Baby Brokers

KELSEY VANDER VLIET RANYARD, Dir., Policy & Advocacy, Ethical Family Building:

A lot of times these women are coming from unstable housing situations, financial instability, pretty deep poverty.

NARRATOR:

In collaboration with Retro Report, correspondent Gabrielle Glaser investigates a hidden side of the adoption industry—

GEORGIA ADOPTIVE MOTHER:

I don’t know a single adoptive parent who wants to buy a baby. I would never want my children to feel like they were bought and sold.

DONNA POPE, Exec. Dir., Heart to Heart Adoptions:

The law says you can’t buy a baby. That’s the law. OK, but can you help this birth mom?

NARRATOR:

—the efforts for reform—

DAVID CLAY FOWLKES, U.S. Atty., Western District of Arkansas, 2020-26:

We have more work that we need to do in this area to try to end the exploitation that we know is occurring among these birth mothers.

REP. LAUREL LEE, (R) Florida:

This is not a problem that states individually can solve alone.

NARRATOR:

—and the impact on families.

TIA GOINS, Birth mother:

Everything was just too fast. She was reading. She pointed. I signed.

RACHEL CHRISTENSEN, Adoptive mother:

I remember walking in and there was all these pregnant women sleeping on the floor. And just being like, “What have we done?”

NARRATOR:

Now on FRONTLINE: Baby Brokers.

MALE NEWSREADER:

A local adoption agency tells us it can take up to two years or more for a family to adopt.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

The birth rate is down in the U.S., leaving a lot more waiting families than available infants.

GABRIELLE GLASER, Correspondent:

I’ve been reporting and writing about adoptions in the U.S. for years, as it’s grown into a multibillion-dollar industry and demand has gotten so high that prospective parents outnumber infants by more than 40 to 1.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Countries that used to adopt out thousands of orphans a year have tightened up their rules.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Many states have strict laws that govern adoptions. But over the past few years, I’ve been investigating a more loosely regulated corner of the industry—where pregnant women are often lured far from their home states by so-called baby brokers, offering quick money to them and quick adoptions to hopeful parents.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

—talking about how Utah’s loose adoption laws have led the state to become a destination for adoption for them, with pregnant women and adoptive families traveling from all over the country to come here.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

It’s been described as “adoption tourism,” and Utah is an epicenter.

Much of the business begins online.

KELSEY VANDER VLIET RANYARD, Dir., Policy & Advocacy, Ethical Family Building:

That first page is going to be all the paid ads that are targeted towards that region. So, get paid for adoption. Geocode, Columbia, South Carolina.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard works for a nonprofit that tracks agencies and brokers that solicit pregnant women around the country.

KELSEY VANDER VLIET RANYARD:

In my work, we survey what’s happening in the Google advertisements. We conduct Google searches from all over the country, from different states and regions, to understand what is popping up in women’s Google searches when they look for adoption help.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

She had firsthand experience, as she had placed one of her own children for adoption.

KELSEY VANDER VLIET RANYARD:

Choose adoption. Free safe housing for you and your family. Money for bills, food and more.

A lot of times these women are coming from unstable housing situations, financial instability, pretty deep poverty. They could live down the street from an adoption agency that’s licensed in their state and can provide social services to them. But that agency is pretty unlikely to actually appear in the ads because an overwhelming amount of those ads, those paid ads, are coming from Utah adoption agencies.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

In some cases, she said, the ads are not even directly from the agencies themselves, but from unlicensed brokers working on their behalf.

KELSEY VANDER VLIET RANYARD:

This is an unlicensed intermediary in Virginia. And their job is to get you to move to Utah—convince you to move to Utah. Facilitate your relocation, and as soon as you arrive, you are handed off to your agency.

Typically, adoption would be finding families for children who need them. But what private, domestic infant adoption has really become is finding children for families who want them. And because that’s been the focus, it’s become incredibly transactional.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

One woman who was drawn into this process was Tia Goins. Her experience began back in 2018, in Michigan, after she had given birth. She was 20 and facing homelessness as winter approached.

What gave you the idea to consider adoption?

TIA GOINS:

I mean, I was adopted, so that’s what kind of gave me the idea, because I was adopted.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

So can you walk me back through how you—You decided to look up an agency. What happened? Can you tell us what—

TIA GOINS:

I was just was having all these different emotions in my head, like, I don’t want to be in a shelter with her. . . . So literally the first thing that popped into my head was adoption . . . So I just looked up adoption agencies. First thing I typed in Google search: adoption agencies. And the first link that popped up . . . I clicked the number and I called it, and a lady named Flossie Green answered. And she told me that they would give me a thousand dollars if I go through with the adoption. So, I told her just to give me a couple of days to let me think about it, let me figure out if that’s what I wanted to do. She called back the next day.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Within 24 hours, she said the woman from the ad, Flossie Green, had arranged for her and her three-month-old baby to be flown to Salt Lake City, where the owner of an adoption agency was waiting.

