Baby Broker | 6. Don’t F**k With Parents

Summary

The Binge Cases: Baby Broker - Episode 6: Don’t Fk With Parents**

Introduction

In Episode 6 of The Binge Cases, titled "Don’t F**k With Parents," host Peter McDonnell delves into the harrowing story of Tara Lee, the founder of an adoption agency called Always Hope. This episode uncovers how Tara Lee manipulated and defrauded over 150 adoptive couples across 24 states, using her agency to exploit parents' dreams of expanding their families for personal gain. The episode illustrates the collective effort of former clients, lawyers, and law enforcement to bring Tara Lee’s criminal activities to light.

Tara Lee and Always Hope's Adoption Scheme

Tara Lee established Always Hope as an adoption agency that promised swift and seamless matches between birth mothers and adoptive parents. However, behind the facade of a compassionate social worker, Tara orchestrated a sophisticated fraud scheme. She charged adoptive parents substantial fees—often between $8,000 to $15,000—under the guise of covering living expenses for birth mothers. These fees were deceptively diverted to her personal accounts, funding a lavish lifestyle contrasting sharply with the impoverished conditions of many birth mothers.

Sarah Woodward (Assistant U.S. Attorney) [15:56]: "Her personality was sort of like, I'm a foul-mouthed, tattooed woman, but I'm doing adoptions and you wouldn't expect that. And I know how to relate to people and I can kind of give you the real talk that you're not getting other places."

Formation of the Facebook Group and Gathering of Evidence

Disillusioned adoptive parents began sharing their experiences in a Facebook group initiated by Courtney Edmond and Julie Falkenberry. Initially aimed at providing support, the group soon became a platform for uncovering widespread deceit. Members meticulously compared stories, identifying inconsistencies in Tara Lee’s narratives. For instance, discrepancies arose when adoptive parents discovered that Tara Lee was siphoning funds while simultaneously orchestrating failed adoptions.

Courtney Edmond [02:00]: "There were so many lies. It's like you're almost able to piece things together in your story based on the information in other people's stories."

Julie Falkenberry took proactive steps by contacting Tara Lee’s lawyers, Talia Genning and Tanya Corrado, leading to the discovery of over 4,000 incriminating emails. These communications revealed detailed records of payments and deceitful practices, further solidifying the case against Tara Lee. Additionally, investigators uncovered that Tara Lee’s claimed credentials were fraudulent, as her master's degree in social work from Northwestern was entirely fabricated.

Julie Falkenberry [06:18]: "They sound pretty distraught. They did sound like they had no idea what was going on."

The FBI Investigation and Raid

As evidence against Tara Lee mounted, Special Agent Matt Sluss spearheaded the FBI’s investigation. By November 2018, the investigation had amassed sufficient evidence to obtain a search warrant. On November 9th, FBI agents executed a raid on Tara Lee's residence in New Haven, Michigan. The raid was covertly recorded by a group member, allowing other former clients to witness the event in real time via the Facebook group.

Matt Sluss [07:46]: "She was taking adoptive parents to the point that they're remodeling their houses to create nurseries... They have birth mothers that are being coerced, pressured into giving up their babies or dealing with the loss of their children."

During the raid, the FBI collected critical evidence, including texts, emails, and financial records that detailed Tara Lee’s extensive web of fraud. The evidence illustrated how Tara Lee manipulated adoptive parents by creating false narratives about birth mothers, including fake pregnancies and fabricated birth stories.

The Court Case and Impact on Families

On January 11, 2019, Tara Lee was formally charged with 18 counts of wire fraud. The criminal complaint detailed the exploitation of adoptive parents who invested significant financial resources based on Tara Lee's deceitful practices. The courtroom proceedings were a pivotal moment for the affected families, many of whom struggled to reconcile the betrayal by someone they had trusted deeply.

Adam and Kyle Bell's Thomas, a couple who had successfully adopted a son through Tara Lee, initially refused to believe the allegations. Their unwavering trust in Tara Lee led them to defend her vehemently, even after encountering evidence of fraud. It wasn't until they reviewed the criminal complaint—a document that mirrored their painful experiences—that they realized the extent of Tara Lee’s deceit.

Adam Bell's Thomas [36:03]: "Everything, everything that she had done in this document is all stuff that had happened to us over the last year, and everything had been a lie."

The episode poignantly captures the emotional turmoil of adoptive parents who had to navigate the betrayal while grappling with the loss and trauma inflicted by Tara Lee’s actions.

Aftermath and Continued Struggles

Following Tara Lee's arrest, the affected families faced ongoing challenges. Legal battles ensued as couples like Tammy and Nick Granith fought to retain custody of their adopted children despite the revelations of fraud. The psychological impact on both adoptive parents and birth mothers was profound, underscoring the deep scars left by Tara Lee’s manipulations.

Heather Catallo [31:08]: "Adoption experts say legitimate agencies never match birth moms with adoptive parents until at least 12 weeks due to miscarriage concerns."

The episode concludes by highlighting the systemic vulnerabilities within the adoption industry that allowed Tara Lee’s scheme to flourish unchallenged for years. It serves as a stark reminder of the necessity for stringent oversight and the collective responsibility to protect vulnerable families from exploitation.

