Has anyone here know someone or themselves been part of a horrible adoption scan?

Question

please share your stories....

Answer 1

For the record, a mother changing her mind is not a "scam".  While I do agree that there are women who fake pregnancies or even go through with adoption plans with no intention of placing their babies, but to say it is a scam when a mother holds her infant and then changes her mind?  She is in no way obligated to hand over her baby.  Nothing a mother signs is legally binding because the baby is not born yet, so she has EVERY RIGHT to change her mind.  I am for adoption completely, I am a birthmother.  I did not change my mind, but I know that a lot of women do, or they really do not want to go through with it once they hold their babies, but do it anyway because they feel pressured into doing so.

Answer 2

I had a cousin who was. Girl told her she would give her the baby and played her but it did go as well as she would like as she couldn't get the money she wanted. My cousin would only pay bills direct for the baby not give her the cash and let her pay. Turns out the girl was never pregnant

Answer 3

This is why my husband and I are doing the foster to adopt route.  My friend at work was scammed 2 times before they were finally able to adopt a child.  The first time it was through a private attorney (spent over 20K) and the mother who on the side had several other couples lined up and got the same amount out of them.  So the second time she went through a private adoption agency (so they wouldn't get scammed), she gave over 10K for a deposit, they would never call her back, several times would tell her someone had picked her.  My friend and her husband would pay several months of living expenses and then before the baby was born was told the mom changed their mind.  After paying for several months of expenses they found out the last person wasn't and hadn't been pregnant they decided to look at a different company (and of course the deposit was non refundable).  Her horror stories of people trying to scam them and the continued ups and downs made myself and several others that would like to adopt really reconsider the way we go about it so we don't get hurt/scammed either.

Answer 4

Oh yes... twice...

First: We were foster parents for our state's system... we fell in love with a little girl. She was 5 at the time and had quite a few struggles mentally and emotionally. My husband and I were married 5 years by this point, owned our own home, 3 vehicles and had a very supportive extended family with my mother-in-law being a psychiatrist, as well as my husband and I running our own successful business. The state social workers told us they could not except our petition for adoption of this child because #1 we were white and she was black. #2 We were catholic and she was not. However she did attend church with us every week since the she was 3. And her family had no prior religious preference.

#3 We could not provider her with the he knowledge she needed to connect her to her ethnic background.

To us this made us feel like n***s, incapable of loving a wonderful child.

The 2nd adoption disaster was when we came in contact with a single woman who wanted us to adopt her child when she gave birth. We took care of her through her last 4 months of pregnancy(with and attorney watching the money we spent for her and on her). When she gave birth she changed her mind after1 day... We were devastated.

Thank god our 3rd attempt was successful. We now are about to celebrate our twins 11 th birthday..... Thank you God!

Answer 5

The daughter of a woman I worked with was scammed three times, and they lost their house because of it.

They were really desperate to adopt. She is the youngest of my friend's children, and all of her older brothers and sisters have at least three children each, and her husband only has one sibling who is disabled and cannot have kids, so they really, really wanted a baby.  She and her husband were having a hard time finding anything through adoption agencies, and they were given the name of a lawyer who works with agencies in Central and South America. The lawyer contacted them and told them that he had had a case pretty much dropped in his lap, and that it was a girl from the South (I live in the US), and that she really wanted some people who were religious, because she wanted her baby to know about God. My friend and all her family and extended family are Mormon, and this lawyer told her daughter that he would ask the girl if Mormons were all right. The girl said yes, that was great, as long as they go to church and pray and read scriptures and stuff like that. So, they made arrangements through this lawyer, and they exchanged letters with the girl, and with her parents, and they got all these pictures of her during her pregnancy and stuff. She was having medical problems, and she had no insurance, so they paid for all her medical bills, and they paid for a car, so she could drive to the doctor, and paid for her insurance, and all sorts of stuff. Their lawyer was monitoring things very carefully, because he doesn't usually do private open adoptions, but everything looked to be on the up and up. Then one day the lawyer called them and told them he was worried because he was paying the insurance premiums on the car, and he'd gotten the check back from one of the premiums, and the insurance company said the girl no longer owned it. He started doing some checking, and one day he called them in tears and simply said, "We've been scammed." It was a scam by the lawyer in the South and the girl. All of it was c**p. He got the bar association in that state on the lawyer, but the $25K they had spent on medical bills and the car were gone, and there was no way to get them back. And that money was money they had borrowed on a home equity line, and it pretty much took up all the equity in their house, because they hadn't owned it very long.

