Tracey and Jeff Scholen were so in love with the daughter they adopted in 2008 they leaped at the chance to adopt her sibling when the birth parents conceived again a year later.
The Alpharetta couple saw the opportunity for their daughter, Sadie Grace, to grow up with a full-blooded brother or sister. And they’d established a relationship with Sadie’s birth parents, Janie and Michael Young of Kentucky, through an open adoption agreement set up by a private adoption agency.
“We really felt like it was going to be a lifelong relationship,” Tracey Scholen said.
This time, though, the Scholens decided to handle the adoption independently, with the help of a lawyer. It would cost far less, about $12,000 compared to the $45,000 an agency would charge. They thought they understood exactly what they were getting into.
They couldn’t have been more wrong.
Like hundreds of prospective adoptive parents across the country each year, the Scholens fell victim to an adoption scam. Unbeknownst to them, the Youngs were also accepting payments from an Massachusetts adoption agency and had promised the child to a couple there, too. After Janie Young gave birth, she backed out of both agreements.
It seemed to be a clear case of fraud. But most states — Georgia and Kentucky included — do not have laws aimed specifically at punishing adoption fraud. So in December, when the Youngs were indicted in Kentucky, it was on a felony charge of theft by deception. They were also charged with being persistent felony offenders. If convicted, they could face between 10 and 20 years in prison.
The Scholens, though, are less interested in seeing Sadie’s birth parents jailed than they are in making sure other adopting parents have clear legal recourse when they are swindled. So they are working with Kentucky prosecutors to try to set a precedent with their case, to make it easier to prosecute adoption scammers when there is clear evidence of fraud.
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The Scholens knew they couldn’t conceive on their own because Jeff was sterile. They investigated an adoption from China before deciding to pursue a domestic adoption.
When the Scholens first met them in 2008, the Youngs already had three young sons. Both were unemployed, and the family was living in the Appalachian hills of eastern Kentucky with no phone, no computer and only an oil-powered heating system. Michael was in jail at the time for selling drugs, but Janie told the Scholens that she never drank or used drugs.
By contrast, the Scholens are college-educated, church-going suburbanites living in a middle-class Alpharetta neighborhood. Jeff earns enough money as a quality assurance engineer to allow Tracey to stay home.
After being matched with the Youngs, Tracey grew close with Janie. As the women chatted over the phone, Janie told Tracey about feeling isolated and fearing that her husband might relapse on drugs. After adopting Sadie, the Scholens sent photographs of her to the Youngs every month, and visited them in November 2009.
They also helped the Youngs in ways big and small: raising money to repair the family’s leaky roof, sending Christmas gifts, setting up a toll-free phone number for them to call.
As is typical in private adoptions, the Scholens’ agency paid some of the Youngs’ monthly expenses such as rent, food and electricity during Janie’s pregnancy. During the second adoption, the Scholens arranged to wire them monthly expense money through an attorney.
But Janie soon began asking for more money. She called claiming all sorts of emergencies: heating bills, lost cell phones, a burglary.
“It was this pressure to constantly deal with their crises, and it seemed like they were having a crisis every few days,” Jeff Scholen recalled.
On several occasions, they made direct payments to the Youngs’ utility providers to help keep the family afloat. Tracey said they felt somewhat guilty about being financially secure when the Youngs were barely surviving.
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On Christmas Day 2009, Janie called with good news.
“She said, ‘I want to give you a gift and tell you the baby you’re going to be adopting is a boy,’ ” Tracey recalled.
At a subsequent baby shower, the Scholens unwrapped infant boy clothing. They swathed their nursery in shades of brown and green, and chose Keller, her grandmother’s maiden name, for their new son.
Then came a shocking phone call in late January from a Kentucky hospital. A social worker who’d met the Scholens during their first adoption notified them that the Youngs were double-dipping, working with an adoption agency in Massachusetts as well.
The Scholens were stunned and confused. In an awkward phone conversation that followed, Janie allegedly admitted to Tracey that she’d accepted payments from the Massachusetts agency, but reassured her that she still intended to place her child with them.
It wasn’t until March 5, when Janie delivered the baby, that the Scholens realized they had been misled about everything, including the sex of the baby. Janie gave birth to a girl, and told them she intended to keep her.
Over the next few weeks, the Scholens grieved. And in another cruel twist, they learned the baby girl was taken away by Kentucky’s child protective services. Janie had tested positive for using prescription drugs, the Scholens said. Police in Kentucky told them that the Youngs had a history of abusing and selling prescription painkillers.
