Background checks would have revealed 33-year-old Jessica Dreves has prior arrests for petit larceny, drugs and spent time in a Maryland jail for peddling counterfeit currency. The Nassau district attorney said Dreves illegally promised her unborn baby to two couples, who each paid her thousands for rent, food, and medical care. But when it came time to turn over the infant, investigators discovered she had fled to Florida and disappeared with the baby and the cash.

“This adoption scam is every would-be parent’s worst nightmare,” Nassau DA Kathleen Rice said. “The fact that a mother would scheme to sell her own unborn child when that child is already promised to another couple is incomprehensible.”

Read the rest of the article here

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Adoption Agency Ratings

**update**: I just checked and it seems you cannot post anonymously
**update #2**: A reader posted another site where you can submit or read adoption agency reviews: Adoption Agency Reviews

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Warning signs of potential birthparent scams:

One sign alone does not mean you are being scammed. It is the combination of several and your instincts that should make you leary.

A favorite ploy is for a scam artist is to fix you up with a “friend”. That person might pose as an adoptive parent or adoption professional. If this “friend” contacts you through e-mail, it may be the same person posing as two different people. If the meeting is in person, check out all references and trust your instincts.

They may be very willing to match quickly and will say you are perfect, without knowing much about you.

They always have complications with the pregnancy…..they usually claim when you cannot find them, that they were at the emergency room.

They don’t like or want to deal with an attorney or other adoption professional. They’ll say they had a bad experience with an attorney or agency and does not want to work with them again. When pressed, they might accuse you of not trusting her and can even get angry.

They will evade certain details regarding medical attention, signing parental rights, contacting social services or adoption professionals.

They change their story about the pregnancy or situation. If they are talking to several adoptive parents, their story may change because they cannot remember what they said to each one.

They will not give you the name of the doctor or clinic where they’re receiving medical attention.

They will offer to bring the baby to you. This ploy is used to get a plane ticket which can be cashed in later.

Proof or pregnancy or other documents are agreed upon, but never seem to arrive. They seem to always have a reason for not sending you identifying information or cannot believe that you have not received the information. A sudden miscarriage or hospitalization can happen when you request for too much information.

If they do not have a phone number and always wants to call you because of an on going situation, beware! She should have a contact number and complete physical address that you can verify.

They have at least one or more crisis going on in their life and tell you that you are part of the solution. This can include sad stories such as rape and incest. Be sensitive, but do not be drawn into the whole situation.

Usually the motivation for birthmother scams is to take your money. Only give money to a birthmother-to-be through an attorney or qualified adoption professional. The amount limits and circumstances vary by state law.
 
 

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“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
— Anonymous

Agency Fraud (domestic & international):

Get references and contact them. Get references who are at different stages in the process and who have completed adoptions at different times. This is important to detect any changes in treatment as the process progresses and any changes in the agency, facilitator or attorney. Try to get references of people who had problems along the way but were able to overcome them and complete a successful adoption so you can see how the agency responds to and handles problems.

Check an adoption professional or agency out with the licensing authority in its home state. Ask for a record of complaints. The authority is usually the state’s Dept. of Social Services or Dept. of Health and Human Services, except in the case of an adoption agency operating under a lawyer’s license, in which case the authority is the state’s Bar Association. Remember, facilitators are usually unlicensed, unregulated and even illegal in some states.

Check with the foreign country’s US consulate. They may be aware of any problems with the professionals you are considering.

Use the INS and State Dept. websites to be up on all the rules, regulations and situations in whatever country you are considering. In programs where you are allowed to visit the referred child prior to finalizing the adoption, take all possible measures to insure that the adoption will, in fact, be finalized, prior to visiting. This means that you should be sure the child meets the INS definition of an orphan and that other country-specific criteria, such as DNA matching in Guatemala, have been met.

In cases where the biological mother is identified, ask the agency what kind of counseling and support their program offers to biological mothers. The answer may help reveal the agency’s commitment to fair and ethical practices.

Ask about up-front fees. Large amounts of money required before any services are provided should set off alarms and should be thoroughly investigated and compared with other agency fees.

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Adopting a child should be a joyful, positive experience. Unfortunately there will always be those who look to cheat and scam. Use your common sense. One of these signs alone doesn’t mean it’s a scam, but a few should be examined and approached with caution.

Birthmother Scams:

1. Usually the motivation for birthmother scams are to take your money. She needs money for rent, food, etc. Only give money to a birthmother-to-be through an attorney or qualified adoption professional. The amount limits and circumstances vary by state law. Do not give money directly to a birthmother.

