Adoption scam officials ordered to pay $100K into trust fund

Five people associated with the now-closed Focus on Children adoption agency were ordered by a federal judge to pay into a $100,000 trust fund that will be used to help Samoan children adopted by U.S. residents get in touch with their birth families.

U.S. District Judge David Sam ordered the money to be paid monthly over a five-year period.

The managers and employees of the adoption agency were indicted for a fraudulent adoption scheme that misled both sets of parents.

Prosecutors contend that friends or relatives in Samoa led parents there to believe their children would simply be educated in the U.S. and would return home eventually. Meanwhile, the adoptive parents were kept uninformed about what the Samoan families understood the arrangement to be, and some adoptive parents even were told that certain children were abandoned or orphans.

The scheme affected approximately 50 families in the U.S. and 25 in Samoa, according to court records.

The five people connected with Focus on Children have since entered into plea bargains and were sentenced to five years of probation and were banned for life from taking part in the adoption business. The agency also was ordered to be dissolved.

Sam determined that the sentencing was intended to punish the five as well as offer a form of "restorative justice," but to do that, the trust fund had to be adequately financed. The sums of money each defendant was ordered to pay were based on the level of responsibility each person was shown to have had in the efforts.

The judge on Tuesday ordered these payments be made into the fund:

 Scott and Karen Banks, who managed the agency, $85,000.

 Dan Wakefield, who found Samoan children to be adopted, $8,000.

 Coleen Bartlett, who helped facilitate adoptions, $4,000.

 Karalee Thornock, a caseworker, $3,000.

e-mail: lindat@desnews.com