WESTBROOK – Woman implicated in adoption plot nabbed for illegally subletting her apartment.
A Westbrook woman slated to stand trial next month for her involvement in what police described as an adoption scam was arrested last week for illegally subletting an apartment on Forest Street.
Misty Sargent, 24, was arrested on Feb. 2 after an investigation into a theft by deception. According to Westbrook police Sgt. Thomas Roche, Sargent took money from at least two people who believed they would be subletting her apartment, from which she was in the process of being evicted.
Sargent was taken to Cumberland County Jail, where she stayed for a week before being released on personal recognizance Monday evening, according to a records clerk at the jail. She’s scheduled to appear in court again on Feb. 19 on the newest charges.
Police arrested Sargent, who was out on bail on the adoption theft charge, on charges of theft by deception and violation of conditions of release. Though the district attorney’s office issued no complaint on the theft charge, Roche said police are pursuing the case.
“She will be charged,” he said.
Sargent was indicted by a Cumberland County grand jury in July on a felony charge of class C theft in relation to an alleged adoption scam. She pleaded not guilty to the charge at an arraignment later that month.
According to police, Sargent and another 27-year-old woman with Westbrook ties scammed more than $50,000 from couples, who believed they would be adopting the women’s babies.
Court documents named John Conger, Kevin Kelly and American Adoptions, a nonprofit agency based in Kansas, as the victims of the scam, which occurred between November 2008 and May 2009.
In an interview in June, Conger said he and his wife, who live in California, spent more than $8,000 during a three-month period supporting Sargent, whose baby they believed they were going to adopt. At the end of May, they found out the baby was born and had been adopted by another couple.
Westbrook Police Chief Bill Baker said at the time that it’s not illegal to take money from adoptive couples and not give them the baby. However, he said, it is illegal to take money from several people at the same time for the same expenses, and not to spend that money for its intended purposes.
Sargent’s trial for the felony theft charge is scheduled to begin at the end of March. She is facing a maximum of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine, due to her prior convictions. According to documents filed in Cumberland County Superior Court, Sargent was convicted on charges of theft twice in 2006 and on a charge of forgery in 2007.
Sargent’s attorney, Joel Vincent, said he didn’t know how her latest arrest could affect the trial.
“It’s just speculation until she’s charged with something,” he said.
Vincent declined to comment further on the arrest or on the upcoming trial scheduled.
“If she goes to trial, she’ll have an opportunity to tell her side of the story,” he said.
But Amy Morin, who owns and lives in the Forest Street home where Sargent had been staying since the end of December, recounted the events of the past couple months with the hope that their story can serve as a cautionary tale for other first-time landlords.
Morin and her husband Jesse, who are in their 20s, bought the Westbrook home in August. They spent the next few months fixing it up before deciding to rent the second floor as a separate apartment. In December, Amy Morin said, Sargent came along with her 3-year-old son, looking for a place to stay.
Though Sargent said she couldn’t pay rent or a security deposit up front, the couple took pity on her and her son and decided to let them move in anyway, Morin said.
“We were really nice, and it really backfired on us. She never gave us anything,” Morin said.
Aside from not paying the rent, Morin said, Sargent was a disrespectful tenant, who Morin believed smoked in the apartment and held late-night parties. When the problems persisted, Jesse Morin decided to search Sargent’s name on the Internet and found articles about the adoption scam last year.
“We had no idea about any of her background,” Morin said.
After not receiving rent for a month, the Morins issued an eviction notice to Sargent, realizing it might take some time to get her out of the house. But the next week, when Morin went upstairs to talk to Sargent, she instead found two women who said they were going to be subletting the apartment, which was advertised on the Web site craigslist.org. Morin told them that not only was subletting prohibited in the lease, they were in the process of evicting Sargent.
The women, who had already paid Sargent for rent, realized they had been duped. One of them, Morin said, was “in hysterics” about losing her money and contacted the police.
According to Roche, Sargent had taken money from “a couple of different people” who believed they’d be renting the apartment from her, but he didn’t know how much she had collected in total.
Police advised the Morins to change the locks on their doors, because they couldn’t know who had copies of the keys. When Sargent tried to return to the apartment later and found she couldn’t get in, she contacted Pine Tree Legal, which called the Morins saying they had illegally locked her out of the house.
The Morins called Westbrook police to let them know that Sargent was at the office of Pine Tree Legal. According to Roche, Sargent’s probation officer met her there and convinced her to turn herself in.
“It’s been quite an experience,” Amy Morin said.
Roche said he’s known Sargent since she was 5-years-old and “cute as a button,” but she ended up taking the wrong path in life.
“She likes Craigslist and she likes bilking people out of money,” he said.
Roche said he didn’t know how the expected theft charge would be handled in regard to Sargent’s current felony charge, but that it “would be an aggravating factor.”
“She’s looking at a couple serious crimes,” he said.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
