June 26, 2025 • 44 mins
Patia shares a conversation she had with Shileshia and Eric Milligan, a couple who became victims of adoption fraud in 2019 after self-matching through a Facebook group. What began with hope quickly turned to fear when the teen birth mother claimed she was in danger. Then, Hannah unpacks the story of Tara Lee, the woman behind a multi-million dollar adoption scam that operated out of Michigan.
National Council for Adoption: How to Avoid Adoption Scams: https://adoptioncouncil.org/article/howtoavoidadoptionscams/
Recommendations: “Couples Therapy” documentary series
Adoption Scam Artist Sentenced to Federal Prison: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/macomb-county/2020/02/26/macomb-co-adoption-scam-artist-tara-lee-sentenced-federal-prison/4879858002/
Couples Therapy Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmmIoCQ40hs
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
(00:21):
Welcome to the Knife Off Record. I'm Patia Eaton. I'm
Hannah Smith, and today we have two stories for you. First,
Pasha will tell me about a case that she's been
looking into, and then I will tell her a story
after that. And both of our stories are thematically connected.
They both have something to do with adoption fraud, but
very different kinds of stories. So let's just get right
(00:42):
into it.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, So a while back I met with a couple,
Salicia and Eric Milligan, and they wanted to talk about
their story with adoption fraud. This all happened back in
twenty fourteen. Salisha and Eric met at work. They live
in the South and Eric had been previously married Sheliicia
(01:04):
wasn't necessarily interested in him in that way, but he
was stopping by her desk a lot, and eventually they
go on a date and the rest is sort of
history for their relationship.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
They were, you know, really.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Excited to start a family together. Salisha didn't have any children,
Eric had children from a previous marriage, and in twenty
nineteen they start trying for a baby. So, because Eric
has children from a previous marriage. When they begin having
trouble conceiving, Slisha pretty quickly decides to get tested and
(01:40):
these has revealed that both of her fallopian tubes were blocked,
so it was going to be extremely difficult for her
to conceive, and so they start looking at alternative forms
of you know, becoming parents. They looked into embryo adoption,
and they did a transfer that was unsuccessful and actually
(02:01):
ended in miscarriage, and that was a very difficult thing
to go through, as you can imagine, and they didn't
want to, you know, experience that again, and so they
started looking into adoption. And by this time it's twenty twenty,
they're just starting their adoption journey. And if you don't
know anything about adoption, it can be extremely expensive. It
(02:23):
can be upwards of like forty thousand dollars. So they
were doing like private adoption. Yeah, so the route that
they were planning to go was to avoid an agency
because forty thousand dollars is just so much money, so
much money, and instead self match and self matching is
basically you put it out there that you're looking to adopt,
and you you know, try to reach mothers or you know,
(02:47):
pregnant people who are perhaps interested in finding an adoptive
couple for their child. So that's what they did. They
joined Facebook groups. So this is July now of twenty twenty.
They have a home they go through the whole thing
there by the book okay, and in August they get
a message.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Wow, that's fast, really really fast.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
And one thing that Shelisha and Eric were super aware
of and mindful of is doing this the right way
because adoption, even when it's not, you know, fraudulent, can
be a really muddy thing. There's an exchange of money,
which sometimes makes sense, but making sense of it can
(03:30):
be really difficult. You know, you want to maybe provide
for the birth mother for good reasons, but you also
don't want to get into a situation where you're paying
for a child, right, buying a baby, buying a baby
and not good, not good. And they absolutely didn't want
to be a part of that either. So they did
this home study, they got approved, they get this message,
(03:52):
It's like, Okay, here's the good luck that we haven't
had yet in this journey. And the person who reached
out identify herself to Slisha as a sixteen year old
girl living in Texas, and she identified herself as Melody,
and she said that she was pregnant by her stepfather.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Oh yeah, which you know that's rape.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
And Salisha was immediately concerned for this girl's well being.
That was her primary focus. You know, they were not
even excited about the prospect of adopting as much in
that moment as they were Okay, let's see if we
can get this young woman some help. This girl some help,
and let's get in touch with our lawyer.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Was this just messages back and forth at this time
or did they talk on the phone or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, so it starts out as Facebook messages and then
they start talking on the phone, but pretty quickly Selicia
gets her lawyer involved. Okay, because this girl tells them
that she hasn't had prenatal care. She's in a dangerous
situation because she still lives in the home with her stepfather.
She tells them that her older brother is incarcerated because
he actually had a physical altercation with their stepfather about
(05:04):
what happened. So they make her arrangements to get her
to a safe house. And you know, this is all
sort of happening as Shelicia and Eric are talking to
her more and more about the pregnancy. She says she's
due in December, and so I think in September is
when they get her to the safe house. The lawyer
(05:25):
makes arrangements to get her somewhere else in Texas, I
think in San Antonio, and they pick her up and
she goes okay. So now she's safe. They start talking
to her a little more about her situation and they're like,
we really need to get you checked by a doctor
for your health and for the health of the baby.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
So sorry, is Shelicia and Eric are they there with
her or just the attorney.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
The attorney had representatives from the safe house go and
get her.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
So Salicia and Eric notified their attorney, who also it
sounds like, was like, we need to get her out
of the situation immediately, and then put that in motion
and then they actually do get her away from her house.
It sounds like, yeah, they make arrangements to take her
to a safe place, a place for girls who need help,
and that was in San Antonio. So Shelicia and Eric
(06:14):
are not in Texas, their attorney is not in Texas.
This is all happening long distance, but they're in constant contact.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
And so once she's at the safe house, that's when
they start making a plan for her to see a doctor.
And it takes some convincing. She's really reluctant. But at
this point, you know, it's been multiple months of communication,
she's gone to a safe house, and she hasn't taken
a dime from them. There's been no money exchanged. So
(06:45):
it's like, Okay, she must really need our help. She's
not asking us for anything, she's just talking to us
and saying that she needs this help and that she
wants to place the baby for adoption. So Melody eventually,
very reluctantly agrees to go see this doctor, and they
make additional arrangements to get her cross state lines to Huntsville, Alabama.
(07:08):
This is where things go completely haywire. So Melody arrives
to the medical facility and the doctor goes to check
on her. You know, they ask you a bunch of questions.
They're talking to Okay, when was your last period? The
basic basic stuff. But then they want to do a
sonogram and she declines. She's like, full stop not doing it.
(07:31):
So the doctor leaves the room and he's like okay, well,
I can't do much with this, and this is a
bit strange. Yeah, And so the lawyer gets on the
phone with the people who are with her at the doctor,
which was another representative, not Salsia and Nerrick themselves, and
the lawyer's like, well, I'm twenty minutes away. I'm going
to drive up there and talk to her myself because
(07:52):
this is now getting a little weird. So he goes
into the room with this girl Melodies who says she's sixteen,
And for twenty minutes he's sitting across from her in
pretty much silence. She doesn't want to respond to his questions,
she doesn't want to talk to him. And in a way,
it makes sense. She's a miner, she's in a new place,
(08:13):
she's pregnant, she's been yeah, through so much trauma that.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
It makes sense that she wouldn't want her body touched
or yeah, inspected.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, And so they're trying to sort of toe the
line of being sensitive to that and being patient, but
also like, well, we need to verify that you're pregnant, right, right,
And so after twenty minutes of asking pretty pointed questions,
she comes out and says, I'm not sixteen.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Oh, I'm not sixteen.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
And he says okay, and she says I'm actually nineteen
and he says okay. Is there anything else? And then
she says, I'm not really pregnant. Oh wow, So she
had just well one, It's like, then, well, who is
this person?
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Why is this happening? Like what is going on?
Speaker 2 (09:07):
And so he says to her, well, what were you
going to do when you got here? Yeah, like you're
at a doctor's appointment to verify your pregnancy. You can't
fake that, And she said she doesn't know. Money hadn't
exchanged hands. So it was pretty baffling. Other than Shelisha
and Erik had been working out money for this attorney,
(09:28):
so it's not like this was not costing them any money.
It just wasn't going to Melody as she said she was.
It's interesting that she got that far along. You know,
I'm guessing she just made this story up then for
whatever reason. But it's interesting that she went along with
the plan when they said we're going to come pick
you up from the house, that she didn't just disappear
(09:50):
or that she was like, yeah, okay, great, and she
went with them. She even goes to the doctor's office, Right, Yeah,
it's like what is the end game? Like did you
have an out or are you just going to try
to like sneak out of the office. So bizarre. So
now they're asking her, well, why did you do this?
And the best answer she can give them is I
(10:11):
can't explain it, And so they make arrangements for her to,
you know, go back home to Texas and Salicia and
Eric are now it's it's pretty discouraging. They've been through
so much emotionally trying to start their family and here's
this person who just took them on this emotional rollercoaster.
