The Knife: Off Record – 114

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Speaker 1 Every day.

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Speaker 6 Are your AI agents helping users or just creating more work?

Speaker 4 If you can't compare your users' workflows before and after adding AI, how do you know it's even paying off?

Speaker 10 Pendo Agent Analytics is the first tool to connect agent prompts and conversations to downstream outcomes like time saved so you know what's working and what to fix.

Speaker 7 Start improving agent performance at pendo.io slash podcast.

Speaker 11 That's pendo.io slash podcast.

Speaker 12 So you're telling me that the AI that's meant to make everyone's job easier to manage just adds more to manage on top of the thousands of apps the IT department already manages.

Speaker 12 Funny how that works.

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Speaker 1 This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 13 Welcome to The Knife Off Record. I'm Patia Eaton.

Speaker 1 I'm Hannah Smith. And today we have two stories for you.
First, Patia will tell me about a case that she's been looking into, and then I will tell her a story after that.

Speaker 1 And both of our stories are thematically connected. They both have something to do with adoption fraud, but very different kinds of stories.
So let's just get right into it.

Speaker 13 Yeah, so a while back, I met with a couple, Shalisha and Eric Milligan, and they wanted to talk about their story with adoption fraud. This all happened back in 2014.
Shalicia and Eric met at work.

Speaker 13 They live in the south and Eric had been previously married. Shalisha wasn't necessarily interested in him in that way, but he was stopping by her desk a lot.

Speaker 13 And eventually they go on a date and the rest is sort of history for their relationship. They were, you know, really excited to start a family together.
Shalicia didn't have any children.

Speaker 13 Eric had children from a previous marriage. And in 2019, they start trying for a baby.

Speaker 13 So because Eric has children from a previous marriage, when they begin having trouble conceiving, Shalisha pretty quickly decides to get tested.

Speaker 13 And these tests revealed that both of her fallopian tubes were blocked. So it was going to be extremely difficult for her to conceive.

Speaker 13 And so they start looking at alternative forms of, of, you know, becoming parents. They looked into embryo adoption and they did a transfer that was unsuccessful and actually ended in miscarriage.

Speaker 13 And that was a very difficult thing to go through, as you can imagine. And they didn't want to, you know, experience that again.
And so they started looking into adoption. And by this time, it's 2020.

Speaker 13 They're just starting their adoption journey. And if you don't know anything about adoption, it can be extremely expensive.
It can be upwards of like $40,000.

Speaker 1 So they were doing like private adoption.

Speaker 13 Yeah. So the route that they were planning to go was to avoid an agency because $40,000 is just so much money.

Speaker 1 So much money.

Speaker 13 And instead self-match. And self-matching is basically you put it out there that you're looking to adopt and you, you know, try to reach.

Speaker 13 mothers or, you know, pregnant people who are perhaps interested in finding an adoptive couple for their their child. So that's what they did.
They joined Facebook groups. So this is July now of 2020.

Speaker 13 They have a home study. They go through the whole thing.
They're by the book, okay?

Speaker 13 And in August, they get a message.

Speaker 1 Wow, that's fast.

Speaker 13 Really, really fast. And one thing that Shalisha and Nerik were super aware of and mindful of is doing this the right way because adoption,

Speaker 13 even when it's not, you know, fraudulent, can be a really muddy thing. There's an exchange of money, which sometimes makes sense, but making sense of it can be really difficult.

Speaker 13 You know, you want to maybe provide for the birth mother for good reasons, but you also don't want to get into a situation where you're paying for a child.

Speaker 1 Right. Buying a baby.

Speaker 13 Buying a baby. And

Speaker 13 not good. And they absolutely didn't want to be a part of that either.
So they did this home study. They got approved.
They get this message.

Speaker 13 It's like, okay, here's the good luck that we haven't had yet in this journey. And the person who reached out identified herself to Shalisha as a 16-year-old girl living in Texas.

Speaker 13 And she identified herself as Melody.

Speaker 13 And she said that she was pregnant by her stepfather.

Speaker 13 Yeah, which, you know, that's rape. And Shalisha was immediately concerned for this girl's well-being.

Speaker 1 That was her primary primary focus.

Speaker 13 You know, they were not even excited about the prospect of adopting as much in that moment as they were, okay, let's see if we can get this young woman some help, this girl, some help, and let's get in touch with our lawyer.

Speaker 1 Was this just messages back and forth at this time, or did they talk on the phone or anything like that?

Speaker 13 Yeah, so it starts out as Facebook messages, and then they start talking on the phone. But pretty quickly, Shalisha gets her lawyer involved.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 13 Because this girl tells them that she hasn't had prenatal care. She's in a dangerous situation because she still lives in the home with her stepfather.

Speaker 13 She tells them that her older brother is incarcerated because he actually had a physical altercation with their stepfather about what happened. So they make arrangements to get her to a safe house.

Speaker 13 And you know, this is all sort of happening as Shleisha and Eric are talking to her more and more about the pregnancy. She says she's due in December.

Speaker 13 And so I think in September is when they get her to the safe house. The lawyer makes arrangements to get her somewhere else in Texas, I think in San Antonio, and they pick her up and she goes.