SANDI QUICK:

Hi, my name’s Sandi Quick. I am the owner, founder and director of Brighter Adoptions. We are a licensed child-placing agency located in Utah, and we serve women from all over the United States who are wanting to do an adoption—

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Goins had been passed on to Sandi Quick, who brought her to a nearby restaurant, where she met a couple who’d come from out of state to adopt her baby. But later that night back at the hotel room, she said she began having second thoughts.

TIA GOINS:

I just kept hearing something that just kept telling me to go back home. Go back home, go back home, go back home. So I called Sandi, and Sandi didn’t answer the phone, so I texted her. I’m like, “I might—I don’t think I want to do this anymore. I think I want to go back home.” And she’s like, “OK, I’m in labor with another mother right now. I’ll give you a call back in a second.”

GABRIELLE GLASER:

She said the call never came, and the next morning, she said Quick’s agency presented her with the adoption paperwork.

TIA GOINS:

It happened too fast. Everything was just too fast. The lady said, “I’m going to read these off and you sign where I point.” So she was reading. She pointed. I signed.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Once she signed, there was no turning back. While some states give birth mothers 30 days to reconsider, even after they’ve placed, at the time Utah did not. The whole transaction took three days.

TIA GOINS:

It hurt real bad, to go back to the same airport I came out of with a baby, without a baby.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Before she left Salt Lake, she said Quick handed her an envelope with $4,000 in cash.

Back then, Utah had no limits on the amount of cash payments to birth mothers as long as the agency said it was covering what’s considered reasonable costs for pregnancy and immediate postpartum care.

TIA GOINS:

She told me, “Try not to spend it all in one place.” Or, “Use it wisely.” That’s what she told me. “Use it wisely.”

GABRIELLE GLASER:

We reached out to both Flossie Green and Sandi Quick, but neither of them would agree to talk to us. Authorities have never charged them with any crimes or prevented them from operating.

When I first wrote about Tia Goins’ story in 2024, Quick told me in an email that she couldn’t discuss specific cases but that her agency takes any indication of hesitation from a birth mother very seriously. And she said they’d “never take consent from a mother who did not fully understand the ramifications.”

For years after the adoption, Goins pursued the adoptive parents for contact with the child—so much so that a court issued a restraining order.

In a statement, the adoptive mother said that her daughter is now a “bright, healthy, extraordinary little girl” and that the adoption was “voluntary.” She said the adoption industry needs federal oversight and uniform standards.

I spoke to dozens of people while reporting this story: birth mothers; adoptive parents; adoptees; agency owners; government officials; and law enforcement. And I combed through thousands of pages of adoption-related documents.

What I found was a patchwork system, where states like Utah with historically lax rules have allowed brokers and agencies to profit—and critics say, often take advantage of birth mothers and adoptive parents.

Why would adoptive parents want to come here from elsewhere to adopt?

KELSEY VANDER VLIET RANYARD:

A lot of times they get led here by their consultant. And the draw of it is just too good. The idea that they could have a baby in just a few months, I think that’s very attractive to desperate people. Adoptions are easy, maybe quicker, seemingly more efficient in terms of bureaucratic red tape.

Essentially, Utah has become a location for private adoption forum shopping.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

In recent months, the state has moved to tighten its adoption laws in response to mounting criticism from birth mothers and their advocates.

Some disillusioned adoptive parents have also been expressing concerns.

GEORGIA ADOPTIVE MOTHER:

It’s been hard to wrap my mind around what we played into. I touted how beautiful our adoption, how easy our adoption was. Of course it was easy. Easy doesn’t mean good. So yeah, there’s a level of guilt that I’ve had to work through.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

This woman adopted a baby in Utah in 2019. She was steered there by a private consultant, another type of unlicensed intermediary, and started going through the process again a few years later.

GEORGIA ADOPTIVE MOTHER:

So this is basically what we would receive as information about a mom who’s pregnant and was considering adoption. So this one we got in March 2022. It says “she has been here before and placed a child for adoption in February of 2020 and June of 2021.” So that’s three babies in less than three years, all placing.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

What did this say to you?

GEORGIA ADOPTIVE MOTHER:

I mean, she’s either not receiving support to heal, to have access to affordable health care, affordable contraceptives, or she’s become accustomed to whatever lifestyle and support the agency’s providing her and is being sold on doing that. It’s telling me she’s very young, and it’s—It feels exploitative. I mean, she’s continuing to get pregnant, give birth and place.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

She told me she and her husband were so concerned about the process they ultimately decided to adopt through an agency in their home state of Georgia.

GEORGIA ADOPTIVE MOTHER:

By spring of 2022, my husband and I just—I remember saying to him, “I don’t think that we can adopt again in this way, because I don’t think I could live with it.”

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Many women I have spoken to who were in Utah, who once they did place, received cash payments.