(10:34):
Slicia said that she was starting to buy baby clothes
that were for the wintertime, because yeah, this person had
said she was doing December, and she was pretty measured
about it. She hadn't gotten in like too deep. But
it was really hard for them. Yeah, you get your
hopes up, it's got to be really hard, really hard.
And so in all that time that you're investing your
(10:54):
energy into this person, it's not like you're going to
engage with another perspective birth mother. So it was really
sad and Shelicia goes on Facebook and joins a group
called Ending Adoption scams, and she says, has anyone heard
of this person? She eventually revealed a different name to
(11:16):
them that I'm not going to say, which I'll tell
you why. But she goes asleep, she thinks nothing of
this Facebook post, like, hopefully someone can see this and
not get duped by this same woman. She wakes up
to multiple comments saying I've been scammed by this same person,
same thing, all emotional, all attention. Didn't take any money
(11:37):
from me, and that is probably why she wasn't convicted
of a crime. There's actually a famous couple, Bella and
doln Lambert, who were scammed by someone I think is
the same person, but I wasn't able to verify and
once again, was not about money. So I reached out
to this Facebook page to see what I could find
out about the woman who had identified herself as Melody,
(12:01):
and she said that, you know, there were a couple
of posts about a woman doing something similar, both in
the South and in California, and the reason that they
don't face criminal charges is because they're not asking for money.
The woman in California eventually did face one charge because
she accepted a small amount of money, but she actually
(12:21):
wasn't prosecuted because they offered her a mental health program
in lieu of prosecution. Okay, and that person is actually
an adoptee themselves, so you know, it's like this adopted
person goes to scam prospective adoptive parents for attention. I mean,
it's really sad, and her parents are aware that she
(12:44):
does this, But how do you keep someone off the internet.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah, I'm so curious what her experience was like as
someone who is adopted, Like, what's going on that she's
right trying to stop adoptions or get back at adoptive
parents or something. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Yeah, I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a psychologist either.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
But yeah, it's really strange and unfair to these families.
The adoption journey can be really emotional, in controversial, it's
difficult to regulate, it's expensive, it can be inaccessible and
unfair at times. So there's so much to consider. Shelisha
and Eric, their story has a happy ending. They eventually
(13:25):
did match with someone and had a child placed in
their home. They are now proud parents. We actually saw
him on the interview crying. It was so cute Eric
rocking him back and forth. Adorable and so Slisha and
Eric have you know, come out on the other side
of this. But they felt like it was important to
talk about because they never really considered that they might
(13:46):
be scammed for, you know, someone who wasn't asking for money.
With adoption fraud stories, there's not always happy ending. So
I'm glad to hear that Salisia and Eric did end
up with a child.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Yeah, there's such a sweet couple.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
And you know, I think it's not easy to talk
about being duped by someone when you're already going through
something so difficult, and really appreciate them taking the time.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, so when you had mentioned talking about this story
that you just told me, it made me, of course,
think of Tara Lee. We actually covered Tara Lee years ago,
around twenty twenty one, did a couple of episodes all
about her, you know, adoption fraud that spanned something like
(14:31):
twenty four states in the US. Those episodes are not
currently available for free online anymore. So I want to
talk about it. I think it's a good time to
revisit that story. I really remember so many of those
interviews very well. Still, I was so impacted by those conversations.
I think that we talked with multiple adoptive parents, We
(14:51):
talked with birth parents, the FBI, as well as attorneys
who you know, worked on this. So there's also a
couple of updates the case that are pretty recent.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
So great.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Yeah, So Tara Lee founded and ran Always Hope Pregnancy
Center in Michigan from about twenty fourteen to twenty eighteen,
and she advertised it as different things at different times
(15:22):
to different people, but often as a pregnancy crisis center.
Really she functioned as an adoption agency, and as you mentioned,
there's a lot of complications when you're trying to adopt someone,
specifically a baby. In the US, there's like very very
high demand, so oftentimes people will be on a list
(15:45):
for a long time. It's not unusual to be on
a list waiting for over a year or longer to
get any kind of contact or news about a potential adoption.
Most of the people who ended up being victims of
Tara were in that same situation. Wanted to have children
for a variety of reasons. We're not able to write
(16:05):
and so we're looking into adoption. A couple of people
that we talked to actually talked about the difficulty even
with private adoption agencies in the US. We spoke with
a woman named Amber, who was a single woman who
you know, had saved up money. She felt like her
life was very stable, she was ready to be a parent,
she just didn't have a partner, and she was rejected
(16:28):
by a lot of adoption agencies because she's single, she
didn't have a husband. They didn't like that. You know,
it's so wild to think about. There's so much I
could say about that. So anyway, usually it was like
a person or a couple would go down this rabbit
hole and then either they're waiting for so long to
(16:49):
get matched or they're rejected even by these agencies, so
they end up looking for other options and somehow or
another are connected with Tara Lee.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
In this process. I mean, you're putting your whole life
out there. If you look at adoption agencies online, on
a lot of them, you can just scroll through these
prospective parents and it's like this whole profile, photos of
you and your partner, if you have one, your home,
your extended family, talking all about your lifestyle and the
lifestyle that this child would have if you pick them.
(17:20):
I mean, you're putting it all out there. Oh yeah, absolutely,
it's a very vulnerable thing. There's pictures of you, of
your partner, There's questionnaires you have to answer about what
the life would be like for this kid. And I
think that's really important to remember because Tara, running this
sort of adoption agency, had access to all of these
booklets that had so much information about people and what
(17:43):
they were looking for. She would even have them fill
out questions of like what would be the ideal scenario
for you as far as like being matched with a
birth parent? She asked Amber, and Amber wanted to detail
and said, well, I mean, I'm open to whatever, but
you know, it would be great if it were a
young woman who was still in school and had big
hopes and dreams for her life and just didn't want
(18:03):
to become a parent. Right then this is the kind
of person she's hoping to help by adopting from them.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yes, yeah, She's.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Like, that would be my sort of if I had
to write my perfect birth parent match, that would be it.
And then lo and behold. You know, weeks later, Tara
comes back to her and says, can you even believe it?
There's a young woman, she's a teenager, and because of that,
you won't have any access or contact with her, you'll
only go through me. She's pregnant. You know, she'd like
(18:33):
to have the baby and place her child with someone
who wants a kid but can't have one. And I
gave her your booklet She Loves You. So Amber was
really excited. She started to again buy baby clothes. She
started to imagine what her life would be like as
a mother. But as Jessica will call her, Jessica's due
date approached, all these issues started to arise. Tara would
(18:54):
text her things like, well, now Jessica's parents are upset
because they want to adopt the baby, but Jessica still
wants you to adopt her child. So we're going to
keep moving forward. We want to let you know, like
you know, there's some risks. So she started to kind
of prep her in that way. So right before you
know her due date, Amber like goes to Michigan and
(19:15):
you know, has a crib, is so ready, has the
car seat, everything, and then nothing. She doesn't hear from
Tara what's going on. Then Tara, you know, calls her
in a panic and is like, oh my gosh, Jessica's
gone missing. We don't know what's going on. She might
be in danger, she might be wandering the streets of Detroit.
Of course, Amber is in a panic about this, and
(19:36):
eventually Tara's just like, I don't know. She basically ghosted us.
I don't know what's going on. So sorry, it's not
going to work out.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
And had Amber been paying for Jessica's pre needle care.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Yeah, So how it worked was when prospective adoptive parents
signed up with Tara, they had to immediately pay her
her fee for her services, as well as fee for
the birth parent, and that could range depending on how
far along they were in their pregnancy. That amount was different,
but a lot of people estimated and you know, in total,
(20:09):
it was about twenty thousand dollars that they would hand
over to Tara, which honestly felt like a bit of
a deal because, as you mentioned, the average price is
more around forty thousand dollars and Tara's services were about
half of that, so it was more affordable. Even though
a lot of these people they had saved up for
years to have that amount of money to be able
(20:32):
to hand over to Tara, and it wasn't like they
had a lot more money if something didn't work out
to try again. Now, Tara did say that if something
falls through with the match, you'll get some of this
money refunded or whatever we haven't spent you can use
toward an additional match.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
So for Amber, though, you know obviously this is like heartbreaking,
she ends up going home. She sort of needs a
minute before she can try to pursue adoption again after this.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
So she went all the way to Michigan, all the
way because I remember working on this, I don't remember
this specific interview. So she goes all the way to Michigan,
and that's when Tara chooses to tell her Jessica is
no longer interested.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yeah, Jessica has ghosted us, right, which she might be
in danger, the baby might be in danger. It's all
of these unknowns, and Amber didn't really get any answers
about that. It just was over. So then she goes home.
