Baby Broker | 5. The Last Adoption

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Speaker 5 Teresa Matheny's initial description of 38-year-old Tara Lee as someone who cussed like a sailor and was covered in tattoos was so striking, it almost sounded like a quote.

Speaker 5 It was, and I found it in the second paragraph of Tara Lee's introductory email to the Mathenis.

Speaker 5 She wrote, I swear like a truck driver and am covered in tattoos.

Speaker 5 She also wrote that she had a master's degree in social work from Northwestern and that her passion was to help birth mothers.

Speaker 5 She wrote, I am constantly teaching life skills to these women who have had no one to help them grow and evolve.

Speaker 5 That phrase, help them grow and evolve, struck me as pejorative.

Speaker 5 I'm sure she didn't mean it that way, but it sounds a little like social Darwinism, as if the birth mothers she worked with were inferior and primitive.

Speaker 5 She said her fee for evolving Stephanie was $9,000.

Speaker 5 The day after Teresa and Mike had their upsetting call with courtney edmund they drove to port huron with their fingers crossed desperately hoping tera lee and stephanie would show up they parked went inside got a booth and waited

Speaker 5 then they spotted a woman with black hair tattoo sleeves and bright designer nails walking toward them

Speaker 5 behind her were a petite pregnant woman with brown hair and two men the birth father and Teralee's assistant, Jay. Teresa and Mike exhaled.

Speaker 5 From Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence, this is Baby Broker. I'm Peter McDonnell, episode 5, The Last Adoption.

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Speaker 5 Teresa and Mike stood up, introduced themselves, and gave Stephanie a hug. Everyone, except Terri Lee, was nervous.

Speaker 7 We had never heard anything about this guy named Jay.

Speaker 7 He was introduced to us as someone that would be witnessing our birth father signing away his rights, because that's what we were doing that night.

Speaker 5 Stephanie and her partner sat next to each other.

Speaker 7 You could tell that the birth parents loved each other very much.

Speaker 5 Because there'd been so much confusion about Stephanie's due date, Teresa decided to ask the one person at the table who would know for sure. Stephanie said she wasn't due for a few more weeks.

Speaker 7 So then Tara jumps in. She goes, that's not true.
That is not true. That is not what the doctors said.

Speaker 7 You are 40 weeks, you know, and our birth mom just kind of cowers down.

Speaker 8 It was 100%

Speaker 8 that the birth mom was terrified of Tara.

Speaker 5 Teresa and Mike smiled and nodded through the dinner, but a whole other conversation was happening in their heads. They realized that if Tara Lee really was running a scam, it was perfect.

Speaker 5 And she had them. She had them good.

Speaker 7 You've got vulnerable birth parents. You've got vulnerable adopted parents.

Speaker 8 Tara's got our money. We're already in Detroit.
We're like in the middle of it. You keep asking for more money and it's like nobody wants to cut ties.

Speaker 7 It's a perfect scam.

Speaker 5 When I started working on this podcast, I reached out to Stephanie through Teresa and Mike. who are now friends with her, but she declined to be interviewed.

Speaker 5 The day after the Mathenis had dinner with Stephanie and Tara Lee, Mike worked from their Airbnb. Teresa hung out with her sister, who was visiting.
And it was way too cold to play golf.

Speaker 5 Late that night, Stephanie and her partner ran into trouble. It was dark out and below freezing.
Stephanie had driven her partner to a grocery store. She idled while he ran in.
Then she passed out.

Speaker 5 A passerby found her slumped over the steering wheel and called 911.

Speaker 5 EMTs arrived and revived her, but her blood pressure was dangerously high. Teresa told me, rather than take her to the hospital, the police arrived and took Stephanie and her partner home.

Speaker 5 Then they impounded her car because her insurance had lapsed. The next morning, Stephanie called Tera Lee and asked her for a ride to the hospital.
Tera Lee called her an Uber.

Speaker 5 When Stephanie arrived at Hutzel Women's Hospital in downtown, her doctor quickly diagnosed her with preeclampsia and decided to induce.

Speaker 5 Stephanie tried calling her partner, but he wouldn't answer. Amidst the chaos the night before, he'd left his cell phone in their impounded car.

Speaker 5 It was October 25th, Teresa and Mike's third wedding anniversary.

Speaker 8 We met Tara and Chick-fil-A

Speaker 8 downstairs, which was like, we're like on pins and needles and Tara was like, I'm famished, you know? Like, we're going to go sit in Chick-fil-A and have a chicken sandwich.