2. If the birthmother is not available by phone and wants to call you because of an on going situation, beware! You should have a contact number and complete physical address that you can verify.

3. A birthmother may not even be pregnant or could be pregnant and has other plans for the baby, including keeping the baby or promising the baby to several waiting adoptive parents. Look for those signs.

4. The birthmother has at least one or more crisis in her life and you are part of the solution. This can include sad stories such as rape and incest. Be sensitive, but do not be drawn into the whole situation.

5. The birthmother offers a plan to bring the baby to you. Birthmothers usually want you to meet her and arrange to receive the baby at the hospital. This ploy is used to get a plane ticket which can be cashed in later. Do not give anyone a plane ticket. Many adopting parents have lost money by purchasing a plane ticket and never hearing from the, supposed, birthmother again

5. To have a match, you must meet face to face with the expectant mother. Big flag, the birthmother flakes out. She misses scheduled meetings with you or other professionals. Even with an unbelievable story she can be very convincing.
6. Proof or pregnancy or other documents are agreed upon, but never seem to arrive. She seems to always have a reason for not sending you identifying information or cannot believe that you have not received the information. A sudden miscarriage or hospitalization can happen when you request for too much information.

7. The birthmother does not want you to contact anyone else concerning her pregnancy. She does not feel comfortable meeting or talking with an attorney or other adoption professional. When pressed, she might accuse you of not trusting her and can even get angry.

8. The birthmother will not give you, but will get you the name of her doctor or clinic where she is receiving medical attention.

9. The birthmother will evade certain details regarding medical attention, signing parental rights, contacting social services or adoption professionals.

10. The birthmother changes her story about the pregnancy or her situation. If a birthmother is talking to several adoptive parents, her story can change because she cannot remember what she said to you.

11. Be careful if the birthmother is expecting twins. This is a popular situation with an adoption scam. In the natural course, ask for proof of pregnancy and how are you able to contact her doctor.

12. A favorite ploy is for someone to fix you up with a friend. That person might pose as an adoptive parent and not an adoption professional. Be careful that the friend is not the same person. If both have the same IP address watch out!

13. Fake birthmothers are very willing to match quickly and will say you are perfect, without knowing much about you. They are going to send you pictures and other thing, but never do.

14. They have always had complications with the pregnancy…..they usually claim when you cannot find them that they were at the emergency room.

15. The birthmother does not like or want to deal with an attorney or other adoption professional. She has had a bad experience with an attorney and does not want to work with them again.

Adoption Professional Scams

1. Beware of any adoption professional on the Internet who cannot provide you with information. Get the basics and go from there.

2. If they are an agency, find out the state they are in and their agency license number. It is not necessary for an adoption professional to have a web site, but it helps validate their presence.

3. An adoption facilitator should be carefully looked at, in California, facilitators have to be bonded and in many state they are illegal. You need to research their business.

4. Find out the professionals legal business name, physical address, physical phone number, city business license.

5. If any adoption professional is offended by you asking questions, they are probably not your choice.

6. Check with the Better Business Bureau for any bad reports.

7. Join various Internet egroups or check boards on the Internet for any positive or negative reports.

8. Read any document you sign. Ask the “what if questions”. Anything said verbally is always overridden by the contract. Make sure there is a contract.

9. Do not be lured by the fact if you sign a contract, you will have the baby you want. An adoption usually takes time.

10. If a facilitator does not have an established business with a track record and is unknown to the Internet adoption circle, DO NOT SEND MONEY UP-FRONT. A small application fee is about as far as we would recommend. Have your attorney verify the facilitators qualifications. You will need an attorney anyway.

One of our adoption forum members, Laura, has this to add:

I don’t think we were truly scammed in that the person set out to take our money, however I feel we were not represented to potential birthmothers and we weren’t dealt with honestly. We lost $5000 with a facilitator who basically closed up shop about a year or so after we contracted with her. She didn’t have the decency to tell us this, we learned through the grapevine. Had I not confronted her about it directly I don’t know if she ever would have “told” us she was out of business. During the time she was in business she seems to have had so much going on in her life that I don’t think she was actively doing much if anything to help us find our child. The hardest part about it was we felt we had done our research, checked references etc. She checked out, she flaked on us though. We were the unfortunate ones I guess. I was greatly disappointed as I felt this person had more moral aptitude then to do what she did (especially being an adoptive parent herself). We learned our lesson and it was a costly one but from now on it is agency only for us or little to no upfront cost for us.