Speaker 13 Okay, so now she's safe. They start talking to her a little more about her situation.
And they're like, we really need to get you checked by a doctor for your health and for the health of the baby.

Speaker 1 So sorry, is Shalisha and Eric, are they there with her or just the attorney?

Speaker 13 The attorney had representatives from the safe house go and get her.

Speaker 1 So Shalisha and Eric notified their attorney, who also, it sounds like, was like, we need to get her out of the situation immediately and then put that in motion.

Speaker 1 And then they actually do get her away from her house, it sounds like.

Speaker 13 Yeah, they make arrangements to take her to a safe place, a place for girls who need help. And that was in San Antonio.
So Shalisha and Eric are not in Texas. Their attorney is not in Texas.

Speaker 13 This is all happening long distance, but they're in constant contact.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 13 And so once she's at the safe house, that's when they start making a plan for her to see a doctor. And it takes some convincing.
She's really reluctant.

Speaker 13 But at this point, you know, it's been multiple months of communication. She's gone to a safe house and she hasn't taken a dime from them.
There's been no money exchanged.

Speaker 13 So it's like, okay, she must really need our help. She's not asking us for anything.
She's just talking to us and saying that she needs this help and that she wants to place the baby for adoption. So

Speaker 13 Melody eventually, very reluctantly, agrees to go see this doctor. And they make additional arrangements to get her across state lines to Huntsville, Alabama.

Speaker 13 This is where things go completely haywire.

Speaker 13 So Melody arrives to the medical facility and the doctor goes to check on her. You know, they ask you a bunch of questions.
They're talking to you, okay, when was your last period?

Speaker 13 The basic basic stuff but then they want to do a sonogram and she declines she's like full stop not doing it so the doctor leaves the room and he's like okay well i can't do much with this and this is a bit strange yeah and so the lawyer gets on the phone with the people who are with her at the doctor which was another representative not shalisha and nerik themselves and The lawyer's like, well, I'm 20 minutes away.

Speaker 13 I'm going to drive up there and talk to her myself because this is now getting a little weird. So he goes into the room with this girl, Melody, who says she's 16.

Speaker 13 And for 20 minutes, he's sitting across from her in pretty much silence. She doesn't want to respond to his questions.
She doesn't want to talk to him. And in a way, it makes sense.
She's a minor.

Speaker 13 She's in a new place. She's pregnant.
She's been

Speaker 13 through so much trauma.

Speaker 1 Like it makes sense that she wouldn't want her body touched or

Speaker 1 inspected.

Speaker 13 Yeah. And so they're trying to sort of toe the line of being sensitive to that and being patient, but also like, well, we need to verify that you're pregnant.

Speaker 1 Right. Right.

Speaker 13 And so after 20 minutes of asking pretty pointed questions, she comes out and says, I'm not 16.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm not 16.

Speaker 13 And he says, okay.

Speaker 13 And she says, I'm actually 19. And he says, okay, is there anything else? And then she says, I'm not really pregnant.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 13 So she had just, well, one, it's like then, well, who is this person?

Speaker 13 Why is this happening? Like, what is going on? And so he says to her, well, what were you going to do when you got here?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Like, you're at a doctor's appointment to verify your pregnancy. You can't fake that.
And she said she doesn't know. Money hadn't exchanged hands.
So it was was pretty baffling.

Speaker 13 Other than Shalisha and Eric had been forking out money for this attorney. So it's not like this was not costing them any money.
It just wasn't going to melody, as she said she was.

Speaker 1 It's interesting that she got that far along. You know, I'm guessing she just made this story up then for whatever reason.

Speaker 1 But it's interesting that she went along with the plan when they said we're going to come pick you up from the house, that she didn't just disappear or that she was like, yeah, okay, great.

Speaker 1 And she went with them. She even goes to the doctor's office.
Right.

Speaker 13 Yeah. It's like, what is the end game? Like, did you have an out? Were you just going to try to like sneak out of the office?

Speaker 13 So bizarre. So now they're asking her, well, why did you do this? And the best answer she can give them is, I can't explain it.
And so.

Speaker 13 They make arrangements for her to, you know, go back home to Texas. And Shalisha and Eric are now,

Speaker 13 it's pretty discouraging. They've been through so much emotionally trying to start their family.
And here's this person who just took them on this emotional roller coaster.

Speaker 13 Shalisha said that she was starting to buy baby clothes that were for the wintertime because, yeah, this person had said she was due in December. And she was pretty measured about it.

Speaker 13 She hadn't gotten in like too deep, but it was really hard for them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you get your hopes up. That's got to be really hard.

Speaker 13 Really hard. And so in all that time that you're investing your energy into this person, it's not like you're going to engage with another prospective birth mother.
So it was really sad.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 13 Shalisha goes on Facebook and joins a group called Ending Adoption Scams. And she says, has anyone heard of this person?

Speaker 13 She eventually revealed a different name to them that I'm not going to say, which I'll tell you why. But

Speaker 13 she goes to sleep. She thinks nothing of this Facebook post.
Like, hopefully, someone can see this and not get duped by this same woman.

Speaker 13 She wakes up to multiple comments saying, I've been scammed by this same person, same thing, all emotional, all attention, didn't take any money from me.