She's heartbroken. She said, for years after this she would
think about Jessica and about the baby and like wonder
what they were doing and if they were okay, and
(21:36):
like hope that they were doing well. She would find
out years later that Jessica never existed, never existed. So
Tara meets Amber says here's what this person is looking for.
I'm just gonna like make up a completely fabricated person
to match that, and then I'm going to string her
along for nine months or however many months had ended up,
(22:00):
take twenty thousand dollars and just leave. Yeah, it's like terrible.
I mean, also, just imagine if you're amber in that situation.
Not only are your own hopes built up for this,
but you're probably already understanding that there is some chance
that any birth mother will decide at the final hour
(22:24):
to not place their baby for adoption and to raise
that baby themselves, and that is their right for a
certain amount of time, and so you're legal even after
the baby is born for like three days or something.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Yeah, you can change your mind, and that's a good
thing that that's in place. But as someone who's trying
to adopt, it's still scary. Oh yeah, it's still emotional,
and so you're already battling that and then to find
out that none.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Of it was true.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah, And because of those very real risks with adoption,
especially when a person is choosing to place a child
that they're giving birth to a for adoption, of course
their rights really need to be paramount here. So if
they give birth and then they decide no, I actually
I want to raise this kid. They have every right
(23:10):
in the world to make that decision, and they should.
But because there is that emotional risk, that financial risk
for people going through the adoption process. As perspective adoptive parents,
a lot of states have very strict rules about agencies
and what they have to offer birth parents perspective of
birth parents, like counseling, they have to have a certain
(23:31):
amount of counseling before they are even allowed to say yes,
I would like to place my child up for adoption.
You can never really make sure, but to try to
safeguard against this right.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
To safeguard against this as much as you can. And
it doesn't mean that someone shouldn't change their mind at
the last minute if that's what they want to do.
But there's an emotional toll that takes place if for
several months you've been telling someone that they'll potentially be
the adopted family.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah, and then Tara, she said that she was a
counselor and that she was providing counseling services to birth
parents that she worked with, which will come out as
not true. I want to talk about one other couple
(24:18):
because I just really liked them a lot.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
I think I know which cole you're talking.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
About, Teresa and Mike Mathene. So there was a podcast
that I thought was really well done that the Binge
just put out this year, Baby Broker, and I noticed
that Teresa and Mike also spoke with them. One of
the things that Teresa told us, which Amber also told us,
it sounds like Tara Lee had this sort of phrase
(24:45):
or group of phrases that she would use to describe
herself when she met perspective adoptive parents, and she would
say something along the lines of to everybody, you know,
I cuss like a trucker, I'm covered in tattoo, I've
survived a heart attack, I've been shot at. But I
just love my work. I love these birth moms.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
You know.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
I'm their sister, I'm their mother, I'm their chauffeur, I'm
their best friend. I'm changing diapers, I'm driving people to appointments.
And multiple people said that this sort of vibe that
she put out it was kind of chaotic, but it
also communicated that she cared a lot. She was messy,
she was chaotic, but she was all heart, like her
(25:29):
heart was in the right place. She cared so much
she was sort of stretching herself thin. Yeah, if I
remember correctly. One thing that Tara did with everyone is
she was in pretty constant communication texts and phone calls.
It was a very became a very casual and friendly,
(25:49):
frequent dialogue between her and these prospective parents. There was
not like, Okay, a channel you go through, right, well,
all communication went through Tara, and it sounds like she
was very communicative. Sometimes after she was paid a big
chunk of money and there were like important questions that
people needed answer, she would sort of not be as
(26:10):
communicative for a while, you know. Like with Mike and Teresa,
they had been very similar kind of story to a
lot of people, and that they signed up with an agency,
were waiting for eighteen months without any news. They ended
up meeting this woman in South Carolina who like went
to Teresa's dad's church, like very trusted kind of They
(26:32):
felt really comfortable with her. She has a referral service,
so they pay like twenty five hundred dollars just to
be part of her referral service. That woman was in
contact with Tara didn't know we don't think there's no
evidence that she knew what Tara was doing, but she
would often send prospective adoptive parents to Tara. So that's
(26:53):
how they got in contact with Tara. Within a week,
they get a call. Tara says, I've already shown your
book to a prospective adoptive parent and she loves you
and she wants to place with you. So of course
they're freaking out. They're so excited, and then Tara says,
I'm gonna patch her in right now. So then they're
just on the phone with her right then it's just
(27:14):
happening so fast, and on the phone with them, Tara
asks this birth mom, so what do you think do
you want to place your kid with Teresa?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
And Mike? Okay? That I mean?
Speaker 2 (27:24):
And you know what, though, we see this so often
where in hindsight you're like, well that's bananas, there's no
way that could be real. But in the moment, people
get really caught up. We all do in, you know,
hoping that something is real. And also, these people had
a legitimate referral service connect them to Tara. Yeah, sounds
(27:46):
like they had some other connection to the referral service.
It's like, who would think who totally. Plus that means
that the person she's patching in is also in on it.
It's a good question, right, So in Mike said, I'm
the kind of guy that reads every contract no matter what,
like my loyal will read it, but I'm also reading it.
But in this moment, we just were so excited about
(28:09):
the prospect and it seemed like so like you got
to act now. So they were just like great, and
the birth mom said, yeah, I really liked them, let's
do it.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Okay. So then they hang up.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Tara immediately calls back and is like, I need you
to send me thirteen thousand dollars immediately to secure this thing.
So they do without a contract. You know. So this
was September, the end of September twenty eighteen, and they're
told the babies do next month, so now you have
to like, okay, let's get ready quickly. But things are
(28:41):
immediately a little strange. They're hard, having a really hard
time getting an exact due.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Date from Tara. She's sort of wishy washy.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
She finally does send a contract, but it's sort of
like not well written.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
They're like okay.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
She puts them on a group text with the birth
mom and says, you know, just to be respectful. I
only want you to communicate with her through this group
text so that if anything gets weird, I can be
like the person that helps it along. She's like, I
have a master's in social work, and they're like, okay,
that makes sense. That totally makes sense. Eight thousand of
the thirteen thousand dollars is for birth parent expenses, which
(29:19):
should be going to the birth parents, rent food, you know,
transportation to doctor's offices, any medical bills. Those are all
legal things for them to pay. It was based on
her bills. It was like more than enough, almost double
what she would need. But they were like great, you know,
in case she needs something random, like we want her
to be taken care of. So they finally get a date.
(29:42):
It's going to be end of October. They're in Georgia.
They pack up their car. They're going to drive to
Detroit so that they can bring the baby back with
like you know, in the car with the car seat everything.
And the day before they leave, they get an email
like from another agency that's sort of ominous and says
something like are any of our parents working with Tara Lee?
(30:04):
Like contact us immediately. Long story short, they end up
getting contact with some attorneys who were working with Tara
but didn't realize what was going on. But they said, look,
the FBI just contacted us and they're investigating Tera Lee.
You can't tell anyone about this. So Teresa and Mike
(30:27):
are just devastated, freaking out, like, we're getting ready to
drive to Detroit and you're telling me that she is
scamming people. What's going on? Like, what should we do?
And Tanya the lawyer said, look, we're pretty sure your
adoption is real. We're pretty sure the birth mom you've
been talking to is a real person and is pregnant
(30:50):
and is in Detroit and does want to place her
child for adoption. So you should probably go. But you
can't tell Tara anything. In fact, if you even let
it slip that you're like suspicious of her, or do
anything that it messes up the FBI investigation, you could
be criminally charged. Oh my gosh, for interfering with an
(31:11):
FBI investigation.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
So they're in Georgia packing up their car to go
to Michigan. I don't know if that for me road
trip would be silent or if I would be talking
NonStop because you're so hopeful, but now you're more nervous
than ever, and you have this added fear of messing
up the investigation. I mean, I assume they're still texting
with Tara and this supposed birth mother. Yeah, I mean
(31:35):
it had to be somewhat reassuring that Tanya said that
she thought things were real. That would be good to
hear in the midst of hearing something else like that.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
I think it's the only reason they went right with
that hope, because they were hearing stories already. Tanya and Talia,
the other attorney, they had an agency together. They had
started to hear all these stories from different people, I
mean horror stories of fake birth parents or Tarah apparently
made up a story with someone, you know, a fake
birth parent that she had fabricated, and then what she
(32:06):
told the perspective adoptive parent was, oh my gosh, she
was shot and killed and so is the fetus, just
like concocting these like traumatic stories. She also she did
work with some people that were actually pregnant, but then
she would often try to match them with like three
four more families because every time she got a new
(32:26):
family on board, she got that match fee, so that
was like five six seven thousand dollars in her pocket immediately,
and then she would try to get that match to
fail so that then she could match the pregnant person
again with a different family.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
And this is so exploitative of the birth mother.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah, I mean, you're explaining these perspective adoptive parents, but
you also have this birth mother who thinks that you're
going to help her and find the right person, and
you're just like raking in cash using her trauma.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah, for money, And Mike and Teresa are about to
learn a lot lot more about that. They do go
to Michigan. They end up meeting Tara and the birth
parents mom and dad at Texas Roadhouse for a meal
because Tara told them that that was the birth mom's
favorite restaurant. Spoiler alert, it was not. Tara liked the restaurant.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
No disrespect to Texas Roadhouse, but the lies. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
So you know, Teresa and Mike at this point are
sitting there feeling all this intensity. They see the birth
mom and she's very pregnant, and so that's like, okay,
it's a good sign. But Tara shows up and they're
describing her as like, you know, full Lululemon sweatsuit, nails done,
Prada glasses, Rolex watch, lou Vitan bag. She sort of
(33:47):
tries to intervene. Anytime Teresa and Mike try to actually
speak with the birth parents, Tarah kind of interjects and
tries to shut that communication down. So she's actively trying
to get them to not communicate with each other sort of.
