravagant life.
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Gracie was unaware of the extreme debt as Rebelo handled their finances. While she earned money as an influencer with growing popularity, the price of their lifestyle was going up in cost too and Rebelo was running out of time to pay off his debts.
On 25 May, 2020, Rebelo’s brother Fabian, 23, was concerned when his mum Colleen, 58, didn’t pick him up from work at 2pm as planned. Fabian lived with his mum, while his older three siblings, including Rebelo, had left home.
Fabian tried to call his mum and, when there was no answer, he walked to their home in Bicton. He could hear the shower running in the en suite bathroom, but Colleen didn’t reply when he called out.
Worried, he entered the bathroom and found his mum slumped on her knees under the running water. He called the emergency services and performed CPR, but she was pronounced dead at the scene by the paramedics.
Colleen’s cause of death was undetermined but it wasn’t considered suspicious, despite her being healthy. She’d been found wearing mascara and gold jewellery in the shower, which was unusual. The shower mat was draped over the side of the bath as well, but her death was put down to natural causes.
Three days after her death, Rebelo tried to claim on her life insurance. Collectively, the three policies were worth more than $1.15 million and shockingly, despite having three siblings, he appeared to be the sole beneficiary. He particularly pursued one policy that was worth $500,000 – the exact amount he had told Gracie was coming from his trading.
Suspicious behaviour
An insurance company employee grew suspicious as they asked for more paperwork. Rebelo provided fake copies of a coroner’s report that said Colleen’s cause of death was an aneurysm, a fake report from his mum’s psychologist and a forged copy of her will that again named him as the sole beneficiary. The insurance company contacted the police and alerted them to Rebelo’s behaviour. Investigators discovered that Rebelo had taken out three policies on his mum in her name in the week before she had died.
After initially denying seeing his mum on the day of her death, his phone records placed him at the house for an hour, just two hours before she was found in the shower. Rebelo eventually said they’d had coffee and when he’d left, she was alive.
The police discovered Rebelo was heavily in debt, and had been using loans and credit cards to keep up the pretence of wealth. Debt collectors had been pursuing him and he was going to struggle to pay the rent on the home he shared with Gracie and their son.
In October 2020, he was charged with forgery offences. In November 2022, there was enough evidence to charge him with his mum’s murder. By the time the trial took place in 2024, Gracie and Rebelo had ended their relationship. She wasn’t accused of any wrongdoing.
At the trial, Rebelo denied killing his mum but on the first day, he pleaded guilty to four counts of attempts to defraud the insurance company and admitted to forging documents to try to get a payout from one policy. He claimed he was doing it to help his siblings get the money they were due because he feared his mum had taken her own life and that would have made the policies void.
The prosecution said he had murdered his mum because he needed the money to cover his lies and maintain the illusion of his wealth. They alleged he’d only ever made $22 in all of his crypto trades. They said his pursuit of his “plastic existence”, which was played out on social media, led him to murder.
“To the outside world they were rich and beautiful, but the truth was different,” the prosecution said.
They showed the court that Rebelo had created an email address in his mum’s name and taken out three policies between 18 and 20 May.
On 25 May, he’d visited his mum and stayed for an hour. Two hours later she was found slumped in the shower.
The court heard that Colleen’s cause of death could have been asphyxiation, including by smothering, but it couldn’t be confirmed.
Rebelo took the stand and said he hadn’t told the police he’d seen his mum on the day of her death because he was not in “the right state of mind”. He said again that his mother may have taken her own life, which is why he had committed fraud.
Stripped of dignity
After an eight-week trial, Rebelo, 29, was found guilty. In April 2025, he was sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in prison. Rebelo’s sentence was backdated to 22 November, 2022, when he was taken into custody.
The judge said the facts about Colleen’s death might never be known but Rebelo had staged the scene so it would look like she’d died of natural causes.
“The only reasonable inference is that you took your mother by surprise,” said the judge. “You used personal violence to kill her. You staged your mother in the shower to make it look like she died of natural causes. In doing so you stripped her of dignity.”
The judge said the crime was premeditated and monstrous. “The persona you had created alongside Ms Piscopo was more important to you than your familial connection to your mother,” he added.
Outside court, Rebelo’s father Antonio Rebelo said he continued to stand by his son.