Speaker 13 And that is probably why she wasn't convicted of a crime.

Speaker 13 There's actually a famous couple, Bella and Dahlin Lambert, who were scammed by someone I think is the same person, but I wasn't able to verify.

Speaker 13 And once again, was not about money. So I reached out to this Facebook page to see what I could find out about the woman who had identified herself as Melody.

Speaker 13 And she said that, you know, there were a couple of posts about a woman doing something similar, both in the South and in California.

Speaker 13 And the reason that They don't face criminal charges is because they're not asking for money.

Speaker 13 The woman in California eventually did face one charge because she accepted a small amount of money, but she actually wasn't prosecuted because they offered her a mental health program in lieu of prosecution.

Speaker 13 Okay. And that person is actually an adoptee themselves.
So, you know, it's like this adopted person goes to scam prospective adoptive parents for attention. I mean, it's really sad.

Speaker 13 And her parents are aware that she does this, but how do you keep someone off the internet?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm so curious what her experience was like as someone who is adopted. Like, what's going on that she's

Speaker 1 trying to stop adoptions or get back at adoptive parents or something? I don't know. Yeah.
I'm not a psychologist.

Speaker 13 I'm not a psychologist either. But yeah, it's really strange and

Speaker 13 unfair to these families. The adoption journey can be really emotional.
and controversial. It's difficult to regulate.
It's expensive. It can be inaccessible and unfair at times.

Speaker 13 So there's so much to consider. Shleisha and Eric, their story has a happy ending.
They eventually did match with someone and had a child placed in their home. They are now proud parents.

Speaker 13 We actually saw him on the interview crying. It was so cute.
Eric rocking him back and forth, adorable.

Speaker 13 And so Shalisha and Eric have, you know, come out on the other side of this, but they felt like it was important to talk about because they never really considered that they might be scammed for, you know, someone who wasn't asking for money.

Speaker 1 With adoption fraud stories, there's not always happy endings. So I'm glad to hear that Shalisha and Eric did end up with a child.

Speaker 13 Yeah, they're such a sweet couple.

Speaker 13 And, you know, I think it's not easy to talk about being duped by someone when you're already going through something so difficult and really appreciate them taking the time.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So when you had mentioned talking about this story that you just told me, it made me, of course, think of Tara Lee.

Speaker 1 We actually covered Tara Lee years ago, around 2021, did a couple of episodes all about her

Speaker 1 adoption fraud that spanned something like 24 states in the US. Those episodes are not currently available for free online anymore.
So I want to talk about it.

Speaker 1 I think it's a good time to revisit that story. I really remember so many of those interviews very well still.
I was so impacted by those conversations.

Speaker 1 I think that we talked with multiple adoptive parents. We talked with birth parents, the FBI, as well as attorneys who worked on this.

Speaker 1 So there's also a couple of updates on the case that are pretty recent. So great.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Mike check one, two.

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Speaker 1 Hi, I'm Michelle Bernstein, an award-winning chef, restaurateur, and mom. I have a lot on my plate, including my psoriatic arthritis symptoms.
That's why I was prescribed Cosentix.

Speaker 1 It helps me move better.

Speaker 14 Cosentix Seccukenumab is prescribed for people two years of age and older with active psoriatic arthritis. Don't use if you're allergic to COSENTIX.
Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis.

Speaker 14 An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur, like tuberculosis or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections. Some were fatal.

Speaker 14 Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or cough. Had a vaccine or plan to, or if inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen.

Speaker 14 Serious allergic reactions and severe eczema-like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1-844-COSENTIX or COSENTIX.com.

Speaker 1 Ask your rheumatologist about Cosentix.

Speaker 6 Are your AI agents helping users or just creating more work?

Speaker 4 If you can't compare your users' workflows before and after adding AI, how do you know it's even paying off?

Speaker 2 Pendo Agent Analytics is the first tool to connect agent prompts and conversations to downstream outcomes like time saved so you know what's working and what to fix.

Speaker 7 Start improving agent performance at pendo.io slash podcast.

Speaker 11 That's pendo.io slash podcast.

Speaker 12 So you're telling me that the AI that's meant to make everyone's job easier to manage just adds more to manage on top of the thousands of apps the IT department already manages.

Speaker 12 Funny how that works.

Speaker 12 Any business can add AI. IBM helps you scale and manage AI to change how you do business.
Let's create Small to Business, IBM.

Speaker 1 So Tera Lee founded and ran Always Hope Pregnancy Center in Michigan from about 2014 to 2018.

Speaker 1 And she advertised it as different things at different times to different people, but often as a pregnancy crisis center, really she functioned as an adoption agency.

Speaker 1 And as you mentioned, there's a lot of complications when you're trying to adopt someone, specifically a baby in the U.S. There's like very, very high demand.

Speaker 1 So oftentimes people will be on a list for a long time. It's not unusual to be on a list waiting for over a year or longer to get any kind of contact or news about a potential adoption.

Speaker 1 Most of the people who ended up being victims of terror were in that same situation, wanted to have children for a variety of reasons, were not able to, right?

Speaker 1 And so we're looking into adoption. A couple of people that we talked to actually talked about the difficulty even with private adoption agencies in the U.S.