And then Tara also, I love this little tidbit. She
orders food to go and it's like clear that Mike
(34:08):
and Teresa are going.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
To pay for the meal, so shameless, shameless.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
They think that Tara's plan all along was to sort
of have this fail and for them to leave. But
what happened while they were there is that the birth
mom actually ends up passing not at Texas roadhouse. They leave,
but like a couple days later, she ends up passing
out and has to go to the hospital and what
comes out is that she has proclampsia. And the reason
(34:34):
this hasn't been caught or on anyone's radar is that
she hasn't been going to doctor's appointments because Tara is
not actually doing anything for her. She needs new tires
for her car. She keeps telling Tara that, and Teresa
and Mike hurt her kind of mention that at the
dinner and wondered why she didn't have tires for her
car when they'd given like eight thousand dollars that was
(34:57):
supposed to go directly to anything the birth mom needed.
Her power got shut off on her house, and Tara
insisted that she give birth to the hospital that was
sixty miles from where she was living. And clear that
Tara was not actually that involved. She wasn't helping her
get to doctor's appointments, she wasn't taking care of her,
was not giving her the money that Mike and Teresa
(35:18):
had given to Tara to help her.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
It's terrible. I mean, that's a life threatening condition. It's
like pregnancy is this quote, you know, routine health event,
but there is so much danger and that is why
this pringnatle care is so important and just also sad
to think of what this person was already going through
and then to just pile on this greed.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Yeah, So because of that, Mike and Teresa end up
in a situation where they are in the hospital. There's
a day where Tara's somehow not around, and they end
up communicating with the birth parents and get along well.
And it turns out that the birth parents realized Tara
had been lying to them and was saying that my
(36:02):
COUNDRIESA just haven't paid. They just won't pay. They won't
pay her expenses. So that's why she didn't want them
to speak at dinner. Yeah, okay, the adoption does end
up going through. It's one of the few sort of
happy stories in everything that Tara Lee was involved with
with this, and they're on good terms with their birth
parents to this day, which is really cool. That is cool,
(36:24):
but obviously a very stressful thing to go through. So
Tara Lee, her home was you know rated, they had
a search warrant. She ended up you know, getting arrested.
She was charged with multiple counts of wire fraud. There
was another person who was also charged, I think with
three counts of wirefraud, who was a woman who was
(36:46):
working with her and posing as a birth mom and
like pretending to be all these other people. And in
twenty twenty she was convicted. She ended up posting bail,
but then violated her terms multiple times. She wasn't supposed
to use a cell phone and there were pictures of
her using a cell phone, so she ended up getting
arrested and the investigation revealed that she basically stole defrauded
(37:12):
people of two point one million dollars from twenty fourteen
to twenty eighteen, and she was convicted and sentenced to
I think it was one hundred and twenty one months
in prison, So she was sentenced to about ten years,
which was actually the maximum that the judge could give
her for her plea deal. She ended up pleading guilty
(37:34):
to like three counts of wire fraud, but the judge
took this very seriously. A bunch of people showed up
and he let everybody give their victim impact statements and
then gave her the maximum sentence. Additionally, he said that
she would have to read and record all the victim
impact statements once she was incarcerated as part of her punishment.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah, I think that. They said that over one hundred
and sixty couples were affected by her actions. So she
was supposed to be released in twenty seven but actually
at the beginning of this year, she was moved from
a federal prison in Alabama to a halfway house, so
she's still being monitored, but she's no longer in a
(38:19):
federal prison, and I think a lot of the victims
were pretty unhappy about that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
I mean she put people's lives in danger. In the
case of the birth mother you were speaking about that
never got the preteal care that she needed. Yeah, and
she also robbed people of money they had set aside
to start their family. That you can't just snap your
fingers and come up with that again.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
No, And it's like the time to get over that trauma,
plus having to save up money again, it was really
negatively impactful for a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
What I think about a lot now with this story
is Tara is a mother. Yeah, It's like she knows
what that feels like to want a child, to have
a child, to be pregnant. I don't know how you
can separate your own experience from others. She just drew
this line like, well, I'm fine if it happens to them,
(39:13):
even though I went through and I know how hard
pregnancy is.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
It's like, really, how could you do that? It's very
hard to believe, very hard to understand. I remember when
we spoke with the FBI to investigators, they talked about
this moment when they interviewed her, and you know, this
is their perception, but they said something like it was
very memorable because she was going through this range of emotions.
(39:38):
She would tell us something and she would like start
kind of crying, and it was clear that we weren't
really buying it or reacting, and then she would switch
and then like she would be like more like mousey
and afraid, and then she would switch and she would
be kind of like aggressive and angry. Their read of
it was she was trying to manipulate the situation and
figure out what would convince them to believe her.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
And that's what she'd been doing this entire time.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yeah, yeah, I remember that we reached out to her
family as well, and no one would speak with us.
That's a perspective I'm always so curious about in these situations.
I mean, maybe they really didn't know what she was doing,
but what would that feel like to know that someone
super close to you, or the mother of your children
(40:26):
had been treating other women like that? It's astounding. And
to hear that she's already been released to a halfway
house I think in Detroit. Hmm, yeah, so now she's
much closer to home, you think about the price these
people paid and how it changed our lives forever. Yeah,
and you just have to wonder is that justice?
Speaker 3 (40:45):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah, okay, So I have a quick recommendation. It's not
true crime. So we'll see if people like it. If
you don't, yell at me, tell me that you only
want true crime recommendations. But it started watching this because
multiple people had recommended it to me, which I did
not take personally. You'll see what I mean. It's called
(41:08):
Couples Therapy. Okay, but have you watched this?
Speaker 3 (41:11):
No? Okay.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
I think it took me a while to watch it
because I was like, what is this? It's a docu
series and it is so fascinating. It is real people,
real couples in a couple's therapy office, and you're seeing
their their therapy sessions.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Is it over the course of years or months or
what is the timeline?
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Do you know?
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Okay? I think it's because I looked it up afterward.
They're like looking for couples for the new season. I'm
not going to do it just they film it in
New York. It's twenty free sessions. This therapist is really
good and at first I was like why would anyone
sign up for this? Probably like you get twenty free
sessions of free therapy with a very good psychoanalyst is
(41:55):
what the type of therapist that she is. And it's
filmed really really like nicely. In the episode, they sort
of weave in like multiple couples. I'm on the first season.
Apparently there's four the first season. There's multiple couples that
you're following over the course of you know, twenty sessions
or something, and it's just so interesting to see, you know,
(42:19):
like every couple, the fights that they get in, the
patterns that the things that they're struggling with. Sometimes you're like,
oh God, that's so stupid, and then sometimes you're like,
oh that's so heartbreaking, and you start to feel for
these people.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
And well I heard that, you like, or maybe I
saw it or read it. I don't I don't remember.
A couple's therapist was talking about how long term couples
have the same three fights. They're disguised as other things,
but they're the same three fights.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
H Yeah, it's interesting. You can really start to see
those dynamics at play. And I just also really like
the therapist. I think it's interesting to see her and
where her brain goes, and the advice and the questions
that she asked these couples. I didn't think that I
would be as interested in it, but I'm very interested
in it.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Well, I would personally love to do that because my
husband puts peanut butter in the refrigerator and this is
I can't understand it.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
How committed are you to this marriage?
Speaker 3 (43:15):
I don't know anymore.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
I mean, it's like ten plus years bad just removed. Okay,
why you know? It's like you want it to be
so unspreadable that the sandwich is a disaster, Like what
is what is the end goal?
Speaker 1 (43:28):
I like shredded bread, shredded bread. Yeah, okay, well yeah
check it out. Let me know what you think of it. Yeah,
I would love to That's our episode for today. Thanks
so much for listening. See you next week. If you
have a story for us, we would love to hear it.