Speaker 5 They said Tara Lee wore a black Lululemon tracksuit, Prada reading glasses, a Rolex watch, and a large diamond ring. She also had diamonds painted on her nails.

Speaker 5 As Tera Lee dug into her lunch, she told them a story.

Speaker 8 This bullshit story about how, you know, that morning she was at the bank at Bank of America, blah, blah, blah, like conducting some business and she, you know, she blacked out and she fell and she hit her head and she had to go get multiple stitches.

Speaker 8 And she was telling us that she probably had a concussion and that the doctor told her that she needed bed rest, but it was so important for her to be there for us for the birth of this baby.

Speaker 8 And the reason I say that's important is because there were so many of those type of stories.

Speaker 7 Heart attack, stroke, cancer.

Speaker 8 Gunshot.

Speaker 5 Did she seem like she had a concussion? No. Oh, no, no, not at all.

Speaker 7 And we knew it was bullshit. We knew.

Speaker 5 It seemed like every time someone else was in the spotlight, in this case, Stephanie, Tara Lee would try to redirect everyone's attention to herself.

Speaker 5 When she was done eating, they went up to labor and delivery.

Speaker 7 Our birth mom is hooked up to the monitors. She is frantically trying to get a hold of her partner, who doesn't have the phone.
She's terrified. She's alone.
She doesn't know us.

Speaker 7 She has no support there.

Speaker 8 Tara's sitting in the corner of the table. Terese and I are literally sitting in chairs against the wall.

Speaker 5 Facing the bed.

Speaker 8 While Tara is,

Speaker 8 you know, on her cell phone.

Speaker 8 Like, the whole dynamic was just so freaking weird.

Speaker 7 And that's when I started recording.

Speaker 9 I love Steve Harvey.

Speaker 1 He makes me laugh on an hourly basis.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, you guys have some TV.

Speaker 9 We got some clear fluids coming.

Speaker 10 I like this food. I like this food.

Speaker 5 Then, Terra Lee made a phone call to someone to vent about a set of adoptive parents. She called them APs.
It sounded like a birth mother was wavering in her decision.

Speaker 9 I specifically told the APs no communication. Let her breathe.
And they didn't listen. They sent text messages.

Speaker 10 Peds 2-2 to 3206, please. Peds 2-2-3206.

Speaker 9 My give-a-shit filter today is at a very, very, very low, low, low fuel left, right? The low fuel lights on.

Speaker 9 I protect my mothers till the ends of the earth.

Speaker 5 My biggest takeaway from 30 minutes of recordings that Teresa shared with me was that despite Tara Lee saying to someone on the phone that she protected her mothers till the ends of the earth, I didn't hear her give Stephanie any emotional support.

Speaker 5 Stephanie was in labor. All the attention should be on her.
She couldn't get hold of her partner, and although the Mathenis were adopting her baby, she'd only met them once.

Speaker 5 The person she knew best in the room was Tara Lee, who was supposed to be her doula.

Speaker 5 Even during the birth of a baby, Tara Lee stole the spotlight. Stephanie, who says almost nothing in these recordings, seems in the shadows, alone, almost as if she wasn't there.

Speaker 5 As the Mathinis sat anxiously in the room, trying not to say the wrong thing, Teresa said, Tara Lee leaned over to her.

Speaker 7 She whispered to me and said, you know you still have a a balance due to me.

Speaker 5 Teresa just nodded. The two attorneys, Talia and Tanya, had told the Mathinis not to give Tera Lee any more money.

Speaker 5 Hours passed. Around 7 p.m., Tera Lee said Stephanie probably wouldn't deliver until the middle of the night.
She encouraged them to go get some sleep and promised she'd call when Stephanie was close.

Speaker 5 Mike and Teresa went to a nearby restaurant to wait it out. And it was a good thing they didn't go back to their Airbnb to take a nap, Because an hour later, Tara Lee texted to say it was happening.

Speaker 5 The Methenis paid their bill and rushed back to the hospital. They ran up to the delivery room and found Stephanie sobbing.
He'd been born. They'd missed it.
The birth father was on his way.

Speaker 5 And you don't see Tara empathizing with the birth mother?

Speaker 7 She was like, just, you know, go to the NICCI or whatever.

Speaker 7 And I'm sitting here looking at this human being, a woman who has carried this baby for nine months, has given this baby up for adoption and has no one there with her. It was heartbreaking.

Speaker 7 The most important thing to me at that moment was consoling her. And

Speaker 7 I asked her permission. I said, is this okay? Is it okay for me to go to the NICU? And she said, yes.
And so that's when I went to the NICU.

