Surrogacy Lawyer Sells Babies On The Side

Knowing the law gives you the best tool to bend it but it doesn’t ensure you’ll get away clean, especially when your shady line of business means making big bucks from people’s desperation.

Theresa Erickson, a lawyer specializing in reproductive law, pleaded guilty to wire fraud for faking surrogacy documents she presented to the San Diego County Superior Court for profit. A Maryland-based lawyer who also specializes in reproductive law and another woman have also pleaded guilty with her.

Her intricate baby-selling ring began by her paying women in San Diego between $38,000 and $40,000 to go to Ukraine to be implanted with embryos created from the sperm and eggs of donors. Erickson sent the women to Ukraine because she knew that no doctor in California would implant the women without seeing documentation that she was part of a formal agreement with the future parents.

Once the women were in the second trimester of pregnancy, they would return to San Diego so Erickson could fool baby-seeking couples that the people who had intended to adopt the unborn babies had backed out of the deal. The new couple would then be charged between $100,000 and $150,000 to adopt the child.

Erickson would then file documents with the court asserting that the baby was part of an existing pre-pregnancy agreement between the woman carrying the fetus and the couple, which made the couple the parents of the child on the birth certificate. The couples were then never aware that they had actually broken the law.

A dozen couples got their child through this scheme but, being unaware of it, they will not lose their parental rights.

California law bans profiteering on the transfer of parental rights and Erickson is suspected of having made $70,000 off her ring. She has already agreed to pay each of the 12 couples $10,000 in compensation and up to $250,000 in fines to the government but she and her accomplices still face up to five years of prison.

Not only did these women prey on couples’ desperate desire to build a family, they also used other women as nothing more than baby incubators and tools for their own wealth, preying on the women’s need for money. As experts in reproductive law, they were meant to help families grow from a healthy basis but instead forgot the essence of their job and only worked for themselves.

Greed always comes back to bite you in the ass.

Contact the author here: sedera@morningquickie.com