Our email is The Knife at exactlyrightmedia dot com, or
you can follow us on Instagram at the Knife podcast
(43:49):
or a Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast. This has
been an exactly Right production hosted and produced by me
Hannah Smith and me Patia Eating. Our producers are Tom
Briefogel and Alexis Amoro. This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport, artwork.
Speaker 3 (44:08):
By Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
(00:21):
Welcome to the Knife Off Record. I'm Patia Eaton. I'm
Hannah Smith, and today we have two stories for you. First,
Pasha will tell me about a case that she's been
looking into, and then I will tell her a story
after that. And both of our stories are thematically connected.
They both have something to do with adoption fraud, but
very different kinds of stories. So let's just get right
(00:42):
into it.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, So a while back I met with a couple,
Salicia and Eric Milligan, and they wanted to talk about
their story with adoption fraud. This all happened back in
twenty fourteen. Salisha and Eric met at work. They live
in the South and Eric had been previously married Sheliicia
(01:04):
wasn't necessarily interested in him in that way, but he
was stopping by her desk a lot, and eventually they
go on a date and the rest is sort of
history for their relationship.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
They were, you know, really.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Excited to start a family together. Salisha didn't have any children,
Eric had children from a previous marriage, and in twenty
nineteen they start trying for a baby. So, because Eric
has children from a previous marriage. When they begin having
trouble conceiving, Slisha pretty quickly decides to get tested and
(01:40):
these has revealed that both of her fallopian tubes were blocked,
so it was going to be extremely difficult for her
to conceive, and so they start looking at alternative forms
of you know, becoming parents. They looked into embryo adoption,
and they did a transfer that was unsuccessful and actually
(02:01):
ended in miscarriage, and that was a very difficult thing
to go through, as you can imagine, and they didn't
want to, you know, experience that again, and so they
started looking into adoption. And by this time it's twenty twenty,
they're just starting their adoption journey. And if you don't
know anything about adoption, it can be extremely expensive. It
(02:23):
can be upwards of like forty thousand dollars. So they
were doing like private adoption. Yeah, so the route that
they were planning to go was to avoid an agency
because forty thousand dollars is just so much money, so
much money, and instead self match and self matching is
basically you put it out there that you're looking to adopt,
and you you know, try to reach mothers or you know,
(02:47):
pregnant people who are perhaps interested in finding an adoptive
couple for their child. So that's what they did. They
joined Facebook groups. So this is July now of twenty twenty.
They have a home they go through the whole thing
there by the book okay, and in August they get
a message.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Wow, that's fast, really really fast.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
And one thing that Shelisha and Eric were super aware
of and mindful of is doing this the right way
because adoption, even when it's not, you know, fraudulent, can
be a really muddy thing. There's an exchange of money,
which sometimes makes sense, but making sense of it can
(03:30):
be really difficult. You know, you want to maybe provide
for the birth mother for good reasons, but you also
don't want to get into a situation where you're paying
for a child, right, buying a baby, buying a baby
and not good, not good. And they absolutely didn't want
to be a part of that either. So they did
this home study, they got approved, they get this message,
(03:52):
It's like, Okay, here's the good luck that we haven't
had yet in this journey. And the person who reached
out identify herself to Slisha as a sixteen year old
girl living in Texas, and she identified herself as Melody,
and she said that she was pregnant by her stepfather.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Oh yeah, which you know that's rape.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
And Salisha was immediately concerned for this girl's well being.
That was her primary focus. You know, they were not
even excited about the prospect of adopting as much in
that moment as they were Okay, let's see if we
can get this young woman some help. This girl some help,
and let's get in touch with our lawyer.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Was this just messages back and forth at this time
or did they talk on the phone or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, so it starts out as Facebook messages and then
they start talking on the phone, but pretty quickly Selicia
gets her lawyer involved. Okay, because this girl tells them
that she hasn't had prenatal care. She's in a dangerous
situation because she still lives in the home with her stepfather.
She tells them that her older brother is incarcerated because
he actually had a physical altercation with their stepfather about
(05:04):
what happened. So they make her arrangements to get her
to a safe house. And you know, this is all
sort of happening as Shelicia and Eric are talking to
her more and more about the pregnancy. She says she's
due in December, and so I think in September is
when they get her to the safe house. The lawyer
(05:25):
makes arrangements to get her somewhere else in Texas, I
think in San Antonio, and they pick her up and
she goes okay. So now she's safe. They start talking
to her a little more about her situation and they're like,
we really need to get you checked by a doctor
for your health and for the health of the baby.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
So sorry, is Shelicia and Eric are they there with
her or just the attorney.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
The attorney had representatives from the safe house go and
get her.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
So Salicia and Eric notified their attorney, who also it
sounds like, was like, we need to get her out
of the situation immediately, and then put that in motion
and then they actually do get her away from her house.
It sounds like, yeah, they make arrangements to take her
to a safe place, a place for girls who need help,
and that was in San Antonio. So Shelicia and Eric
(06:14):
are not in Texas, their attorney is not in Texas.
This is all happening long distance, but they're in constant contact.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
And so once she's at the safe house, that's when
they start making a plan for her to see a doctor.
And it takes some convincing. She's really reluctant. But at
this point, you know, it's been multiple months of communication,
she's gone to a safe house, and she hasn't taken
a dime from them. There's been no money exchanged. So
(06:45):
it's like, Okay, she must really need our help. She's
not asking us for anything, she's just talking to us
and saying that she needs this help and that she
wants to place the baby for adoption. So Melody eventually,
very reluctantly agrees to go see this doctor, and they
make additional arrangements to get her cross state lines to Huntsville, Alabama.
(07:08):
This is where things go completely haywire. So Melody arrives
to the medical facility and the doctor goes to check
on her. You know, they ask you a bunch of questions.
They're talking to Okay, when was your last period? The
basic basic stuff. But then they want to do a
sonogram and she declines. She's like, full stop not doing it.
(07:31):
So the doctor leaves the room and he's like okay, well,
I can't do much with this, and this is a
bit strange. Yeah, And so the lawyer gets on the
phone with the people who are with her at the doctor,
which was another representative, not Salsia and Nerrick themselves, and
the lawyer's like, well, I'm twenty minutes away. I'm going
to drive up there and talk to her myself because
(07:52):
this is now getting a little weird. So he goes
into the room with this girl Melodies who says she's sixteen,
And for twenty minutes he's sitting across from her in
pretty much silence. She doesn't want to respond to his questions,
she doesn't want to talk to him. And in a way,
it makes sense. She's a miner, she's in a new place,
(08:13):
she's pregnant, she's been yeah, through so much trauma that.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
It makes sense that she wouldn't want her body touched
or yeah, inspected.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, And so they're trying to sort of toe the
line of being sensitive to that and being patient, but
also like, well, we need to verify that you're pregnant, right, right,
And so after twenty minutes of asking pretty pointed questions,
she comes out and says, I'm not sixteen.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Oh, I'm not sixteen.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
And he says okay, and she says I'm actually nineteen
and he says okay. Is there anything else? And then
she says, I'm not really pregnant. Oh wow, So she
had just well one, It's like, then, well, who is
this person?
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Why is this happening? Like what is going on?
Speaker 2 (09:07):
And so he says to her, well, what were you
going to do when you got here? Yeah, like you're
at a doctor's appointment to verify your pregnancy. You can't
fake that, And she said she doesn't know. Money hadn't
exchanged hands. So it was pretty baffling. Other than Shelisha
and Erik had been working out money for this attorney,
(09:28):
so it's not like this was not costing them any money.
It just wasn't going to Melody as she said she was.
It's interesting that she got that far along. You know,
I'm guessing she just made this story up then for
whatever reason. But it's interesting that she went along with
the plan when they said we're going to come pick
you up from the house, that she didn't just disappear
(09:50):
or that she was like, yeah, okay, great, and she
went with them. She even goes to the doctor's office, Right, Yeah,
it's like what is the end game? Like did you
have an out or are you just going to try
to like sneak out of the office. So bizarre. So
now they're asking her, well, why did you do this?
And the best answer she can give them is I
(10:11):
can't explain it, And so they make arrangements for her to,
you know, go back home to Texas and Salicia and
Eric are now it's it's pretty discouraging. They've been through
so much emotionally trying to start their family and here's
this person who just took them on this emotional rollercoaster.
(10:34):
Slicia said that she was starting to buy baby clothes
that were for the wintertime, because yeah, this person had
said she was doing December, and she was pretty measured
about it. She hadn't gotten in like too deep. But
it was really hard for them. Yeah, you get your
hopes up, it's got to be really hard, really hard.