GEORGIA ADOPTIVE MOTHER:

That feels gross to me, to be handing someone a lump of cash. The point of birth mother expenses are to provide the support she needs to have a healthy and safe pregnancy. Not to give you $5,000 cash to go and do what you will. Not to be an inducement to place your child. How does that not end up feeling like selling a baby? I don’t know a single adoptive parent who wants to buy a baby. I would never want my children to feel like they were bought and sold.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

One of the reasons Utah became such an adoption hot spot is due to how agencies have used cash and housing offers as incentives for vulnerable women in other states.

Ashley Mitchell placed her own child for adoption and later became an advocate for reform.

ASHLEY MITCHELL, Adoption reform advocate:

I just kept getting messages and messages, and you need to see this, and have you heard about this? And do you know about this contract, and do you know about this apartment?

GABRIELLE GLASER:

I met with her in 2025, when she showed us some local apartments that agencies had used to house pregnant women from out of state.

ASHLEY MITCHELL:

So this was the first apartment that we heard of.

I mean, look how broken down, like all the blinds and everything.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

She said she’d talked to birth mothers who’d lived in these kinds of apartments and told her that there were consequences for anyone who changed their minds about going through with an adoption.

ASHLEY MITCHELL:

If a woman wanted to parent, they would be evicted immediately. Because if they were brought here for the sole purpose of adoption, they’re not going to pay their bills anymore.

And this is like you carrying your baby out of the hospital, we’re packing up your s— in your apartment.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Mitchell learned about a woman who’d gone through that experience. The woman had reached out to a Facebook group of birth mothers, who rallied to help her.

ASHLEY MITCHELL:

And so I just said, “Well, let’s go get her.”

This is crazy. This is so messed up. I wish I was surprised that this was happening. I wish I was—I’m very angry, but I’m just like, pick a day. It’s just a normal Wednesday in Utah. Which is so messed up.

I’m making sure this is the right address.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

We filmed as she went to see the woman at a home they’d found for her, her newborn and two toddlers to stay in while she figured out next steps.

ASHLEY MITCHELL:

Hi, how are you?

GULF STATE MOTHER:

Good.

ASHLEY MITCHELL:

It’s so nice to meet you.

GULF STATE MOTHER:

Yes.

ASHLEY MITCHELL:

Hey, beautiful. Hi. How are you? [Laughs] Can I hold this? I brought some gifts. [Laughs]

GULF STATE MOTHER:

OK.

It’s so hurtful—

GABRIELLE GLASER:

She’d come to Utah from a state where abortion is illegal. She had no job, and no stable place to live.

ASHLEY MITCHELL:

I live here, I’m born and raised here.

GULF STATE MOTHER:

Oh, really?

ASHLEY MITCHELL:

I placed my son for adoption 18 years ago.

GULF STATE MOTHER:

OK.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

She’d gone online looking for help and found an ad from Flossie Green, who put her in touch with Denise Garza, the owner of the Love and Light adoption agency.

She said Garza offered her a free apartment with a playground and a pool, good medical care and money for food and clothing. But once she was there, she began to have second thoughts about placing the baby.

GULF STATE MOTHER:

As my stomach got bigger, and just my emotions were just really getting in the way for me. And you know, at times I felt like I was scared to say, “Hey, I don’t want to do it anymore. It’s getting to the end, and I don’t know if I owe something.” I just felt pressured all the way around. I just felt trapped, isolated and I was just ready to run off, and I didn’t know where to go. And it just feels like I’ve been hit by a train several times.

ASHLEY MITCHELL:

It’s wild.

GULF STATE MOTHER:

And it’s, it’s—I don’t even know what to say no more.

ASHLEY MITCHELL:

I’m sorry.

GULF STATE MOTHER:

Let’s switch.

ASHLEY MITCHELL:

Trade you. You’re like— [Laughter]

GULF STATE MOTHER:

I never would’ve thought I would be in this situation, like for real. Going back to square one.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

The woman was scheduled to fly back to her home state the next day.

ASHLEY MITCHELL:

What a f—— mess. God, that’s so f—– up.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

After leaving, Mitchell called us to talk about the situation.

ASHLEY MITCHELL:

OK, I’m going to call them real quick. They just make it—There’s just no way. They just make it impossible. What the f— is she supposed to do? Lose her kid, or lose her support? Like—Hey.

GABRIELLE GLASER [on phone]:

How are you?

SARAH WEISER, Producer [on phone]:

Tell us, how did it go?

ASHLEY MITCHELL:

Uh, I mean, I don’t—As good as those things go, I guess. [Laughs] I mean. She, um—she’s so—I’ll bet—I would just tell you it would not shock me in any way if she goes back to an agency to place.