Speaker 1 We spoke with a woman named Amber who was a single woman who, you know, had saved up money. She felt like her life was very stable.
She was ready to be a parent. She just didn't have a partner.

Speaker 1 And she was rejected by a lot of adoption agencies because she is single. She didn't have a husband.
They didn't like that. You know, it's so wild to think about.

Speaker 13 There's so much I could say about that.

Speaker 1 So anyway, usually it was like a person or a couple would go down this rabbit hole and then Either they're waiting for so long to get matched or they're rejected even by these these agencies.

Speaker 1 So they end up looking for other options and somehow or another are connected with Terra Lee.

Speaker 13 And this process, I mean, you're putting your whole life out there.

Speaker 13 If you look at adoption agencies online on a lot of them, you can just scroll through these prospective parents and it's like this whole profile, photos of you and your partner, if you have one.

Speaker 13 your home, your extended family talking all about your lifestyle and the lifestyle that this child would have if you picked them. I mean, you're putting it all out there.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's a very vulnerable thing.
There's pictures of you, of your partner. There's questionnaires you have to answer about what the life would be like for this kid.

Speaker 1 And I think that's really important to remember because Tara, running this sort of adoption agency, had access to all of these booklets that had so much information about people and what they were looking for.

Speaker 1 She would even have them fill out questions of like, what would be the ideal scenario for you as far as like being matched with a birth parent?

Speaker 1 She asked asked Amber and Amber went into detail and said, well, I mean, I'm open to whatever, but you know, it would be great if it were a young woman who was still in school and had big hopes and dreams for her life and just didn't want to become a parent right then.

Speaker 13 This is the kind of person she's hoping to help by adopting from them. Yes.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 She's like, that would be my sort of, if I had to write. my perfect birth parent match, that would be it.

Speaker 1 And then lo and behold, you know, weeks later, Tara comes back to her and says, can you even believe it? There's a young woman. She's a teenager.

Speaker 1 And because of that, you won't have any access or contact with her. You'll only go through me.
She's pregnant.

Speaker 1 You know, she'd like to have the baby and place her child with someone who wants a kid, but can't have one. And I gave her your booklet.
She loves you. So Amber was really excited.

Speaker 1 She started to, again, buy baby clothes. She started to imagine what her life would be like as a mother.

Speaker 1 But as Jessica, we'll call her Jessica's due date approached, all these issues started to arise.

Speaker 1 Tara would text her things like, well, now Jessica's parents are upset because they want to adopt the baby. But Jessica still wants you to adopt her child.
So we're going to keep moving forward.

Speaker 1 We want to let you know, like, you know, there's some risks. So she started to kind of prep her in that way.

Speaker 1 So right before, you know, her due date, Amber like goes to Michigan and, you know, has a crib, is so ready, has the car seat, everything.

Speaker 1 And then nothing. She doesn't hear from from Tara what's going on.
Then Tara, you know, calls her in a panic and is like, oh my gosh, Jessica's gone missing. We don't know what's going on.

Speaker 1 She might be in danger. She might be wandering the streets of Detroit.
Of course, Amber's in a panic about this. And eventually Tara's just like, I don't know.
She basically ghosted us.

Speaker 1 I don't know what's going on. So sorry.
It's not going to work out.

Speaker 13 And had Amber been paying for Jessica's prenatal care?

Speaker 1 Yeah. So how it worked was when prospective adoptive parents signed up with Tara, they had to immediately pay

Speaker 1 her fee for her services as well as fees for the birth parent. And that could range depending on how far along they were in their pregnancy, that amount was different.

Speaker 1 But a lot of people estimated, and you know, in total, it was about $20,000 that they would hand over to Tara, which honestly felt like a bit of a deal because as you mentioned, the average price is more around $40,000.

Speaker 1 And Tara's services were about half of that. So it was more affordable, even though a lot of these people, they had saved up for years to have that amount of money to be able to hand over to Tara.

Speaker 1 And it wasn't like they had a lot more money if something didn't work out to try again.

Speaker 1 Now, Tara did say that if something falls through with the match, you'll get some of this money refunded or whatever we haven't spent, you can use toward an additional match, right?

Speaker 1 So for Amber, though, you know, obviously this is like heartbreaking. She ends up going home.
She sort of needs a minute before she can try to pursue adoption again after this.

Speaker 13 So she went all the way to Michigan. All the way.
Because I remember working on this. I don't remember this specific interview.
So she goes all the way to Michigan.

Speaker 13 And that's when Tara chooses to tell her. Jessica is no longer interested.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Jessica has ghosted us. Right.
And she might be in danger. The baby might be in danger.
It's all of these unknowns. And Amber didn't really get any answers about that.
It just was over.

Speaker 1 So then she goes home. She's heartbroken.

Speaker 1 She said for years after this, she would think about Jessica and about the baby and like wonder what they were doing and if they were okay and like hope that they were doing well.

Speaker 1 She would find out years later that Jessica never existed.

Speaker 13 Never existed. So Tara meets Amber, says, here's what this person is looking for.
I'm just going to like make up a completely fabricated person to match that.

Speaker 13 And then I'm going to string her along for nine months or however many months it ended up being, take $20,000 and just leave.