Speaker 8 And Tara comes to me and was basically like, so can I get that check?

Speaker 8 I walked past her like she didn't exist.

Speaker 5 They went into the NICU and for the first time saw their son.

Speaker 7 And I saw his little face and he was just so sweet.

Speaker 5 Mike reached in and touched him.

Speaker 7 His hand was as big as his body. He was just

Speaker 7 precious.

Speaker 5 He was five pounds, four ounces.

Speaker 7 He was a tiny little thing. And

Speaker 7 yeah, he was the cutest thing I'd ever seen.

Speaker 7 He was so sweet.

Speaker 7 He had had like the cutest little nose he was just perfect to my eyes i mean he was

Speaker 7 just

Speaker 7 you know he also seemed like he was very alert you know he was just

Speaker 7 beautiful i don't know it felt like he was mine if that makes sense like like here we are this is real

Speaker 7 i couldn't believe it i was like oh my gosh like this is real like we have a son like this is crazy Their son's Ballard score was just 34 weeks, meaning Stephanie was right about her due date.

Speaker 5 She delivered early. The Mathenis didn't want to leave their son alone.
They worried that if they stepped away, something might happen. They told me they just had a gut feeling about it.

Speaker 8 Well, I think she had every intention of having us drive to Detroit. I don't think she had any intention of us going home with the baby.

Speaker 11 Yeah, no intentions at all.

Speaker 5 But the adoption paperwork couldn't be signed for three days, and they needed sleep. The Mathenis went back to their rental house and crashed.
In the morning, they rushed back to the hospital.

Speaker 5 Baby S was still in the NICU, and Tera Lee was still sitting right next to Stephanie in her recovery room.

Speaker 8 She is camped out waiting for us, and she is pissed off because she wants her money.

Speaker 5 Teresa said they ignored Tera Lee's demand for her final $4,000 payment.

Speaker 8 And that's when we put the hospital on notice.

Speaker 8 That we didn't want Tara anywhere near the NICU.

Speaker 7 So no one knew about the FBI, so the hospital, they thought we were crazy.

Speaker 5 Later that morning, the lawyers, Talia Gedding and Tanya Corrado, surreptitiously arrived. They messaged the Mathinis to meet them on another floor where they could talk in secret.

Speaker 5 When they were all out of Terra Lee's earshot, the lawyers said the FBI's investigation was very serious, and this might be Terra Lee's last adoption.

Speaker 5 They gave the Mathenis the phone number for FBI Special Agent Matt Sluss.

Speaker 8 And so I called what turned out to be Matt's Matt's cell phone, left him a voicemail, and then it was like, I don't know, probably lunchtime. I was walking into the hospital by myself.

Speaker 8 I had just parked the car. It was snowing.
I see this 313 number.

Speaker 5 Mike answered. He had his first conversation with the FBI.

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Speaker 5 Last summer, I reached out to the FBI to ask if they'd speak with me about their investigation into Terra Lee. They don't always talk to reporters, but this case was very important to them.

Speaker 5 Special Agent Matt Sluss is thin with a neat beard and talks in a thoughtful and precise way. In 2018, he was a newish agent working white-collar crime.

Speaker 5 And he said, when he got this case, he knew nothing about how adoption works.

Speaker 12 It was early October of 2018.

Speaker 12 There was an individual who was intimately connected with Tera Lee's adoption business that brought information to our FBI Detroit field office.

Speaker 5 They wouldn't tell me who tipped them off, though. They don't want to discourage people from reporting crimes to the FBI.

Speaker 5 Regardless, someone told them that Tera Lee was taking money for an adoption that was designed to fail. The FBI had never come across a case like it.

Speaker 5 The first person to review it was Supervisory Special Agent Mark Krieg.

Speaker 3 Okay, what is the exact violation here?

Speaker 5 As Agent Krieg chewed it over in the office, Agent Sluss came in.

Speaker 12 It was a Friday afternoon, and I had returned from a meeting with a prosecutor on a different case.

Speaker 5 They didn't know if this was a federal crime or a state crime, or if it was a crime at all, but it seemed like it should be.

Speaker 5 And if you're curious about the timeline of this meeting, It happened about a week before the Methenis got to Detroit. Agent Krieg called the U.S.

Speaker 5 Attorney's Office and asked to talk with Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Woodward.

Speaker 13 And he just said, we have this allegations that are really unusual, and we're not sure if this is a federal case, if there's a crime here, but how do you think we should move forward?