And so in all that time that you're investing your
(10:54):
energy into this person, it's not like you're going to
engage with another perspective birth mother. So it was really
sad and Shelicia goes on Facebook and joins a group
called Ending Adoption scams, and she says, has anyone heard
of this person? She eventually revealed a different name to
(11:16):
them that I'm not going to say, which I'll tell
you why. But she goes asleep, she thinks nothing of
this Facebook post, like, hopefully someone can see this and
not get duped by this same woman. She wakes up
to multiple comments saying I've been scammed by this same person,
same thing, all emotional, all attention. Didn't take any money
(11:37):
from me, and that is probably why she wasn't convicted
of a crime. There's actually a famous couple, Bella and
doln Lambert, who were scammed by someone I think is
the same person, but I wasn't able to verify and
once again, was not about money. So I reached out
to this Facebook page to see what I could find
out about the woman who had identified herself as Melody,
(12:01):
and she said that, you know, there were a couple
of posts about a woman doing something similar, both in
the South and in California, and the reason that they
don't face criminal charges is because they're not asking for money.
The woman in California eventually did face one charge because
she accepted a small amount of money, but she actually
(12:21):
wasn't prosecuted because they offered her a mental health program
in lieu of prosecution. Okay, and that person is actually
an adoptee themselves, so you know, it's like this adopted
person goes to scam prospective adoptive parents for attention. I mean,
it's really sad, and her parents are aware that she
(12:44):
does this, But how do you keep someone off the internet.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah, I'm so curious what her experience was like as
someone who is adopted, Like, what's going on that she's
right trying to stop adoptions or get back at adoptive
parents or something. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Yeah, I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a psychologist either.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
But yeah, it's really strange and unfair to these families.
The adoption journey can be really emotional, in controversial, it's
difficult to regulate, it's expensive, it can be inaccessible and
unfair at times. So there's so much to consider. Shelisha
and Eric, their story has a happy ending. They eventually
(13:25):
did match with someone and had a child placed in
their home. They are now proud parents. We actually saw
him on the interview crying. It was so cute Eric
rocking him back and forth. Adorable and so Slisha and
Eric have you know, come out on the other side
of this. But they felt like it was important to
talk about because they never really considered that they might
(13:46):
be scammed for, you know, someone who wasn't asking for money.
With adoption fraud stories, there's not always happy ending. So
I'm glad to hear that Salisia and Eric did end
up with a child.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Yeah, there's such a sweet couple.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
And you know, I think it's not easy to talk
about being duped by someone when you're already going through
something so difficult, and really appreciate them taking the time.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, so when you had mentioned talking about this story
that you just told me, it made me, of course,
think of Tara Lee. We actually covered Tara Lee years ago,
around twenty twenty one, did a couple of episodes all
about her, you know, adoption fraud that spanned something like
(14:31):
twenty four states in the US. Those episodes are not
currently available for free online anymore. So I want to
talk about it. I think it's a good time to
revisit that story. I really remember so many of those
interviews very well. Still, I was so impacted by those conversations.
I think that we talked with multiple adoptive parents, We
(14:51):
talked with birth parents, the FBI, as well as attorneys
who you know, worked on this. So there's also a
couple of updates the case that are pretty recent.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
So great.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Yeah, So Tara Lee founded and ran Always Hope Pregnancy
Center in Michigan from about twenty fourteen to twenty eighteen,
and she advertised it as different things at different times
(15:22):
to different people, but often as a pregnancy crisis center.
Really she functioned as an adoption agency, and as you mentioned,
there's a lot of complications when you're trying to adopt someone,
specifically a baby. In the US, there's like very very
high demand, so oftentimes people will be on a list
(15:45):
for a long time. It's not unusual to be on
a list waiting for over a year or longer to
get any kind of contact or news about a potential adoption.
Most of the people who ended up being victims of
Tara were in that same situation. Wanted to have children
for a variety of reasons. We're not able to write
(16:05):
and so we're looking into adoption. A couple of people
that we talked to actually talked about the difficulty even
with private adoption agencies in the US. We spoke with
a woman named Amber, who was a single woman who
you know, had saved up money. She felt like her
life was very stable, she was ready to be a parent,
she just didn't have a partner, and she was rejected
(16:28):
by a lot of adoption agencies because she's single, she
didn't have a husband. They didn't like that. You know,
it's so wild to think about. There's so much I
could say about that. So anyway, usually it was like
a person or a couple would go down this rabbit
hole and then either they're waiting for so long to
(16:49):
get matched or they're rejected even by these agencies, so
they end up looking for other options and somehow or
another are connected with Tara Lee.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
In this process. I mean, you're putting your whole life
out there. If you look at adoption agencies online, on
a lot of them, you can just scroll through these
prospective parents and it's like this whole profile, photos of
you and your partner, if you have one, your home,
your extended family, talking all about your lifestyle and the
lifestyle that this child would have if you pick them.
(17:20):
I mean, you're putting it all out there. Oh yeah, absolutely,
it's a very vulnerable thing. There's pictures of you, of
your partner, There's questionnaires you have to answer about what
the life would be like for this kid. And I
think that's really important to remember because Tara, running this
sort of adoption agency, had access to all of these
booklets that had so much information about people and what
(17:43):
they were looking for. She would even have them fill
out questions of like what would be the ideal scenario
for you as far as like being matched with a
birth parent? She asked Amber, and Amber wanted to detail
and said, well, I mean, I'm open to whatever, but
you know, it would be great if it were a
young woman who was still in school and had big
hopes and dreams for her life and just didn't want
(18:03):
to become a parent. Right then this is the kind
of person she's hoping to help by adopting from them.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yes, yeah, She's.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Like, that would be my sort of if I had
to write my perfect birth parent match, that would be it.
And then lo and behold. You know, weeks later, Tara
comes back to her and says, can you even believe it?
There's a young woman, she's a teenager, and because of that,
you won't have any access or contact with her, you'll
only go through me. She's pregnant. You know, she'd like
(18:33):
to have the baby and place her child with someone
who wants a kid but can't have one. And I
gave her your booklet She Loves You. So Amber was
really excited. She started to again buy baby clothes. She
started to imagine what her life would be like as
a mother. But as Jessica will call her, Jessica's due
date approached, all these issues started to arise. Tara would
(18:54):
text her things like, well, now Jessica's parents are upset
because they want to adopt the baby, but Jessica still
wants you to adopt her child. So we're going to
keep moving forward. We want to let you know, like
you know, there's some risks. So she started to kind
of prep her in that way. So right before you
know her due date, Amber like goes to Michigan and
(19:15):
you know, has a crib, is so ready, has the
car seat, everything, and then nothing. She doesn't hear from
Tara what's going on. Then Tara, you know, calls her
in a panic and is like, oh my gosh, Jessica's
gone missing. We don't know what's going on. She might
be in danger, she might be wandering the streets of Detroit.
Of course, Amber is in a panic about this, and
(19:36):
eventually Tara's just like, I don't know. She basically ghosted us.
I don't know what's going on. So sorry, it's not
going to work out.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
And had Amber been paying for Jessica's pre needle care.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Yeah, So how it worked was when prospective adoptive parents
signed up with Tara, they had to immediately pay her
her fee for her services, as well as fee for
the birth parent, and that could range depending on how
far along they were in their pregnancy. That amount was different,
but a lot of people estimated and you know, in total,
(20:09):
it was about twenty thousand dollars that they would hand
over to Tara, which honestly felt like a bit of
a deal because, as you mentioned, the average price is
more around forty thousand dollars and Tara's services were about
half of that, so it was more affordable. Even though
a lot of these people they had saved up for
years to have that amount of money to be able
(20:32):
to hand over to Tara, and it wasn't like they
had a lot more money if something didn't work out
to try again. Now, Tara did say that if something
falls through with the match, you'll get some of this
money refunded or whatever we haven't spent you can use
toward an additional match.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
So for Amber, though, you know obviously this is like heartbreaking,
she ends up going home. She sort of needs a
minute before she can try to pursue adoption again after this.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
So she went all the way to Michigan, all the
way because I remember working on this, I don't remember
this specific interview. So she goes all the way to Michigan,
and that's when Tara chooses to tell her Jessica is
no longer interested.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yeah, Jessica has ghosted us, right, which she might be
in danger, the baby might be in danger. It's all
of these unknowns, and Amber didn't really get any answers
about that. It just was over. So then she goes home.
She's heartbroken. She said, for years after this she would
think about Jessica and about the baby and like wonder
what they were doing and if they were okay, and
(21:36):
like hope that they were doing well. She would find
out years later that Jessica never existed, never existed. So
Tara meets Amber says here's what this person is looking for.
I'm just gonna like make up a completely fabricated person
to match that, and then I'm going to string her
along for nine months or however many months had ended up,
(22:00):
take twenty thousand dollars and just leave. Yeah, it's like terrible.