She’s got to get on an airplane tomorrow or not. She’s either going to pack up her s— and get on that airplane with her new baby or she’s going to go back to the agency. Because those are her two options.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

The woman ended up returning home with her newborn. But six weeks later she reached back out to Denise Garza at Love and Light for help.

When I got in touch with the woman again, she told me that Garza had flown to her, arranged the adoption and then gave her $5,000 in cash apps and gift cards.

Denise Garza wouldn’t agree to an interview but has disputed the woman’s account.

I’d started reporting on her two years earlier. Although there weren’t any criminal charges, in 2018, Utah revoked her license for five years after regulators cited her for violations, including failing to provide medical information to adoptive parents, falsifying forms and charging for medical expenses paid for by Medicaid.

At the time, she told me in an email that she was very sorry for the mistakes she’d made in the past and was committed to mothers’ safe and healthy pregnancies and running her agency at the highest ethical and administrative standards.

In addition to Garza and Quick, a few other adoption agencies in Utah also regularly bring women in from out of state.

Donna?

DONNA POPE, Exec. Dir., Heart to Heart Adoptions:

Hey, hi.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Donna Pope runs one of them and agreed to talk to me.

Oh, is this your map you were telling me about?

DONNA POPE:

This is the map. And this is also, this is our wall of fame. This is this year.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Her nonprofit agency, Heart to Heart, arranges about 90 adoptions a year. She said roughly a quarter of them are with out-of-state birth mothers who’ve traveled to Utah.

DONNA POPE:

Every one of these has this amazing story.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Some agencies here are for-profit. And I know you know about them. Some of them have come under scrutiny. Sandi Quick and Denise Garza, who run for-profit entities, have raised a lot of eyebrows nationally, and you are aligned with them. How do you think some of that scrutiny reflects on the adoption industry in Utah overall?

DONNA POPE:

Yeah, no. And I like Sandi and I like Denise. I think they’re wonderful people and I care about them a lot. Since it’s become more scrutinized here, we’ve increased our conversations with each other and we have talked a little bit more about, well, why are you choosing to do it that way? Why are you choosing to do it this way?

I don’t feel like I’m in a position to tell people how to run their business. I don’t feel like that is my job. I certainly am very, as you can tell, vocal about some of the principles that I think are important. One is that you treat women with dignity, with respect and empower them and try to make sure that you follow what their needs are and try to fulfill them.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Pope has never had any legal or regulatory sanctions that stopped her from operating her adoption business. And as for out-of-state adoptions specifically, she said they fulfill an important need.

DONNA POPE:

This population of women are oftentimes extremely vulnerable. They don’t have a lot of power. If they need to get up and move, let them get up and move. If they need additional help from someone else that’s not their neighbor, get them additional help from someone else that’s not their neighbor. Empower them to get the services they need, wherever that might be.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

But one thing I learned was that sometimes women get cash payments. What do you think of that? And do you think that can be seen as coercive?

DONNA POPE:

Yeah, no, I think that’s something people bring up. Let’s—First of all, we can go to the law part about it. The law says you can’t buy a baby. That’s the law. OK, but can you help this birth mom? Well, sure. Help her. Well, how? How can I help her? Well, help her with her pregnancy-related expenses. That would include housing, clothing, her phone. They always need a phone. Transportation, utilities, medical care, legal care, legal help if they need counseling. Well, that costs money.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

How do you make sure these payments don’t function as an inducement rather than legitimate support?

DONNA POPE:

I sometimes think that we are goofy in how we think about this, because some states we say, “Don’t you have an abortion.” But then we say, “But don’t get any help or it’s seen as an inducement.” Well, come on, you guys. Be fair with her. She needs help. And we’ve got to give them the ability to live during the time that they’re pregnant so that they can give life to that child.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

But there are also critics of the practice within the industry itself.

Tara Romney Barber is program director for a nonprofit child welfare organization that provides family services, including a small number of adoptions—just two last year. They don’t work with mothers from out of state and they charge about $20,000—a fraction of the more than $80,000 that some agencies have charged.

TARA ROMNEY BARBER, Children’s Service Society of Utah:

Utah is known as being a family-friendly state. That is a reputation I think my state really enjoys having. And we hold that. That’s a core value for our state. And in that, we want to make sure that families can be created in all kinds of ways, adoption being one of those.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

So you have recently been very vocal about your concerns surrounding what’s happening today in Utah adoptions. Can you lay out for us what’s happening and why you have raised your voice?

TARA ROMNEY BARBER:

Yeah. One of the things that I’ve been really concerned about is we were getting reports from community partners about the increase in the number of adoptions they were seeing, where the adoptive parents and the birth parents were coming to Utah from other states solely for the purpose of the adoption. And then they would both fly back or go back to wherever they came from.

