Utahns ran baby scam, feds say

Seven owners and managers of a Utah-based international adoption agency have been indicted on charges they ran a baby-smuggling operation out of Samoa.

Federal officials unsealed a 135-count indictment against Focus on Children, a Salt Lake City-incorporated company based in Wellsville, and its owners, Scott Banks, 46, and his wife, Karen Banks, 45, along with five employees.

The indictment alleges employees of Focus on Children systematically misled birth parents in Samoa into signing away rights to their children while telling adoptive parents in the United States that the children had been abandoned and were orphans.

U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman called the allegations some of the most "shocking and appalling" he has ever seen.

"This case is one in which there are victims on both sides," Tolman told the media during a news conference Thursday.

Federal investigators say more than 80 children had been adopted by families in about 13 U.S. cities, including some in Utah.

According to the indictment, agency employees were sent to markets in Samoa looking for pregnant women, who were then told they would be compensated with "humanitarian aid" if they agreed to send their babies overseas to the United States, where they would be raised by families until they were 18 and then returned. In many cases, parents who did not speak very good English were persuaded to sign legal documents in English, relinquishing parental rights. Some parents were given small items, small amounts of money or even bags of rice as compensation, the indictment states.

Some children were placed in a "nanny house," which U.S. State Department officials reported was in deplorable condition with children suffering from dehydration, malnutrition and sores. Birth parents were told they could visit and take home their children from the nanny house. However, Tolman said in one case a mother found her child abused and dehydrated and took her to a local hospital where she later died.

Back in the United States, Tolman said Focus on Children advertised on the Internet to people looking to adopt. In several instances, adoptive parents were told the children were either orphaned or abandoned when they were not.

Agency workers then told U.S. parents to declare the children were abandoned on their U.S. immigration visa application, when in some cases the children were still living with their parents.