Speaker 13 Yeah. It's like terrible.
I mean, also just imagine if you're Amber in that situation.

Speaker 13 Not only are your own hopes built up for this, but you're probably already understanding that there is some chance that any birth mother will decide at the final hour to not place their baby for adoption and to raise that baby themselves.

Speaker 13 And that is their right for a certain amount of time.

Speaker 1 And so you're illegal, even after the baby is born for like three days or something.

Speaker 13 Yeah, you can change your mind. Totally.
And that's a good thing that that's in place. But as someone who's trying to adopt, it's still scary.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, of course.

Speaker 13 It's still emotional. And so you're already battling that.
And then to find out that none of it was true.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And because of those very real

Speaker 1 risks with adoption, especially when a person is choosing to place a child that they're giving birth to up for adoption, of course, their rights really need to be paramount here.

Speaker 1 So if they give birth and then they decide, no, I actually want to raise this kid, they have every right in the world to make that decision and they should.

Speaker 1 But because there is that emotional risk, that financial risk for people going through the adoption process as prospective adoptive parents.

Speaker 1 A lot of states have very strict rules about about agencies and what they have to offer birth parents, prospective birth parents, like counseling.

Speaker 1 They have to have a certain amount of counseling before they are even allowed to say, yes, I would like to place my child up for adoption.

Speaker 1 You can never really make sure, but to try to safeguard against this.

Speaker 13 Right, to safeguard against this as much as you can.

Speaker 13 And it doesn't mean that someone shouldn't change their mind at the last minute if that's what they want to do, but there's an emotional toll that takes place if, for several months, you've been telling someone that they'll potentially be the adopted family.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then Tara, she said that she was a counselor and that she was providing counseling services to birth parents that she worked with, which will come out as not true.

Speaker 1 Psoriatic arthritis symptoms can be unpredictable.

Speaker 15 I had joint pain and I couldn't move like I used to.

Speaker 3 I needed relief.

Speaker 1 I got Cosentix.

Speaker 15 It helped me move better.

Speaker 14 Cosentix Seccukenumab is prescribed for people two years of age and older with active psoriatic arthritis. Don't use if you're allergic to Cosentix.
Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis.

Speaker 14 An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur, like tuberculosis or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections. Some were fatal.

Speaker 14 Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or cough. Add a vaccine or plan to, or if inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen.

Speaker 14 Serious allergic reactions and severe eczema-like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1-844-COSENTIX or COSENTIX.com.

Speaker 3 Ask your dromatologists about COSENTIX.

Speaker 6 Are your AI agents helping users or just creating more work?

Speaker 4 If you can't compare your users' workflows before and after adding AI, how do you know it's even paying off?

Speaker 2 Pendo Agent Analytics is the first tool to connect agent prompts and conversations to downstream outcomes like time saved so you know what's working and what to fix.

Speaker 7 Start improving agent performance at pendo.io/slash podcast.

Speaker 11 That's pendo.io slash podcast.

Speaker 12 So let me get this straight. Your company has data here, there, and everywhere.
But your AI can't use the data because it's here, there, and everywhere?

Speaker 12 Seems like something's missing. Every business has unique data.
IBM helps your AI access your data wherever it lives to change how you do business.

Speaker 12 Let's create Smarter Business, IBM.

Speaker 1 I want to talk about one other couple because I just really liked them a lot.

Speaker 13 I think I know which couple you're talking about.

Speaker 1 Teresa and Mike Mathini. So there was a podcast that I thought was really well done that the binge just put out this year, Baby Broker, and I noticed that Teresa and Mike also spoke with them.

Speaker 1 One of the things that Teresa told us, which Amber also told us, it sounds like Tara Lee

Speaker 1 had this sort of phrase or group of phrases that she would use to describe herself when she met prospective adoptive parents.

Speaker 1 And she would say something along the lines of to everybody, you know, I cuss like a trucker. I'm covered in tattoos.
I've survived a heart attack. I've been shot at, but I just love my work.

Speaker 1 I love these birth moms. You know, I'm their sister.
I'm their mother. I'm their chauffeur.
I'm their best friend. I'm changing diapers.
I'm driving people to appointments.

Speaker 1 And multiple people said that this sort of vibe that she put out, it was kind of chaotic, but it also communicated that she cared a lot. She was messy, she was chaotic, but she was all heart.

Speaker 1 Like her heart was in the right place. She cared so much.
She was sort of stretching herself thin.

Speaker 13 Yeah, if I remember correctly, one thing that Tara did with everyone is she was in pretty constant communication, texts and phone calls. It was a very, became a very casual and friendly,

Speaker 13 frequent dialogue between her and these prospective parents. There was not like, okay, a channel you go through.

Speaker 1 Right. Well, all communication went through Tara.
And it sounds like she was very communicative.

Speaker 1 Sometimes after she was paid a big chunk of money and there were like important questions that people needed answers, she would sort of not be as communicative for a while, you know?

Speaker 1 Like with Mike and Teresa, they had been very similar kind of story to a lot of people in that they signed up with an agency, were waiting for 18 months without any news.

Speaker 1 They ended up meeting this woman in South Carolina who like went to Teresa's dad's church, like very trusted kind of, they felt really comfortable with her. She has a referral service.