“It was hard to lose a child, but it was even more difficult dealing with the betrayal of the whole thing,” Tracey said. “We didn’t realize they were spending all our money on drugs.”
The Scholens began working with a private detective to gather evidence of the fraud, handing over what they obtained to state prosecutors in November. A month later, the Youngs were arrested.
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Kentucky prosecutors admit that the main charge faced by the Youngs — theft by deception, for allegedly failing to disclose to the agreement they made with the other adoption agency — is somewhat of an ill fit for the facts of the case.
By definition, theft by deception revolves around a fraudulent transaction. But by law, adoptions are considered gifts. It’s illegal for a birth parent to profit from an adoption, or for an adoptive parent to buy a baby.
Some states, like Kentucky, allow birth parents to receive payments for their living expenses from private adoption agencies or prospective adoptive families. In Georgia, only private adoption agencies can pay for those expenses. In either case, there is an implied risk that the agency or adoptive parents could forfeit the money if the birth mother changes her mind.
But most states — Georgia and Kentucky included — do not have laws that address cases where a prospective adoptive family is deliberately deceived.
“It happens where people can prosecute, but that is kind of rare,” said Ashley Byers, director of adoption programs for A Adoption Advocates of Georgia. “If you call a detective at a local precinct, he’ll be like, ‘Huh? Were you buying the baby?’ ”
According to Kentucky Assistant Commonwealth Attorney Tony Skeans, the Youngs are expected to enter a guilty plea Friday.
But Skeans, who wants the case to get attention from higher courts, said the plea deal he’s negotiating would require the Youngs to file an appeal of their conviction. By reaching a higher court, the case could set a precedent for other adoption fraud cases in Kentucky.
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Should the appellate courts in Kentucky find it unlawful to prosecute the Youngs for theft by deception, the Scholens hope lawmakers there will look to Indiana for guidance in creating new statutes.
Indiana, one of the most progressive states in the area of adoption law, has an adoption deception statute. It makes it a misdemeanor for a birth mother to accept adoption-related expenses from more than one prospective adoptive parent or agency. It also allows prospective parents to sue the birth mother for up to three times the amount of expenses they paid.
Indiana’s law also applies to other types of adoption fraud: birth mothers who accept expenses from adoptive parents when they intend to keep the child, and women who profit from a fake pregnancy.
The Scholens hope sharing their story might spur a similar law in Georgia as well.
Norcross adoption attorney Justin Hester said there are a lot of gray areas where birth mothers may legitimately decide to change adoption agencies during their pregnancy or keep their baby following delivery. But in cases where deception is clear-cut, there is little recourse for adoptive parents.
“It’s part of the process when it doesn’t work out, but it’s really throwing salt in the wound when they find out it was a scam from the get-go,” Hester said.
Lynne Banks, who co-founded a website on adoption fraud, www.AdoptionScam.net, said she receives about 250 reports of possible adoption scams a year.
Signs that could indicate a deception include some that, in hindsight, the Scholens observed. Among them, when the birth mother seems to be dealing with one crisis after another and constantly needs money, Banks said.
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Sadie Scholen, now 2 1/2, will soon become a big sister after all. Via embryo adoption, Tracey is pregnant, and the Scholens are expecting another girl in June.
They’ve decided to keep the name Keller, and they’ve feminized their boy-themed nursery by tying bows on the curtains and bedding.
Janie Young, too, got pregnant again, just three months after delivering the baby taken by authorities. Though Tracey and Janie have not spoken since her arrest, the Scholens say they have forgiven the Youngs.
They want to help set a precedent to prevent other prospective adoptive parents from being swindled. But they also hope their relationship with Sadie’s biological parents can one day be repaired.
“Would we ever give her money again? No,” Tracey said. “Will we still love and care for her and speak well of her eventually with Sadie? Yes.”
Indiana: A legal leader
Indiana’s law on adoption fraud is considered among the most progressive in the country. It says:
A person who is a birth mother, or a woman who holds herself out to be a birth mother, and who knowingly or intentionally benefits from adoption-related expenses paid, commits adoption deception, a misdemeanor, when:
»The person knows or should have known that the person is not pregnant;
»A prospective adoptive parent is unaware that at the same time another prospective adoptive parent is also paying adoption-related expenses in an effort to adopt the same child; or
»When the person does not intend to make an adoptive placement.
A court may also order the person who commits adoption deception to make restitution to a prospective adoptive parent, attorney, or licensed child-placing agency that incurs an expense as a result of the offense.
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