I mean, also, just imagine if you're amber in that situation.
Not only are your own hopes built up for this,
but you're probably already understanding that there is some chance
that any birth mother will decide at the final hour
(22:24):
to not place their baby for adoption and to raise
that baby themselves, and that is their right for a
certain amount of time, and so you're legal even after
the baby is born for like three days or something.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Yeah, you can change your mind, and that's a good
thing that that's in place. But as someone who's trying
to adopt, it's still scary. Oh yeah, it's still emotional,
and so you're already battling that and then to find
out that none.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Of it was true.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah, And because of those very real risks with adoption,
especially when a person is choosing to place a child
that they're giving birth to a for adoption, of course
their rights really need to be paramount here. So if
they give birth and then they decide no, I actually
I want to raise this kid. They have every right
(23:10):
in the world to make that decision, and they should.
But because there is that emotional risk, that financial risk
for people going through the adoption process. As perspective adoptive parents,
a lot of states have very strict rules about agencies
and what they have to offer birth parents perspective of
birth parents, like counseling, they have to have a certain
(23:31):
amount of counseling before they are even allowed to say yes,
I would like to place my child up for adoption.
You can never really make sure, but to try to
safeguard against this right.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
To safeguard against this as much as you can. And
it doesn't mean that someone shouldn't change their mind at
the last minute if that's what they want to do.
But there's an emotional toll that takes place if for
several months you've been telling someone that they'll potentially be
the adopted family.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah, and then Tara, she said that she was a
counselor and that she was providing counseling services to birth
parents that she worked with, which will come out as
not true. I want to talk about one other couple
(24:18):
because I just really liked them a lot.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
I think I know which cole you're talking.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
About, Teresa and Mike Mathene. So there was a podcast
that I thought was really well done that the Binge
just put out this year, Baby Broker, and I noticed
that Teresa and Mike also spoke with them. One of
the things that Teresa told us, which Amber also told us,
it sounds like Tara Lee had this sort of phrase
(24:45):
or group of phrases that she would use to describe
herself when she met perspective adoptive parents, and she would
say something along the lines of to everybody, you know,
I cuss like a trucker, I'm covered in tattoo, I've
survived a heart attack, I've been shot at. But I
just love my work. I love these birth moms.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
You know.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
I'm their sister, I'm their mother, I'm their chauffeur, I'm
their best friend. I'm changing diapers, I'm driving people to appointments.
And multiple people said that this sort of vibe that
she put out it was kind of chaotic, but it
also communicated that she cared a lot. She was messy,
she was chaotic, but she was all heart, like her
(25:29):
heart was in the right place. She cared so much
she was sort of stretching herself thin. Yeah, if I
remember correctly. One thing that Tara did with everyone is
she was in pretty constant communication texts and phone calls.
It was a very became a very casual and friendly,
(25:49):
frequent dialogue between her and these prospective parents. There was
not like, Okay, a channel you go through, right, well,
all communication went through Tara, and it sounds like she
was very communicative. Sometimes after she was paid a big
chunk of money and there were like important questions that
people needed answer, she would sort of not be as
(26:10):
communicative for a while, you know. Like with Mike and Teresa,
they had been very similar kind of story to a
lot of people, and that they signed up with an agency,
were waiting for eighteen months without any news. They ended
up meeting this woman in South Carolina who like went
to Teresa's dad's church, like very trusted kind of They
(26:32):
felt really comfortable with her. She has a referral service,
so they pay like twenty five hundred dollars just to
be part of her referral service. That woman was in
contact with Tara didn't know we don't think there's no
evidence that she knew what Tara was doing, but she
would often send prospective adoptive parents to Tara. So that's
(26:53):
how they got in contact with Tara. Within a week,
they get a call. Tara says, I've already shown your
book to a prospective adoptive parent and she loves you
and she wants to place with you. So of course
they're freaking out. They're so excited, and then Tara says,
I'm gonna patch her in right now. So then they're
just on the phone with her right then it's just
(27:14):
happening so fast, and on the phone with them, Tara
asks this birth mom, so what do you think do
you want to place your kid with Teresa?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
And Mike? Okay? That I mean?
Speaker 2 (27:24):
And you know what, though, we see this so often
where in hindsight you're like, well that's bananas, there's no
way that could be real. But in the moment, people
get really caught up. We all do in, you know,
hoping that something is real. And also, these people had
a legitimate referral service connect them to Tara. Yeah, sounds
(27:46):
like they had some other connection to the referral service.
It's like, who would think who totally. Plus that means
that the person she's patching in is also in on it.
It's a good question, right, So in Mike said, I'm
the kind of guy that reads every contract no matter what,
like my loyal will read it, but I'm also reading it.
But in this moment, we just were so excited about
(28:09):
the prospect and it seemed like so like you got
to act now. So they were just like great, and
the birth mom said, yeah, I really liked them, let's
do it.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Okay. So then they hang up.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
Tara immediately calls back and is like, I need you
to send me thirteen thousand dollars immediately to secure this thing.
So they do without a contract. You know. So this
was September, the end of September twenty eighteen, and they're
told the babies do next month, so now you have
to like, okay, let's get ready quickly. But things are
(28:41):
immediately a little strange. They're hard, having a really hard
time getting an exact due.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Date from Tara. She's sort of wishy washy.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
She finally does send a contract, but it's sort of
like not well written.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
They're like okay.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
She puts them on a group text with the birth
mom and says, you know, just to be respectful. I
only want you to communicate with her through this group
text so that if anything gets weird, I can be
like the person that helps it along. She's like, I
have a master's in social work, and they're like, okay,
that makes sense. That totally makes sense. Eight thousand of
the thirteen thousand dollars is for birth parent expenses, which
(29:19):
should be going to the birth parents, rent food, you know,
transportation to doctor's offices, any medical bills. Those are all
legal things for them to pay. It was based on
her bills. It was like more than enough, almost double
what she would need. But they were like great, you know,
in case she needs something random, like we want her
to be taken care of. So they finally get a date.
(29:42):
It's going to be end of October. They're in Georgia.
They pack up their car. They're going to drive to
Detroit so that they can bring the baby back with
like you know, in the car with the car seat everything.
And the day before they leave, they get an email
like from another agency that's sort of ominous and says
something like are any of our parents working with Tara Lee?
(30:04):
Like contact us immediately. Long story short, they end up
getting contact with some attorneys who were working with Tara
but didn't realize what was going on. But they said, look,
the FBI just contacted us and they're investigating Tera Lee.
You can't tell anyone about this. So Teresa and Mike
(30:27):
are just devastated, freaking out, like, we're getting ready to
drive to Detroit and you're telling me that she is
scamming people. What's going on? Like, what should we do?
And Tanya the lawyer said, look, we're pretty sure your
adoption is real. We're pretty sure the birth mom you've
been talking to is a real person and is pregnant
(30:50):
and is in Detroit and does want to place her
child for adoption. So you should probably go. But you
can't tell Tara anything. In fact, if you even let
it slip that you're like suspicious of her, or do
anything that it messes up the FBI investigation, you could
be criminally charged. Oh my gosh, for interfering with an
(31:11):
FBI investigation.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
So they're in Georgia packing up their car to go
to Michigan. I don't know if that for me road
trip would be silent or if I would be talking
NonStop because you're so hopeful, but now you're more nervous
than ever, and you have this added fear of messing
up the investigation. I mean, I assume they're still texting
with Tara and this supposed birth mother. Yeah, I mean
(31:35):
it had to be somewhat reassuring that Tanya said that
she thought things were real. That would be good to
hear in the midst of hearing something else like that.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
I think it's the only reason they went right with
that hope, because they were hearing stories already. Tanya and Talia,
the other attorney, they had an agency together. They had
started to hear all these stories from different people, I
mean horror stories of fake birth parents or Tarah apparently
made up a story with someone, you know, a fake
birth parent that she had fabricated, and then what she
(32:06):
told the perspective adoptive parent was, oh my gosh, she
was shot and killed and so is the fetus, just
like concocting these like traumatic stories. She also she did
work with some people that were actually pregnant, but then
she would often try to match them with like three
four more families because every time she got a new
(32:26):
family on board, she got that match fee, so that
was like five six seven thousand dollars in her pocket immediately,
and then she would try to get that match to
fail so that then she could match the pregnant person
again with a different family.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
And this is so exploitative of the birth mother.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah, I mean, you're explaining these perspective adoptive parents, but
you also have this birth mother who thinks that you're
going to help her and find the right person, and
you're just like raking in cash using her trauma.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah, for money, And Mike and Teresa are about to
learn a lot lot more about that. They do go
to Michigan. They end up meeting Tara and the birth
parents mom and dad at Texas Roadhouse for a meal
because Tara told them that that was the birth mom's
favorite restaurant. Spoiler alert, it was not. Tara liked the restaurant.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
No disrespect to Texas Roadhouse, but the lies. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
So you know, Teresa and Mike at this point are
sitting there feeling all this intensity. They see the birth
mom and she's very pregnant, and so that's like, okay,
it's a good sign. But Tara shows up and they're
describing her as like, you know, full Lululemon sweatsuit, nails done,
Prada glasses, Rolex watch, lou Vitan bag. She sort of
(33:47):
tries to intervene. Anytime Teresa and Mike try to actually
speak with the birth parents, Tarah kind of interjects and
tries to shut that communication down. So she's actively trying
to get them to not communicate with each other sort of.