And the partner had some real concerns about the things that she was seeing as she was talking to me about it. And they were matching up with some of the things that I was learning about what was happening in the adoption world. And the more thinking about it was what can we do to maybe have our voices heard that we don’t necessarily agree with that type of practice, that it can be predatory in our opinion, in my opinion, and that people deserve to be protected throughout what can be a really vulnerable process of adoption.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

She told me about one local hospital where there were as many as three adoptions a week—almost all of them with impoverished women from out of state.

TARA ROMNEY BARBER:

Why are we recruiting women in another state to come to Utah solely for the purpose of adoption? And why are we bringing in adoptive families who are not residents of Utah to Utah solely for the purpose of this placement and this adoption? And it makes me go, well, why? Why aren’t we doing these in their home states or where they are? Because what I think is, is when you remove a woman from her safety nets, whether she has friends or family in that home state, whether there are social supports or a job that she has there, if we’re flying her to Utah, she is removed from all of those things.

In my opinion, that creates a higher level of vulnerability and a higher chance of likelihood that that woman could be preyed upon in a vulnerable way or pressured to make a plan for adoption. And that doesn’t sit right for me, because what I know is that there are ethical adoption agencies and ethical adoption services available in all 50 of our states, and that a woman could receive all of the services that she’s provided in Utah but in her home state, where she’s not removed from her own natural support system.

I think when women come from out of state, they don’t always know what their rights are and feel like—could maybe potentially feel like—well, they’ve paid for my medical expenses, they’ve paid for my housing. I’m going to have to pay that back if I don’t place. That can feel coercive.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

A hospital employee eventually became so concerned that she wrote a report to the Utah attorney general’s office. In it, the employee named Denise Garza and Sandi Quick as the adoption providers and said that many of the women had mental health challenges. Several told staff they felt pressured to sign the adoption paperwork; in one instance, twins were separated.

Ashley Mitchell saw the report and was hearing similar accounts from birth mothers themselves.

ASHLEY MITCHELL:

I think the most shocking thing that I have learned is how the women are being treated. Because the narrative of adoption and the advertisements and the language on the websites completely contradict what we’re hearing. It floored me to see how that was actually being played out and that there was nothing supportive or beautiful or helpful in that at all.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

The hospital employee’s report was given to the Utah State Legislature—

STATE REP. STEPHANIE GRICIUS, Utah (R):

Next up on our agenda, we are going to hear about adoption tourism. Rep. Hall, if you want to come up.

STATE REP. KATY HALL, Utah (R):

Thank you, Chair Gricius, appreciate you, and thank you committee for hearing this.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

—which convened hearings in the summer and fall of 2025.

KATY HALL:

We are an adoption-friendly state, and we want to protect that. But we also want the practice of adoption to be ethical for all the parties involved, so thank you again for your attention to this matter.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

In response to the mounting concerns, the Legislature was considering new laws that would give mothers 72 hours to revoke consent, require all agencies to be registered as nonprofits and disclose where they are licensed and guarantee birth mothers mental health therapy.

Among the adoption providers who testified was Sandi Quick, who defended her practices.

SANDI QUICK:

There’s been negative media stories that specifically named me and my agency, and I was not allowed to speak on those because of confidentiality. We never once did anything wrong or anything unethical or anything illegal. I’m still in business, and I’m still not kidnapping children, and I’m still helping birth mothers. And I hope that I get to continue doing so.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

After one of the hearings, I tried to speak to Sandi Quick, who was in the corridor with Denise Garza and Donna Pope.

I’m here from PBS’s FRONTLINE, and I’m just wondering if you would have a moment now?

SANDI QUICK:

No, I don’t owe PBS anything. I don’t have to answer to anybody except the Office of Licensing and my current clients.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

By March 2026, the Legislature would pass the proposed adoption reforms, though they left in place a controversial policy that makes it hard to undo adoptions, even in cases of alleged fraud.

Not long afterwards, I met a couple from Tennessee who’d been working with Sandi Quick. They said they’d paid her $45,000 of the total $78,000 cost of the adoption.

This money that you came up with, $45,000, most people don’t just have that lying around. How did you come up with that?

TENNESSEE ADOPTIVE FATHER:

So we had taken out a home equity line of credit, because we knew there was going to be some costs up front that we would have to pay to the adoption agency.

We had also—Several years ago, we had bought a piece of land that we had thought we were going to use. So we ended up selling that land.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

How many acres of land did you sell?

TENNESSEE ADOPTIVE FATHER:

It was about 3 1/2 acres.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Three and a half acres.

TENNESSEE ADOPTIVE MOTHER:

We looked at it as like giving up one dream for another.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

So you sent this in one lump sum. Did you ever get any itemization for it? Was there ever any—were there ever any receipts that were provided to you?

TENNESSEE ADOPTIVE FATHER:

No. We received nothing like that.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Under the law, adoption expenses are supposed to be documented and submitted to a court. But a state audit found that Quick didn’t submit expense reports in a timely manner for roughly 75% of her adoptions between 2024 and 2025.

