Greek authorities found the four-year-old girl during a crackdown on illegal activities by Gypsies living in the area.

Police noticed the girl bore no similarities to the dark-skinned Greek couple she was with and DNA tests confirmed that she was not related to them. 

The girl was living in a camp with 13 other children, and police believe that at least 10 of them are victims of an international child trafficking ring.

Some theories hold that Madeleine McCann, who was abducted in Portugal on a family vacation in 2007, may have met a similar fate. The discovery of ‘Maria,’ in Greece has given the McCanns hope that their daughter is still alive. 

Madeleine, then three years old, was abducted when her parents left her alone with her baby twin siblings to eat dinner with friends. Although her mother checked the room regularly, someone most likely had snuck in the window and taken Madeleine, leading authorities to believe that her abduction was planned. 

Police are now looking into a new suspect they overlooked six years earlier. He was seen carrying a child away from the same apartment complex about 45 minutes before Madeleine’s mother discovered her missing.

‘Maria,’ the child found with the Gypsies, has since been taken into custody and is undergoing treatment by child psychologists. 

Reach Executive Producer Anne Artley here