Speaker 13 And I think he called me because I had worked on a lot of child exploitation cases and some unusual cases with victims. So once he told me about it,

Speaker 13 I said, well, that sounds like wire fraud, potentially. So we should open an investigation and we should try to find out what's going on.

Speaker 5 Wire fraud. You've probably heard of it, but might not know what it means.
It's the use of physical or electronic communication systems, like email or text, to commit fraud.

Speaker 5 The name is kind of outdated. It dates back to when we used wired telephones.
Wire fraud is a federal offense, which is why the FBI got involved.

Speaker 5 Sarah Woodward and Agent Matt Sluss would need to show that Terra Lee used her cell phone or email to defraud people.

Speaker 5 AUSA Sarah Woodward was sitting at her L-shaped desk on a high floor of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Detroit when we talked.
She was surrounded by case files.

Speaker 5 Woodward told me that this case was so novel that she had to come up with a new terminology just to describe the alleged fraud. terms like fabricated match and double match.

Speaker 5 That first week on the case, agents Sluss and Krieg interviewed about a dozen people connected with Terra Lee's adoption business.

Speaker 5 These people were the tip of the iceberg because each interview introduced the FBI to new names and allegations. The scope of the case beneath the surface was way bigger than they initially thought.

Speaker 5 By Friday, Matt Sluss felt compelled to visually piece it together.

Speaker 12 And I went into our conference room and I took

Speaker 12 that big rollout paper that's, you know, three, four feet wide and

Speaker 12 tore off like a 10-foot section, put it across the conference table, and then just literally started drawing, hand-drawing, handwriting a roadmap of every name, who was connected to who, adopted parents' names, birth parents' names, match date, how much money was paid.

Speaker 12 Did the match succeed? Was it failed? A quick note on how did it fail? If it did.

Speaker 5 Courtney and Curtis Edmond, two failed matches. Tammy and Nick Granath, one failed match, one fabricated match, one success.
On October 26th, Agent Sluss added, Mike and Teresa Matheny. Success.

Speaker 5 20 blocks away, Mike hung up with Matt Sluss and found Teresa in the hospital and told her what had just happened.

Speaker 5 He now had no doubts that this investigation was real, and it was time to turn the tables on Terra Lee.

Speaker 5 He and Teresa walked the echoe halls, talking in hushed tones, when they saw two familiar faces coming toward them. It was Stephanie and her partner with no Tara.

Speaker 8 And so we just kind of start talking and we find one of those just little random like sitting areas. She was like, oh, Tara's upset with you guys about something.

Speaker 8 Okay. I said,

Speaker 8 she wants us to pay her more money and we're not going to pay her. She's not providing the services.
Their rent wasn't paid. Their electric was about to be cut off.
No insurance on the cars.

Speaker 8 The tires hadn't been put on. There's no food in the house.

Speaker 8 I said, I can do one of two things. I said,

Speaker 8 I can either pay Tara so that she goes away, or we can tell Tara to fuck off.

Speaker 8 And I can put that money to use to help you guys. You know, I had spoken to the attorneys.

Speaker 8 The attorneys confirmed that as long as everything was documented and we weren't like giving cash, that you know, I could pay their rent and then submit receipts, you know, directly myself.

Speaker 8 And so that was what what we chose to do.

Speaker 5 They paid Stephanie's back rent and three months of advance rent. They paid her overdue electric bill and bought a few months of credit.

Speaker 5 They paid her car insurance and had her driver's license reinstated. They put new tires on her car.
They bought her food, clothes, and shoes.

Speaker 5 And they felt bad that Stephanie had been taken advantage of. She'd been promised support for her pregnancy.
Instead, she struggled for months. She collapsed in her car.

Speaker 5 She was alone during the delivery. The truth was, even after what they'd done for her, Stephanie was going to keep living paycheck to paycheck.
Her son was going to grow up with a middle-class family.

Speaker 5 It was going to be hard, no matter what. Tara Lee had made it so much harder.

Speaker 5 A few days later, Tanya Corrado returned to the hospital in secret so the Mathenis could sign the adoption consent forms. In her last adoption, Tara Lee was going to be cut out.

Speaker 8 Tara was literally marching around the hospital trying to find us. And we're sitting at a table and Tanya's got her phone.
Tara called her no less than 15 times.

Speaker 7 Yeah, she's blowing Tanya's phone up.

Speaker 5 Like Tanya's hiding.

Speaker 8 She's like, over and over and over again.

Speaker 8 Like, this is how convoluted it got. Talia called me and said, hey, I've got to send your wife a text.
Want you to know it's not real.

