A Polish national who asserted to be the missing girl "pursued that myth" and stalked the child's family by dispatching electronic messages, placing telephone calls and turning up at their residence, a trial was told.
Karen Spragg and the second defendant conducted a "campaign of harassment", Leicester Crown Court heard, and in Ms Wandelt's case, that occurred over two and a half years.
On Monday, jurors were told Ms Wandelt repeatedly claimed she was Madeleine and was abducted and transported to Poland.
Ms Spragg and Ms Wandelt each deny a count of stalking causing significant distress and anxiety to Madeleine's parents between mid-2022 and February this year.
Madeleine's disappearance in the year 2007 - at the age of three during a family holiday in Portugal - is among the most widely reported child disappearance incidents and continues unresolved.
The prosecutor also spoke of the global attention that the disappearance had brought on the parents.
"Among numerous devastating outcomes for Madeleine's parents has been their ongoing struggle to avoid the spotlight of publicity that accompanied that incident.
"The attention they have received has sometimes lacked compassionate, sometimes quite the opposite.
"There continues to exist a number of people who persist in refusing to recognize their plight and perpetuate conspiracy theories.
"Regrettably, these two defendants belong to that latter group."
Escalating Behavior
Testimony revealed from June 2022, Ms Wandelt had begun to speak to "any willing listener" that she was Madeleine.
The prosecutor said that, in January 2023, the accused was in communication with a organization in Poland created to help with historic missing persons cases and provide assistance and advice to people looking for individuals who had disappeared.
Based on the prosecutor, the defendant first claimed she was missing German girl Inga Gehricke.
But after these claims were ruled out by the charity, Ms Wendalt then reached out to the charity with a conviction she could be Acacia Bishop - a missing baby from Utah in the US - before contacting them about her insistence she was the British missing child.
'Failed to Stop'
Her belief escalated to an effort to contact the hospital where the parents were employed.
A lengthy telephone conversation to the reception led to a notification from the health service representative to the investigation team, the British investigation into the vanishing.
The jury was told the defendant made additional efforts to reach out to officials and then the father personally through electronic mail in June 2023.
In a message, she stated: "I could be your child, there's a chance I am the missing girl."
She added people were "trying to cover up the story" and claimed there were resemblances between her and the child, including having marks in the same places.
But her efforts went unanswered, which court officials said "did not deter" the defendant - who then made communication with Madeleine's younger sister Amelie via online platforms.
Informing her she was her "sole chance", she sent doctored images to show they were "possibly connected" and asserted possessing recollections of life before the abduction, the trial was told.
These assertions, the proceedings revealed, were restated in 2024 when the defendant is alleged to have "consistently" messaged Mrs McCann's cell phone over the span of 24 hours - calling her "mommy", claiming to recall giving food to the family's son Sean, of playing children's games in the rear yard of the family's home in Rothley, Leicestershire, and of the night the disappearance occurred.
In one message, she stated: "I remember you came to my room before the incident, rubbed my head and said 'I love you and I will find you'."
The trial of Ms Wendalt, of Jana Kochanowskiego in the Polish city, the country, and Ms Spragg, of a location in the Welsh city, proceeds.