The Tennessee couple said they’d picked out a name for their baby and were preparing for her arrival when they got an email informing them that Sandi Quick was closing her agency.

TENNESSEE ADOPTIVE MOTHER:

We get the email and there’s immediate panic. I remember going hot. My entire body got hot. And I immediately called her, I immediately sent a text message and I emailed and said, “Where is our money? You’re not—We are paying for services at the end of the day, and you are failing to render those services to us.”

TENNESSEE ADOPTIVE FATHER:

And we’re like, “Where’s where’s the birth mother? And where’s our baby?”

TENNESSEE ADOPTIVE MOTHER:

Right.

TENNESSEE ADOPTIVE FATHER:

Have you transferred her to another agency? What’s going on there? And we got no reply.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

In her email, Quick cited what she called the “changed” legal landscape. The couple, along with several other families, still haven’t gotten their money back and have filed complaints with the state attorney general’s office.

TENNESSEE ADOPTIVE MOTHER:

This is something you read about on the news. There’s news articles, something you read about in a book or you see on TV, and it’s happening to us. And that is—

TENNESSEE ADOPTIVE FATHER:

You know, you never think it’s going to happen to you.

TENNESSEE ADOPTIVE MOTHER:

—that’s crazy. Crazy. You feel taken advantage of. You feel embarrassed. You feel ashamed. You feel all these things, but it was all out of our control. And that’s what’s the biggest thing.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

For years, many families went overseas to adopt children. Hundreds of thousands of babies were brought to the U.S. before scandals largely shut that practice down by the early 2000s.

But the demand for babies continued, and an adoption attorney in Arizona found another way to fulfill it—bringing pregnant women into the U.S. and matching them with American families.

PAUL PETERSEN:

Hello. My name is Paul Petersen. Welcome to our website. Perhaps one of the most important decisions you will make is who you will trust to guide you through your adoption journey. I am confident that I can be that person.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Paul Petersen spent two years as a Mormon missionary in the Marshall Islands before becoming a lawyer and starting an adoption business in 2005, bringing birth mothers from the islands to the U.S. He expanded into Arkansas and Utah, where there were fewer hurdles in the adoption process.

Dan and Rachel Christensen live south of Salt Lake City. They hired Petersen in 2018 to help them adopt a baby.

RACHEL CHRISTENSEN:

We had never done this before, so we didn’t know how it worked. I had a friend who had just adopted a little boy, so I reached out to her, and she connected me with Paul.

DAN CHRISTENSEN:

And then we were thinking, OK, you know, it’s probably going to be like a year, a year and a half—

RACHEL CHRISTENSEN:

Two years.

DAN CHRISTENSEN:

—two years. And then it was—

RACHEL CHRISTENSEN:

Three weeks? We got an email at 10:30 at night and it just said in the subject line, “You’ve been matched.”

DAN CHRISTENSEN:

And then at the very bottom was his account and routing number to send—

RACHEL CHRISTENSEN:

To send 25, right?

DAN CHRISTENSEN:

$24,000.

RACHEL CHRISTENSEN:

$24,000, in like a couple days.

DAN CHRISTENSEN:

It was very strange.

RACHEL CHRISTENSEN:

Very strange. But you’re not going to turn down a baby.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Petersen had matched them with a birth mother named Telma who he’d brought to Utah from the Marshall Islands.

They went to meet her at a local restaurant.

RACHEL CHRISTENSEN:

I remember just being like, “Are you freezing?” Because she was wearing like a muumuu and flip flops, and it was February.

DAN CHRISTENSEN:

And it was snowing.

RACHEL CHRISTENSEN:

And we’re like, what is—

DAN CHRISTENSEN:

Why doesn’t she have warm clothes?

RACHEL CHRISTENSEN:

Like, what’s our money doing?

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Soon after meeting Telma, Rachel went to a prenatal appointment with her.

RACHEL CHRISTENSEN:

The doctor wanted to do an ultrasound. And she said, “We need to take this baby because he’s going to be stillborn.” It was so scary. We had been told that she’s been getting medical care all along the way.

DAN CHRISTENSEN:

Once that was kind of called into question with this being her first prenatal visit, then we’re like, I wonder what else isn’t being done properly?

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Telma was induced the following day. She gave birth to a boy the Christensens named Kai.

A few days later, they went to the house where Telma was staying.

RACHEL CHRISTENSEN:

I remember walking in and there was all of these pregnant women sleeping on the floor. I don’t know how Dan felt, but I was like, this is like a baby mill. Like you would have a puppy mill? That’s what it felt like. And just being like, “What have we done? What is this?”

GABRIELLE GLASER:

The Christensens told Utah authorities about what had happened.

CAPT. MICK SPILKER, Utah Attorney General’s Office:

We identified about 60 birth mothers that had come here. I can just reach in there and pull out any of these and there’s going to be a picture or a passport. And this is just the Utah-related ones.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Mick Spilker is an investigator at the Utah attorney general’s office. At the time of the Christensens’ experience, he’d already been looking into Petersen after a complaint from a staff member at a local hospital.