The lawyer gave them back all the fees they'd paid to him, but that was only about $3000, and he promised them he'd find them a baby from a reputable orphanage in Central or South America, but that it might be 18 months or two years. In that time, they fell for two more open adoption scams. Their lawyer kept telling them to wait, that he knew for a fact he could get them a healthy infant, but they just wanted a baby so bad they ignored his advice and got involved with bad people. One of the "mothers" wasn't pregnant at all, and the other one was, but had promised the baby to three or four other couples. They just kept digging themselves deeper into debt on each one, and their lawyer was so mad he threatened to stop working with them because he knew he could get them a baby, it was just a matter of time. They ended up losing their house when the girl's husband fell while getting out of the car in their driveway. Their homeowner's insurance covered part of it, but it didn't cover the time he was off from work, and they just couldn't make their mortgage payments because they had wiped out all their savings and his 401(k) in the two other scams. It was really sad. My friend was trying to figure out how she and her husband could help them hang on to their house, but they just didn't have the financial resources to do it, so the kids lost their house.

The one bright light was that their lawyer was good on his word. He called them and said that there was an orphanage in South America that he worked with and that there was a young girl who wanted her baby to go to people in the US, and she was really motivated, and were they interested? My friend and her husband did manage to scrape up airfair for them, and their lawyer ended up lending them the money they needed for the actual adoption (he gave them really generous terms, too--they pay him like $50 a month, no interest, until they are paid up). They went down and actually met the baby's momma. She is a young girl, half-Indian, and her husband was killed right after she found out she was pregnant, and she just knew that she couldn't handle a baby. She had relatives there where she lives who offered to help, but she decided really early on she wanted her baby to go to the US, where he/she could have a really good life. They couldn't talk except through an interpreter, but it was really good for them. She asked my friend's daughter to be in the room with her while she was in labor, so she was in there with the baby's grandma on the other side, whispering encouragement in English. She said the mother told her she was very sad about having to give the baby up, because he was like a little piece of his daddy who had died, but she knew it was the right thing, and that if God wanted her to be a mother, He would bless her with another chance in the form of another husband and another baby. They asked what the birth mom would have named him, and that's his middle name, and he has an English first name. The last time I saw pictures of him, he was a chunky, beautiful little toddler with huge brown eyes and coppery skin--a really handsome little boy. My friend (the grandma) said that they were saving their money, not to buy a house (a house can wait), but to pay back their lawyer and try and get another baby from the same area that also has Indian blood, so that they have two kids who look alike. They are still young, and their lawyer has had really good luck with this home, so I imagine they probably already have another baby from the same area.

The scams themselves are just sickening and heartbreaking. I, myself, am adopted. I think about the stories I have heard from everyone in our family about when my parents and brother got me, and it just makes me sick that there are people who would scam someone on something so important. I cannot think of a scam which could possibly hurt someone more. I saw a TV news program that had a bunch of couples who had all been scammed by girls in the same family (sisters), with the help of their parents. All together, they have scammed people for over $100K, and to them it's just a business, but it's literally almost killed some of the hopeful parents. The thing that struck me the most was that people didn't care about the money--it was losing that baby that hurt them so bad. Losing huge sums of money was just adding insult to grave injury. It's just awful.

I am very sorry if you or a friend has been the victim of one of those scams. It's really terrible, and my thoughts are with you.