Speaker 1 So they pay like $2,500 just to be part of her referral service. That woman was in contact with Tara, didn't know.
We don't think.

Speaker 1 There's no evidence that she knew what Tara was doing, but she would often send prospective adoptive parents to Tara. So that's how they got in contact with Tara.
Within a week, they get a call.

Speaker 1 Tara says, I've already shown your book to a prospective adoptive parent and she loves you and she wants to place with you. So of course they're freaking out.
They're so excited.

Speaker 1 And then Tara says, I'm going to patch her in right now. So then they're just on the phone with her right then.
It's just happening so fast. And on the phone with them, Tara asks this birth mom.

Speaker 1 So what do you think? Do you want to place your kid with Teresa and Mike?

Speaker 13 Okay. That, I mean, and you know what, though, we, we see this so often where in hindsight, you're like, well, that's bananas.
There's no way that could be real.

Speaker 13 But in the moment, people get really caught up. We all do, in,

Speaker 13 you know, hoping that something is real. And also these people had a legitimate referral service connect them to Tara.
Yeah. Sounds like they had some other connection to the referral service.

Speaker 13 It's like, who would think?

Speaker 1 Totally.

Speaker 13 Plus that means that the person she's patching in is also in on it.

Speaker 1 It's a good question. Right.
So, and Mike said, he's like, I'm the kind of guy that reads every contract, no matter what. Like my lawyer will read it, but I'm also reading it.

Speaker 1 But in this moment, we just were so excited about the prospect. And it seemed like, so like you got to act now.

Speaker 1 So they were just like, great. And the birth mom said, yeah, I really like them.
Let's do it. Okay.
So then they hang up.

Speaker 1 Tara immediately calls back and is like, I need you to to send me $13,000 immediately to like secure this thing. So they do without a contract, you know?

Speaker 1 So this was September, the end of September 2018. And they're told the baby's due next month.
So now you have to like, okay, let's get ready quickly. But things are immediately a little strange.

Speaker 1 They're having a really hard time getting an exact due date from Tara. She's sort of wishy-washy.
She finally does send a contract, but it's sort of like not well written. They're like, okay.

Speaker 1 She puts them on a group text with the birth mom and says, you know, just to be respectful, I only want you to communicate with her through this group text so that if anything gets weird, I can be like the person that helps it along.

Speaker 1 She's like, I have a master's in social work. And they're like, okay, that makes sense.
That totally makes sense.

Speaker 1 $8,000 of the $13,000 is for birth parent expenses, which should be going to the birth parents' rent, food, you know, transportation to doctor's offices, any medical bills.

Speaker 1 Those are all legal things for them to pay. It was based on her bills, it was like more than enough, almost double what she would need.

Speaker 1 But they were like, great, you know, in case she needs something random, like we want her to be taken care of. So they finally get a date.
It's going to be end of October. They're in Georgia.

Speaker 1 They pack up their car. They're going to drive to Detroit so that they can bring the baby back with like, you you know, in the car with the car seat, everything.

Speaker 1 And the day before they leave, they get an email like from another agency that's sort of ominous and says something like, are any of our parents working with Tara Lee, like contact us immediately?

Speaker 1 Long story short, they end up getting contact with some attorneys who were working with Tara, but didn't realize what was going on.

Speaker 1 But they said, look, the FBI just contacted us and they're investigating Tara Lee. You can't tell anyone about this.

Speaker 1 So Teresa and Mike are just devastated, freaking out. They're like, we're getting ready to drive to Detroit.
And you're telling me that she is scamming people. What's going on?

Speaker 1 Like, what should we do? And Tanya, the lawyer, said, look. We're pretty sure your adoption is real.

Speaker 1 We're pretty sure the birth mom you've been talking to is a real person and is pregnant and is in Detroit and does want to place her child for adoption.

Speaker 1 So you should probably go, but you can't tell Tara anything.

Speaker 1 In fact, if you even let it slip that you're like suspicious of her or do anything that messes up the FBI investigation, you could be criminally charged.

Speaker 13 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 For interfering with an FBI investigation. Wow.

Speaker 13 So they're in Georgia packing up their car to go to Michigan.

Speaker 13 I don't know if that for me road trip would be silent or if I would be talking nonstop because you're so hopeful, but now you're more nervous than ever and you have this added fear of messing up the investigation.

Speaker 13 I mean, I assume they're still texting with Tara and this supposed birth mother.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 13 I mean, it had to be somewhat reassuring that Tanya said that she thought things were real. That would be good to hear in the midst of hearing something else like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think it's the only reason they went, right, with that hope because they were hearing stories already.
Tanya and Talia, the other attorney, they had an agency together.

Speaker 1 They had started to hear all these stories from different people.

Speaker 1 I mean, horror stories of fake birth parents, or Tara apparently made up a story with someone, you know, a fake birth parent that she had fabricated.

Speaker 1 And then what she told the prospective adoptive parent was, oh my gosh, she was shot and killed. And so was the fetus.
Just like concocting these like traumatic stories.

Speaker 1 She also, she did work with some people that were actually pregnant, but then she would often try to match them with like three, four more families because every time she got a new family on board, she got that match fee.

