John and Alexandra Conger were in CPR class – a requirement for parents who are adopting a child – when they got a message from across the country that changed everything.
“It’s over. I’m keeping the child,” John Conger said the message, e-mailed to his cell phone, read.
But police believe the 24-year-old woman whose baby the California couple thought they were adopting didn’t just have a change of heart. She and a another 27-year-old woman, both of whom have Westbrook ties, could be facing charges for scamming more than $50,000 from couples who believed they would be adopting the women’s babies.
Westbrook Police Chief Bill Baker said an investigation into the scam involving the two women is under way, but he would not release their names because they have not yet been charged.
However, Baker said, the department presented a report to the district attorney this week establishing probable cause that the women and their relatives had committed theft by deception, targeting at least two couples who expected to adopt their children and “may have left a trail of victims including more than 14 adoptive couples and three adoption companies since October of last year.”
Neither Conger nor Baker would say where the woman has been living, but, Baker said, both women have lived in Westbrook on and off through the past several years.
The Congers said they spent more than $8,000 through three months supporting the 24-year-old, whose baby they believed they were going to adopt.
They were first connected to the woman in February through their adoption attorney in California. The couple, married for 13 years and unable to have a child of their own, adopted a boy in 2006 and decided they wanted another child.
“It seemed like a good idea,” John Conger said of his instinct about the mother. “Seemingly, everyone was on the same page.”
Conger said it’s typical for someone who is giving up a child for adoption to need financial assistance through the pregnancy, and the Congers started helping the woman as soon as she came into their lives.
“There was a desperate need presented to us for her to have housing,” Conger said, and so he and his wife paid to put her up in a hotel and later found her an apartment. They paid for her transportation, food, phone bills and clothing.
“We tried to set a budget at $1,450 a month, but we never kept to that,” John Conger said.
According to Betsy Bewsey, director of adoption programs and services for MAPS Worldwide, an adoption and social services agency in Portland, more often than not, adoptive parents provide financial support to birth mothers. However, she said, the agency works hard to verify what financial support is warranted and makes sure the money goes directly toward the need, whether it’s a rent check paid to the landlord or gift cards to the supermarket or Wal-Mart for clothes.
“We don’t give carte blanche checks to any birth parents,” she said.
Susan Greenwood, communications director for MAPS, said because of the amount of ongoing face-to-face counseling the agency does with birth mothers, it would be very difficult for someone to pull off a similar scam.
She said MAPS helps birth mothers explore all of their options and doesn’t start working to place the child until the birth mother has firmly decided she wants her child to be adopted.
“What happened was so awful and unfortunate, but such a rarity,” Greenwood said.
Despite her constant demands for more money, the Congers continued to trust the woman and help her in any way they could. In March, they flew to Maine to meet her and her boyfriend and took them out to dinner – a visit that reassured them even more.
He said the woman didn’t seem highly educated, but intelligent nonetheless. He said she was friendly and open, willing to answer questions – or, as he later learned, “willing to tell you what you wanted to hear.”
After the Congers returned to California, however, the woman’s demands increased and became more urgent. The Congers tried to work with her, but she became more and more difficult and began saying that she didn’t know if she could go through with the adoption. Conger asker her if she had been working with another family.
“She denied that outright,” he said.
Then, on May 1, they received the e-mail, and the Congers haven’t heard from her, or her lawyer, Timothy Robbins, based in Gorham, since. Baker said Robbins hasn’t cooperated with police, either, citing attorney-client privilege. However, Baker said, after presenting Robbins with a waiver of that right, he still refused to speak to police. Robbins didn’t return a call from the American Journal.
After getting the message, the Congers were in disbelief. They had just gone on a shopping trip to Babies R Us and bought a car seat and onesies.
“My wife’s bags were packed,” he said, ready to leave for Maine at any moment.
Conger said he learned Friday that the baby, which was due around the beginning of July, was born last week and adopted by another couple. He said he believes the woman intended to give the baby to that couple from the start, but that Maine laws prevented her from collecting money from them until the last two months of her pregnancy. However, in California, adoptive couples are allowed to support the mother throughout the nine months.
According to Baker, police have reason to believe that the 27-year-old gave birth to her child last year or early this year and placed it under the care of her own parents, despite the fact that she collected more than $20,000 from adoptive couples throughout her pregnancy.
As the investigation continues, Baker said, in the cases of both women, “the numbers are going up every day.”
Conger, who contacted the district attorney in Portland when he suspected he was being scammed, said he doesn’t expect to get his money back, but hopes that, by bringing the situation to the attention of police, he can help prevent other couples from being taken advantage of in the same way, at least by these two women.
Conger said he and his wife will continue trying to adopt a child, but will take a few more precautions with the next mother they work with. He said there’s a fear adoptive parents have that, if they’re too direct with the birth mothers as they go through the process, they’ll scare them away. But now, Conger said, that’s a risk they’re willing to take.
“I would rather scare one away than go through this again,” he said.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