MICK SPILKER:

We had received a call indicating some concerns about the numbers of Marshallese women that had been giving birth at their hospital.

Surveillance photos

MICK SPILKER:

And then a few months later, another hospital called. One particular social worker had spoken with the birth mothers through a translator and found out that some of them really didn’t know what was going on.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

All of the women were from the Marshall Islands, all were placing their babies for adoption and almost all of them had listed the same address and the same name—Paul Petersen—on their paperwork.

Petersen eventually moved his operation to duplex apartments across town—

MICK SPILKER:

It’s going to be up here on the left. Just on this side.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

—and Spilker set up surveillance there.

MICK SPILKER:

We started subpoenaing some records—hospital records, bank records, email, social media. We started just getting everything.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

The investigation expanded to other states and ended up detailing a multimillion-dollar operation using unlicensed middlemen to recruit pregnant Marshallese women with promises of money and a better life for their children.

MALE INVESTIGATOR:

All right, it is Aug. 14, 2019, 3:02 p.m. We’re in the Marshall Islands’ AG’s office.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

In 2019, Spilker and a team of investigators traveled to the Marshall Islands to interview some of the birth mothers.

MICK SPILKER:

Did anybody offer her any money to go to the United States?

VOICE OF TRANSLATOR:

Yes.

MICK SPILKER:

OK, how much?

VOICE OF TRANSLATOR:

It was supposed to be $3,000.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Some of the women said the full amount they were promised never materialized. And they said they had no ongoing relationships with their children, though they were told that they would.

MICK SPILKER:

Are you in contact with the baby’s family?

VOICE OF TRANSLATOR:

No, I kept on calling them, but they’re not answering my call.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Petersen appeared to be taking advantage of the fact that Marshallese culture encourages extended families to raise children together.

MICK SPILKER:

Did you understand what you were doing when you were doing the adoption, as far as surrendering your parental rights?

VOICE OF TRANSLATOR:

I did not understand.

MICK SPILKER:

Had you known what those papers were meaning, would you have gone through with the adoption?

VOICE OF TRANSLATOR:

I wouldn’t have.

DAN STRONG, Asst. Attorney General, Utah, 2016-21:

We felt they were just manipulated in one of the most personal and meaningful decisions of their lives.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Dan Strong was part of the team that conducted the interviews.

DAN STRONG:

I tend not to emotionalize cases very much, but it was hard for me in the room speaking to people who’d given up their child and in some cases due to what was an incorrect understanding on their part or, and a lie, I think, on Paul Petersen’s part, or at least the deliberate misleading or exploitation of this misunderstanding between our two cultures. It really made me sad. I remember tearing up in the room as we’re asking questions.

FEMALE NEWSREADER:

Yesterday around this time, agents raided Petersen’s home and law office in Mesa, taking evidence from both of those locations.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Petersen, who was an elected county official, was arrested in October 2019 as part of an effort by federal and state investigators from Arizona, Arkansas and Utah.

SEAN REYES, Attorney General, Utah, 2013-25:

The commercialization of children is illegal. And the commoditization of children is simply evil.

MALE NEWSREADER:

Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen faces 62 state and federal felony charges for allegedly running a baby mill that ripped off taxpayers.

DAN STRONG:

What’s kind of crazy about this case, as a prosecutor, as a lawyer, is if you just look at what happened, you just read it, somebody just tells it to you, it’s obviously horrible. But from a lawyer’s perspective, it wasn’t that easy to match up what happened to criminal charges. I think that’s one way that this type of thing kind of avoids capture or avoids prosecution.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

In the end, Petersen pled guilty to a number of state and federal charges including fraud and, because of the international nature of the scheme, human smuggling. He’s serving a sentence of more than 10 years.

DAN CHRISTENSEN:

I guess we couldn’t deny that it was the right thing to do, to raise questions and to get the attorney general’s office involved, to help as much as we could to try to bring it to an end.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

The Petersen case brought heightened concerns about adoptions, especially in Arkansas, where he had operated and where there is a large Marshallese population.

The state made changes to its adoption laws, but investigators continued to come across potential abuses involving pregnant Marshallese women.

DAVID CLAY FOWLKES, U.S. Atty., Western District of Arkansas, 2020-26:

We have more work that we need to do in this area to try to end the exploitation that we know is occurring among these birth mothers in western Arkansas. We have to find those cases. We have to develop the information to be able to prosecute them, and we have to hold those individuals accountable.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Clay Fowlkes helped oversee the Petersen prosecution and was the U.S. attorney for the western district of Arkansas when I sat down with him last year. He told me he was particularly concerned about money being used as inducement for adoptions.