Speaker 1 So that was like five, six, seven thousand dollars in her pocket immediately.

Speaker 1 And then she would try to get that match to fail so that then she could match the pregnant person again with a different family.

Speaker 13 And this is so exploitative of the birth mother.

Speaker 13 I mean, you're exploiting these prospective adoptive parents, but you also have this birth mother who thinks that you're going to help her and find the right person.

Speaker 13 And you're just like raking in cash using her trauma for money.

Speaker 1 And Mike and Teresa are about to learn a lot more about that. They do go to Michigan.

Speaker 1 They end up meeting Tara and the birth parents, mom and dad, at Texas Roadhouse for a meal because Tara told them that that was the birth mom's favorite restaurant. Spoiler alert, it was not.

Speaker 1 Tara liked the restaurant.

Speaker 13 No disrespect to Texas Roadhouse, but the the lies. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, you know, Teresa and Mike at this point are sitting there feeling all this intensity. They see the birth mom and she's very pregnant.
And so that's like, okay, it's a good sign.

Speaker 1 But Tara shows up and they're describing her as like, you know, full Lululemon sweatsuit, nails done, Prada glasses, Rolex watch, Louis Vuitton bag. She sort of tries to intervene.

Speaker 1 Anytime Teresa and Mike try to actually speak with the birth parents, Tara kind of interjects and tries to shut that communication down.

Speaker 1 So she's actively trying to get them to not communicate with each other, sort of. And then Tara also, I love this little tidbit.

Speaker 1 She orders food to go and it's like clear that Mike and Teresa are going to pay for the meal. So shameless.

Speaker 13 Shameless.

Speaker 1 They think that Tara's plan all along was to sort of have this fail and for them to leave.

Speaker 1 But what happened while they were there is that the birth mom actually ends up passing, not at Texas Roadhouse, they leave, but like a couple days later, she ends up passing out and has to go to the hospital.

Speaker 1 And what comes out is that she has praclampsia.

Speaker 1 And the reason this hasn't been like caught or on anyone's radar is that she hasn't been going to doctor's appointments because Tara is not actually doing anything for her.

Speaker 1 She needs new tires for her car. She keeps telling Tara that.

Speaker 1 And Teresa and Mike heard her kind of mention that at the dinner and wondered why she didn't have tires for her car when they'd given like $8,000 that was supposed to go directly to anything the birth mom needed.

Speaker 1 Her power got shut off on her house. And Tara insisted that she give birth at a hospital that was 60 miles from where she was living.
And clear that Tara was not actually that involved. She wasn't.

Speaker 1 helping her get to doctor's appointments. She wasn't taking care of her, was not giving her the money that Mike and Teresa had given to Tara to help her.

Speaker 13 It's terrible. I mean, that's a life-threatening condition.
It's like pregnancy is this, quote, you know, routine health event, but there is so much danger.

Speaker 13 And that is why this pregnatal care is so important. And just also sad to think of what this person was already going through and then to just pile on this greed.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So because of that, Mike and Teresa end up in a situation where they are in the hospital.

Speaker 1 There's a day where Tara is somehow not around and they end up communicating with the birth parents and get along well.

Speaker 1 And it turns out that the birth parents realized Tara had been lying to them and was saying that Mike and Teresa just haven't paid, they just won't pay. They won't pay your expenses.

Speaker 13 So that's why she didn't want them to speak at dinner.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 The adoption does end up going through. It's one of the few sort of happy stories in everything that Tara Lee was involved with with this.

Speaker 1 And they're on good terms with their birth parents to this day, which is really cool.

Speaker 13 That is cool.

Speaker 1 But obviously a very stressful thing to go through.

Speaker 1 So Tara Lee, her home was, you know, raided. They had a search warrant.
She ended up getting arrested. She was charged with multiple counts of wire fraud.

Speaker 1 There was another person who was also charged, I think, with three counts of wire fraud, who was a woman who was working with her and posing as a birth mom and like pretending to be all these other people.

Speaker 1 And in 2020, she was convicted. She ended up posting bail, but then violated her terms multiple times.
She wasn't supposed to use a cell phone, and there were pictures of her using a cell phone.

Speaker 1 So she ended up getting arrested. And the investigation revealed that she basically stole, defrauded people of $2.1 million

Speaker 1 from 2014 to 2018.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 she was convicted and sentenced to, I think it was 121 months in prison. So she was sentenced to about 10 years, which was actually the maximum that the judge could give her for her plea deal.

Speaker 1 She ended up pleading guilty to like three counts of wire fraud, but the judge took this very seriously.

Speaker 1 A bunch of people showed up and he let everybody give their victim impact statements and then gave her the maximum sentence.

Speaker 1 Additionally, he said that she would have to read and record all the victim impact statements once she was incarcerated as part of her punishment.

Speaker 13 I like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think that they said that over 160 couples were affected by her actions.

Speaker 1 So she was supposed to be released in 2027, but actually at the beginning of this year, she was moved from a federal prison in Alabama. to a halfway house.

Speaker 1 So she's still being monitored, but she's no longer in a federal prison. And I think a lot of the victims were pretty unhappy about that.