Speaker 8 I need to send it so I can screenshot it and send it back to Tara.

Speaker 5 It was time to turn Tara Lee's tactics against her.

Speaker 8 And so Talia sends Teresa this text basically like demanding the attorney's fee, accusing us of being shady and blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 8 Talia was like, now I need your wife to respond back to that text so I can screenshot and send the answer. So like we answer from Teresa's phone saying, oh, I'm so sorry.
We don't mean to be shady.

Speaker 8 I have to transfer some money from a brokerage account. The transfer is going to take a few days, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Like, you know, so that was how we bought time. So of course,

Speaker 8 you know, I'm like, and please let Tara know that she's been such an angel through this whole process, you know? Like, just like really like overplaying the hand.

Speaker 8 It was like after Talia sends it to Tara, then Tara responds and was like, well, at least she recognizes it.

Speaker 5 Tara Lee never got her $4,000.

Speaker 5 The Mathenis stayed in Detroit for almost two months. Every day, They visited their son in the NICU, rocked him, read to him, fed him.
He doubled his weight.

Speaker 5 In early December, he was released from the hospital. They could go home.

Speaker 7 I think we still had a week left on our Airbnb and we just said, keep it, just, we're leaving.

Speaker 5 The only thing that wouldn't fit in the car were the golf clubs. Mike put them on the roof.
It was sleeting and snowing.

Speaker 5 as they dressed their son in the monogrammed sailor outfit they'd bought for him back in brunswick georgia

Speaker 7 we're so excited we get in the car We get on the road. I mean, we're hit the road, dude.
We're like out of there.

Speaker 5 Teresa squeezed into the back seat next to her son. At a stoplight, Mike aimed his camera at the rearview mirror and snapped a family picture they'd never forget.

Speaker 5 Teresa and Mike are smiling as if it's the first mile of a spring break road trip.

Speaker 8 It's like my first time driving with a baby.

Speaker 7 He stayed in the slow lane like a grandpa.

Speaker 8 And it's boring and he screamed like the whole way. You know what I mean?

Speaker 7 He hated the car seat.

Speaker 8 He decided that he was over it by the time we hit like southern Ohio. And then it rained.

Speaker 7 Yes, the entire way home.

Speaker 8 I'm talking pork from southern Ohio through Kentucky, through Tennessee, all the way to the doorstep. Yep.

Speaker 7 It's all our friends. I think we're waiting at our house when we got there, right? We had...
all of our friends there. My dad, yeah, he came down.
My sister was there.

Speaker 5 It was great.

Speaker 7 Yeah, so that's kind of how it happened.

Speaker 5 The Matheni's dream came true.

Speaker 5 But after they got home, settled in, they said they felt guilty. Even though they'd been through hell to adopt their son, they got him.

Speaker 5 But one couple didn't. Teresa told me the name of a couple besides the Granits who she believes Tara Lee might have matched with Stephanie.
The couple who didn't get the baby.

Speaker 5 I reached out to them and have not heard back. So I'm not going to share their names.
For many of the couples, the painful experience of working with Tera Lee remains private.

Speaker 5 In November 2018, while the Mathenis were still in Detroit, FBI agent Matt Sluss was uncovering a trove of evidence of wire fraud, enough to get a search warrant for Terra Lee's house.

Speaker 5 And Courtney's Facebook group now included the Mathenis and over 100 other couples. But one couple wouldn't reply to Courtney's messages because they firmly believed that Tera Lee was innocent.

Speaker 5 They believed that her side of the story was the truth.

Speaker 11 It was these angry women who were after her to shut her business down because they had failed adoptions.

Speaker 5 Next time on Baby Broker.

Speaker 11 I texted we are here for you. You just have to keep dealing with the bullshit and these bitches.
Karma will turn just a matter of time. We trust and believe you.
We are in your corner. Stay strong.

Speaker 11 Be the tatted, foul-mouthed woman we love.

Speaker 5 Baby Broker is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence. It was hosted and reported by me, Peter McDonald.
I'm the executive.

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Speaker 5 Producer, along with Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch of Sony Music Entertainment.

Speaker 5 Stephen George recorded the narration at the Invisible Studios, West Hollywood. We used music from Audio Network and a few tracks from Epidemic Sound.

Speaker 5 News clips are courtesy of WXYZ7 in Detroit, Michigan. Our production managers are Tamika Balance-Kalasny and Sammy Allison.
Our lawyers are Allison Sherry and Kathleen Farley.

Speaker 5 Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Racick, and Jamie Myers.