DAVID CLAY FOWLKES:

In certain circumstances, money can be paid to a pregnant woman to support them during their pregnancy. But under no circumstances can you provide cash money to a birth mother in order to induce them and convince them to put their baby up for adoption. And under no circumstances can someone be paid money to seek out vulnerable people.

MICHAELA MONTIE, Adoption reform advocate:

As we’ve seen over and over again, generally, there’s operation in the gray. Ethics are unfortunately oftentimes up to interpretation.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Michaela Montie had adopted Marshallese children in Arkansas. But after having concerns about the process, she started her own nonprofit agency to facilitate adoptions and provide support to birth mothers.

MICHAELA MONTIE:

We have at least two issues a month of families that come to us that feel like they have been preyed upon, or we get calls from hospitals saying we don’t think this mom wants to go through with this.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Montie was working with another local community advocate, Stephanie Takamaru.

At the time, they were helping a young mother who said she’d been pressured into an adoption by relatives she was living with.

STEPHANIE TAKAMARU, Community advocate:

So this is the revocation form.

Ms. Amelia does not speak any English. And so when I met her, she’s like, “Well, I had given up my baby back in December.” And I said, “OK, how do you—how did you give up your baby?” And she mentioned that she was forced.

I said did she still want to keep fighting if that’s a possibility?

GABRIELLE GLASER:

They were working with her on a legal petition to vacate the adoption—based on, among other things, her claim she signed paperwork she didn’t understand.

STEPHANIE TAKAMARU:

Hey, Michaela. So they were both really scared about, you know, if they don’t sign this they can get the cops called on them, go to jail.

MICHAELA MONTIE:

They shouldn’t be expected to be legal experts. They’re in a crisis situation, they’re seeking help.

AMELIA:

[Speaking Marshallese] I do not understand what papers we were signing.

I was deeply saddened for my son. I did not want to give him away.

STEPHANIE TAKAMARU:

So Amelia did mention she’s been grieving since the baby’s been given away.

MICHAELA MONTIE:

I’m sure it’s so, so, so, so hard. And this is her first adoption?

STEPHANIE TAKAMARU:

Yeah. Second baby, first adoption.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Over the next year, Amelia missed a court date and stopped communicating with Takamaru and Montie.

Her case to overturn the adoption was ultimately dropped.

MICHAELA MONTIE:

Unfortunately, due to just the downhill impacts of homelessness, constant crisis, about a year into the case, when we finally had a hearing set, we lost track of her. We could not contact her. We didn’t know where she had gone.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

In the summer of 2025, Michaela Montie shut down her nonprofit and now works for another, larger adoption agency in Arkansas. She says that many of the ongoing problems with adoptions could be addressed by stronger laws.

MICHAELA MONTIE:

We have international standards that every country has to adhere to if children are coming into the United States. Why isn’t there a baseline of federal standards?

GABRIELLE GLASER:

To what extent do the 50 different states and the 50 different sets of laws set up a system that’s ripe for exploitation?

DAVID CLAY FOWLKES:

I think when you have that sort of complex web of different laws and different statutes, it makes our job as investigators and prosecutors incredibly difficult. And I think that’s one thing that we could look at as a possible solution, is having one overarching set of rules and regulations that apply to adoptions that are conducted inside the United States, whether that’s western Arkansas, Arizona, Utah or anywhere else.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

Today, lawmakers from more than a dozen states are backing a bipartisan federal adoption bill. Congresswoman Laurel Lee is a cosponsor.

Why do you think domestic infant adoption is ripe for federal regulation?

REP. LAUREL LEE, (R) Florida:

Any time we see inconsistent state laws that are really operating to the detriment of families, and this is exactly such a case, it’s an opportunity for us to look at whether there’s a role for federal law. And so while certainly we respect that adoptions fundamentally belong with states, where we see that there are some baseline standards that just aren’t being met, it’s a perfect opportunity for us to step in.

GABRIELLE GLASER:

The proposed legislation would do away with the intermediaries who work with adoptive parents and birth mothers—the baby brokers.

LAUREL LEE:

What we really want to do is eliminate that solicitation and that marketing that’s drawing those families across state lines. And also, bringing them across state lines is one of the things that makes federal action important, that this is not a problem that states individually can solve alone. By creating standards that will be uniform across the United States and clearly stating that this type of conduct is unlawful, we ensure that a family can’t be taken from one state to another state where they will be exploited.

DAN CHRISTENSEN:

Before having Kai, we were blessed with two biological children. But we just knew that there was another child out there, and that’s why we chose to adopt. But for people that have never been able to have a child, who have spent thousands of dollars on fertility treatments and all these things, they’re so vulnerable to this sort of thing.

RACHEL CHRISTENSEN:

I feel bad for Kai. I just feel like his story is tainted. Because he’ll grow up and he’ll be able to read all these things. And it doesn’t take away from how much we love him or his mom loves him or his family. It just is a time that should be really happy and exciting, is—has this dark shadow over it.

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