Speaker 13 Yeah. I mean, she put people's lives in danger in the case of the birth mother you were speaking about that never got the prenatal care that she needed.
Yeah.

Speaker 13 And she also robbed people of money they had set aside to start their family that you can't just snap your fingers and come up with that again.

Speaker 1 No. And it's like the time to get over that trauma plus having to save up money again.
It was really negatively impactful for a lot of people.

Speaker 13 What I think about a lot now with this story is Tara is a mother. Yeah.
It's like she knows what that feels like to want a child, to have a child to be pregnant.

Speaker 13 I don't know how you can separate your own experience from others. She just drew this line.
Like, well, I'm fine if it happens to them, even though I went through it. I know how hard pregnancy is.

Speaker 13 It's like, Really?

Speaker 1 How could you do that? It's very hard to believe, very hard to understand. I remember when we spoke with the FBI to investigators, they talked about this moment when they interviewed her.

Speaker 1 And, you know, this is their perception, but they said something like,

Speaker 1 it was very memorable because she was going through this range of emotions. She would tell us something and she would like start kind of crying.

Speaker 1 And it was clear that we weren't really buying it or reacting. And then she would switch.
And then like, she would be like, more like mousy and afraid.

Speaker 1 And then she would switch and she would be kind of like aggressive and angry their read of it was she was trying to manipulate the situation and figure out what would convince them to believe her and that's what she'd been doing this entire time yeah

Speaker 13 yeah i remember that we reached out to her family as well and no one would speak with us that's a perspective i'm always so curious about in these situations i mean Maybe they really didn't know what she was doing, but what would that feel like to know that that someone super close to you or the mother of your children had been treating other women like that?

Speaker 13 It's astounding. And to hear that she's already been released to a halfway house, I think in Detroit.

Speaker 13 Yeah. So now she's much closer to home.
You think about the price these people paid and how it changed their lives forever. Yeah.
And you just have to wonder, is that justice? I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. So I have a quick recommendation.

Speaker 1 It's not true crime. So we'll see if people like it.
If you don't, yell at me. Tell me that you only want true crime recommendations.

Speaker 1 But I just started watching this because multiple people had recommended it to me, which I did not take personally. You'll see what I mean.
It's called Couples Therapy. Okay.
Have you watched this?

Speaker 1 No. Okay.

Speaker 1 I think it took me a while to watch it because I was like, what is this? It's a docuseries and it is so fascinating. It is real people, real couples in a couple's therapy office.

Speaker 1 And you're seeing their therapy sessions.

Speaker 13 Is it over the course of years or months? Or what is the timeline? Do you know?

Speaker 1 Okay, I think it's because I looked it up afterward. They're like looking for couples for the new season.
I'm not going to do it. I just,

Speaker 1 they film it in New York. It's 20 free sessions.
This therapist is really good. And at first I was like, why would anyone sign up for this?

Speaker 1 Probably like you get 20 free sessions of free therapy with a very like good psychoanalyst is what the type of therapist that she is. And

Speaker 1 it's filmed really, really like nicely. In the episodes, they sort of weave in like multiple couples.
I'm on the first season. Apparently there's four.

Speaker 1 The first season, there's multiple couples that you're following over the course of, you know, 20 sessions or something.

Speaker 13 And it's just so

Speaker 1 interesting to see,

Speaker 1 you know, like every couple, the fights that they get in, the patterns that the things that they're struggling with. Sometimes you're like, God, that's so stupid.

Speaker 1 And then sometimes you're like, oh, that's so heartbreaking. And you start to feel for these people.

Speaker 13 And well, I heard that you like, or maybe I saw it or read it. I don't remember.
A couples therapist was talking about how long-term couples have the same three fights.

Speaker 13 They're disguised as other things, but they're the same three fights.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's interesting. You can really start to see those dynamics at play.
And I just also really like the therapist.

Speaker 1 I think it's interesting to see her and where her brain goes and the advice and the questions that she asks these couples.

Speaker 1 I didn't think that I would be as interested in it, but I'm very interested in it.

Speaker 13 Well, I would personally love to do that because my husband puts peanut butter in the refrigerator and this is, I can't understand it.

Speaker 1 How committed are you to this marriage? I don't know anymore.

Speaker 13 I mean, it's like 10 plus years, but I've just removed. Okay, why? You know, it's like you want it to be so unspreadable that the sandwich is a disaster.
Like,

Speaker 13 what is the end goal?

Speaker 1 I like shredded bread. Shredded bread, yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, yeah, check it out. Let me know what you think of it.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I would love to.

Speaker 1 That's our episode for today. Thanks so much for listening.
See you next week.

Speaker 13 If you have a story for us, we would love to hear it. Our email is thenife at exactlyrightmedia.com, or you can follow us on Instagram at theknife podcast or Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.

Speaker 1 This has been an exactly right production. Hosted and produced by me, Hannah Smith, and me, Patia Eaton.

Speaker 13 Our producers are Tom Breifogel and Alexa Samurosi.

Speaker 1 This episode was mixed by Tom Breifogel.

Speaker 13 Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.

Speaker 1 Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.

Speaker 13 Artwork by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 1 Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

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Speaker 15 Me

Speaker 16 What do you do when things get tough? You don't give up. You stand your ground.

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