Related Tags: adopt, adopting, adoption

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The adoptions were never finalized, but the attempts violated state, federal and foreign law, charges the lawsuit, which promises to fuel international criticism of Utah adoption agencies.

Legacy is the second Utah agency to come under fire recently for work in the Pacific Islands. In March, owners of Focus on Children were indicted for allegedly running a baby-smuggling operation in Samoa.

In those nations, adoptions are casual – children don’t lose ties with their birth parents, they instead create a link between families. And there have been allegations in both countries that birth mothers were falsely promised they would keep close ties with their adopted children.

Legacy’s owner, Teresa Snow of Salt Lake City, did not immediately respond to calls about the suit, filed Tuesday in 3rd District Court. Her agency is no longer licensed in Utah. While a state licensing official said in June that a federal indictment against the agency was pending, the office of the U.S. Attorney for Utah did not comment Thursday.

Vanishing birth mothers:
The nine U.S. families are seeking a refund as well as punitive damages. Most of them are from Utah, with two from Idaho and one in Florida. None would comment, including the group’s lawyer, Rick Rose, who also attempted to adopt a child through the agency and is a plaintiff.

International adoption – including from the tiny Republic of the Marshall Islands – skyrocketed in the late 1990s. But in 2002, evidence of fraud and coercion in the industry spurred a crackdown by Marshallese officials. Legacy was suspended from doing business there in February 2002. Now all adoptions must be done inside the country, and only one U.S. agency is authorized. The government also banned the practice of taking Marshallese women out of the country for the purpose of surrendering children. But in 2006, Legacy still “held itself out as an expert” in Marshallese adoption, according to the lawsuit.
The agency “continuously assured” the prospective adoptive parents that the birth mothers were fully informed of the terms of the adoptions, and promised to arrange travel, medical and housing expenses for the mothers.

Those promises proved false, the suit alleges. In November 2006, after learning the “actual” terms, several Marshallese birth mothers – who had already made the trek to America and been “matched” with families – backed out of the adoptions and returned home, the suit said.

Lindsey Wells, of Willard, is one of the adoptive parents pursuing damages. She declined to discuss the suit Thursday, but said in an earlier interview that she and her husband signed on with Legacy in July 2006. In November, the agency charged her $3,000 to fly a pregnant Marshallese woman to Utah, she said. Wells said she never met the woman, though the agency cashed her check.

‘Meant to be’:
But Ryan and Shirlene Pimentel, of Idaho Falls, say Legacy workers were honest and professional when the couple adopted a Marshallese girl through the agency in 2005. Shirlene Pimentel said she met the girl’s birth mother, Atrine, several times in person, during her pregnancy and shortly after Atrine delivered and surrendered the baby at a Utah hospital. Atrine became pregnant out of wedlock and the baby’s father wouldn’t support her, said Shirlene, who remembers the young woman as a bit shy, but fluent in English and “fully aware” that the adoption was permanent. When Atrine handed the baby over to the Pimentels, she gave the baby a kiss and had tears in her eyes, “but seemed really OK,” said Shirlene. The couple gave their contact information to Atrine, but haven’t heard from her since she returned to the Marshall Islands.

High school sweethearts, the Pimentels dated for eight years before marrying. They tried for eight years to have children before deciding to adopt. They ran into another Idaho family who had adopted from the Marshall Islands and recommended Legacy. The Pimentels, now in their early 30s, took out a second mortgage on their home to cover the expenses, about $20,000. The adoption took about six months.
They can’t imagine life without their now-22-month-old daughter, who they say was a little colicky as an infant, but healthy. The toddler never sits still, is a real “chatter box,” and when she is tired, she sucks on two fingers, said Ryan Pimentel. The family’s small house is on a full acre of land, shared with six cats, two horses and two dogs.

“Things happen for a reason. I believe this child was meant to be with this family,” said Shirlene Pimentel, who would like to adopt another Marshallese child, but fears the “door has closed.”

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Then two years later and still no baby, the agency called them to say they were closing down. They didn’t get their money back.

“You have begged for money, you have saved, you have scrimped. They have all your money,” says the woman who doesn’t want to be identified.

The couple is speaking out because they want others to research thouroughly before choosing an adoption agency.

The agency didn’t close. On Wednesday we told you about another couple that’s suing Adoption Services Worldwide for negligence. They too, say they lost $20,000.

Adoption Services Worldwide has an unsatisfactory record with the Better Business Bureau for not responding to another complaint. The agency tells News-4 that rating is wrong and they’re working to get it corrected.

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