And then Tara also, I love this little tidbit. She
orders food to go and it's like clear that Mike
(34:08):
and Teresa are going.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
To pay for the meal, so shameless, shameless.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
They think that Tara's plan all along was to sort
of have this fail and for them to leave. But
what happened while they were there is that the birth
mom actually ends up passing not at Texas roadhouse. They leave,
but like a couple days later, she ends up passing
out and has to go to the hospital and what
comes out is that she has proclampsia. And the reason
(34:34):
this hasn't been caught or on anyone's radar is that
she hasn't been going to doctor's appointments because Tara is
not actually doing anything for her. She needs new tires
for her car. She keeps telling Tara that, and Teresa
and Mike hurt her kind of mention that at the
dinner and wondered why she didn't have tires for her
car when they'd given like eight thousand dollars that was
(34:57):
supposed to go directly to anything the birth mom needed.
Her power got shut off on her house, and Tara
insisted that she give birth to the hospital that was
sixty miles from where she was living. And clear that
Tara was not actually that involved. She wasn't helping her
get to doctor's appointments, she wasn't taking care of her,
was not giving her the money that Mike and Teresa
(35:18):
had given to Tara to help her.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
It's terrible. I mean, that's a life threatening condition. It's
like pregnancy is this quote, you know, routine health event,
but there is so much danger and that is why
this pringnatle care is so important and just also sad
to think of what this person was already going through
and then to just pile on this greed.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Yeah, So because of that, Mike and Teresa end up
in a situation where they are in the hospital. There's
a day where Tara's somehow not around, and they end
up communicating with the birth parents and get along well.
And it turns out that the birth parents realized Tara
had been lying to them and was saying that my
(36:02):
COUNDRIESA just haven't paid. They just won't pay. They won't
pay her expenses. So that's why she didn't want them
to speak at dinner. Yeah, okay, the adoption does end
up going through. It's one of the few sort of
happy stories in everything that Tara Lee was involved with
with this, and they're on good terms with their birth
parents to this day, which is really cool. That is cool,
(36:24):
but obviously a very stressful thing to go through. So
Tara Lee, her home was you know rated, they had
a search warrant. She ended up you know, getting arrested.
She was charged with multiple counts of wire fraud. There
was another person who was also charged, I think with
three counts of wirefraud, who was a woman who was
(36:46):
working with her and posing as a birth mom and
like pretending to be all these other people. And in
twenty twenty she was convicted. She ended up posting bail,
but then violated her terms multiple times. She wasn't supposed
to use a cell phone and there were pictures of
her using a cell phone, so she ended up getting
arrested and the investigation revealed that she basically stole defrauded
(37:12):
people of two point one million dollars from twenty fourteen
to twenty eighteen, and she was convicted and sentenced to
I think it was one hundred and twenty one months
in prison, So she was sentenced to about ten years,
which was actually the maximum that the judge could give
her for her plea deal. She ended up pleading guilty
(37:34):
to like three counts of wire fraud, but the judge
took this very seriously. A bunch of people showed up
and he let everybody give their victim impact statements and
then gave her the maximum sentence. Additionally, he said that
she would have to read and record all the victim
impact statements once she was incarcerated as part of her punishment.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah, I think that. They said that over one hundred
and sixty couples were affected by her actions. So she
was supposed to be released in twenty seven but actually
at the beginning of this year, she was moved from
a federal prison in Alabama to a halfway house, so
she's still being monitored, but she's no longer in a
(38:19):
federal prison, and I think a lot of the victims
were pretty unhappy about that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
I mean she put people's lives in danger. In the
case of the birth mother you were speaking about that
never got the preteal care that she needed. Yeah, and
she also robbed people of money they had set aside
to start their family. That you can't just snap your
fingers and come up with that again.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
No, And it's like the time to get over that trauma,
plus having to save up money again, it was really
negatively impactful for a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
What I think about a lot now with this story
is Tara is a mother. Yeah, It's like she knows
what that feels like to want a child, to have
a child, to be pregnant. I don't know how you
can separate your own experience from others. She just drew
this line like, well, I'm fine if it happens to them,
(39:13):
even though I went through and I know how hard
pregnancy is.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
It's like, really, how could you do that? It's very
hard to believe, very hard to understand. I remember when
we spoke with the FBI to investigators, they talked about
this moment when they interviewed her, and you know, this
is their perception, but they said something like it was
very memorable because she was going through this range of emotions.
(39:38):
She would tell us something and she would like start
kind of crying, and it was clear that we weren't
really buying it or reacting, and then she would switch
and then like she would be like more like mousey
and afraid, and then she would switch and she would
be kind of like aggressive and angry. Their read of
it was she was trying to manipulate the situation and
figure out what would convince them to believe her.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
And that's what she'd been doing this entire time.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yeah, yeah, I remember that we reached out to her
family as well, and no one would speak with us.
That's a perspective I'm always so curious about in these situations.
I mean, maybe they really didn't know what she was doing,
but what would that feel like to know that someone
super close to you, or the mother of your children
(40:26):
had been treating other women like that? It's astounding. And
to hear that she's already been released to a halfway
house I think in Detroit. Hmm, yeah, so now she's
much closer to home, you think about the price these
people paid and how it changed our lives forever. Yeah,
and you just have to wonder is that justice?
Speaker 3 (40:45):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah, okay, So I have a quick recommendation. It's not
true crime. So we'll see if people like it. If
you don't, yell at me, tell me that you only
want true crime recommendations. But it started watching this because
multiple people had recommended it to me, which I did
not take personally. You'll see what I mean. It's called
(41:08):
Couples Therapy. Okay, but have you watched this?
Speaker 3 (41:11):
No? Okay.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
I think it took me a while to watch it
because I was like, what is this? It's a docu
series and it is so fascinating. It is real people,
real couples in a couple's therapy office, and you're seeing
their their therapy sessions.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Is it over the course of years or months or
what is the timeline?
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Do you know?
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Okay? I think it's because I looked it up afterward.
They're like looking for couples for the new season. I'm
not going to do it just they film it in
New York. It's twenty free sessions. This therapist is really
good and at first I was like why would anyone
sign up for this? Probably like you get twenty free
sessions of free therapy with a very good psychoanalyst is
(41:55):
what the type of therapist that she is. And it's
filmed really really like nicely. In the episode, they sort
of weave in like multiple couples. I'm on the first season.
Apparently there's four the first season. There's multiple couples that
you're following over the course of you know, twenty sessions
or something, and it's just so interesting to see, you know,
(42:19):
like every couple, the fights that they get in, the
patterns that the things that they're struggling with. Sometimes you're like,
oh God, that's so stupid, and then sometimes you're like,
oh that's so heartbreaking, and you start to feel for
these people.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
And well I heard that, you like, or maybe I
saw it or read it. I don't I don't remember.
A couple's therapist was talking about how long term couples
have the same three fights. They're disguised as other things,
but they're the same three fights.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
H Yeah, it's interesting. You can really start to see
those dynamics at play. And I just also really like
the therapist. I think it's interesting to see her and
where her brain goes, and the advice and the questions
that she asked these couples. I didn't think that I
would be as interested in it, but I'm very interested
in it.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Well, I would personally love to do that because my
husband puts peanut butter in the refrigerator and this is
I can't understand it.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
How committed are you to this marriage?
Speaker 3 (43:15):
I don't know anymore.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
I mean, it's like ten plus years bad just removed. Okay,
why you know? It's like you want it to be
so unspreadable that the sandwich is a disaster, Like what
is what is the end goal?
Speaker 1 (43:28):
I like shredded bread, shredded bread. Yeah, okay, well yeah
check it out. Let me know what you think of it. Yeah,
I would love to That's our episode for today. Thanks
so much for listening. See you next week. If you
have a story for us, we would love to hear it.
Our email is The Knife at exactlyrightmedia dot com, or
you can follow us on Instagram at the Knife podcast
(43:49):
or a Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast. This has
been an exactly Right production hosted and produced by me
Hannah Smith and me Patia Eating. Our producers are Tom
Briefogel and Alexis Amoro. This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport, artwork.
Speaker 3 (44:08):
By Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.
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