Notable Quotes

• Matt Sluss [15:08]: "She definitely wasn't cautious. I mean, she was constantly texting... I could see the beginning. I could see maybe the first failed match, the second failed match."
• Sarah Woodward [15:26]: "Her personality was sort of like, I'm a foul-mouthed, tattooed woman, but I'm doing adoptions... could relate to people... might have helped people ignore some red flags."
• Adam Bell's Thomas [32:25]: "She can tell a wicked story."

Conclusion

"Don’t F**k With Parents" is a compelling exposé of Tara Lee’s fraudulent adoption practices, showcasing the resilience and determination of affected parents and law enforcement officials to dismantle her scheme. Through meticulous investigation and unwavering support from the community, the episode underscores the importance of vigilance and advocacy in safeguarding the sanctity of the adoption process.

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This summary captures the essence of Episode 6 of The Binge Cases: Baby Broker, providing a comprehensive overview of the key events, discussions, and emotional narratives surrounding Tara Lee's fraudulent activities and the collective efforts to bring her to justice.

Transcript

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[Peter McDonnell]

Listen to all episodes of Baby Broker ad free right now by subscribing to the binge. Visit the binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or visit getthebinge.com to get access. Wherever you listen the binge feed your true crime obsession the binge. Last October, I was in the recording studio with Mike and Theresa Matheny, the couple from Atlanta who adopted Stephanie's son. We were taking a break drinking coffee when Mike asked me, did you ever.

[Courtney Edmond]

See the documentary don't fuck with Cats?

[Peter McDonnell]

I have not seen it. No.

[Courtney Edmond]

Guy starts out herding animals online and ends up killing a human. It's like this group of normal people come together online where they're like putting together pieces of the puzzle, like the wrapper from the cigarette and the picture on the wall in the hotel to track this guy down. And they eventually give like Interpol what they need to find this guy. I feel like it's a good analogy for sort of our little Facebook group. The rule of the group was once you're admitted, you know, you have to sort of write out your family's story with how you connected with Tara. And there were so many lies. It's like you're almost able to piece things together in your story based on the information in other people's stories. Yeah, there was like someone that said that, you know, Tara collected 8, 10, $15,000 or whatever, you know, on October 25th. And we're like, we were with her in the hospital that whole day. So it's like where she was clickety clacking on her cell phone. It's like she was in there robbing people blind while our son was being born.

[Peter McDonnell]

From Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence, this is Baby broker. I'm Peter McDonnell. Episode 6 Don't Fuck with Parents.

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[Peter McDonnell]

By September of 2018, the Facebook group Courtney Edmond helped start had evolved into a Crowdsourcing juggernaut of Tara Lee's pissed off former clients. By October, members of the Facebook group were telling their stories to FBI agent Matt. By November, Sluss investigation had swelled to include 150 couples, all of whom felt Tara Lee had misled, defrauded or swindled them. Courtney's Facebook group was the seed from which the investigation grew. I want to zoom in on a moment in early October before the FBI got involved when the seed took root. Julie Falkenberry, one of the three women who started the Facebook group, told Courtney that she wanted to cold call Thalia Getting and Tanya Corrado. They were the two lawyers who represented many of the couples in Tara Lee's adoptions. Here's Courtney.

[Julie Falkenberry]

She did. She called them. And after a couple hours of Julie talking to them, Julie called me back. And she's like, I don't know if they're involved. Like, I don't know what's going on, but it doesn't seem like they are. I was like, girl, no. She's like, listen, I have another call with them later. I'm gonna add you in, but you stay on mute. You listen. So I just listened into the call, and they did sound pretty distraught. They did sound like they had no idea what was going on. They were scared for their business. They were scared for the families.

[Peter McDonnell]

When I talked with Talia Genning, one of the lawyers, I asked her about this call with Julie. Thalia said Julie yelled at them and accused them of fraud. But Thalia swore she had no idea who Julie Falkenberry was. Thalia told me it was only when Julie said her adoption with Tara Lee had failed that she knew why she'd never heard of her. Tara Lee would send out all inclusive adoption contracts with Talia and Tanya's names and fees on them without ever telling them. If an adoption failed, they often never knew. Tara Lee usually only called them when one succeeded, usually at the 11th hour. Thalia told me she hated that Tara Lee did this and reprimanded her, but it did no good. When I shared all this with Rob Kirsch, he was appalled. He's an attorney who knows how adoptions are supposed to work. That was the problem with Tara Lee.

[Matt Sluss]

Is that these poor adoptive parents trusted that she was doing it right and she was experienced that. I'm sure she talked a good game and made them feel comfortable that she.

[Peter McDonnell]

Was the expert at it and she took advantage of them. Her scheme worked in part because no one was looking for criminals, con artists and fraudsters in the adoption industry, because not only was preying on people involved in adoptions unconscionable, it was unimaginable. Even the feds at first needed a minute to wrap their heads around what she'd done. Adoptions, by the way, are regulated at the state level. So while there is oversight and there are rules, they differ in Michigan. Tara Lee knew what the rules were, and she flagrantly violated them. The state had even told her to stop doing adoptions. But she didn't. On the phone, Julie Falkenberry told Thalia about the baby boy she was adopting through Always Hope. It was a closed adoption, meaning Julie had no contact with the birth mother. Tara Lee told her that the birth mother went into labor unexpectedly, and the baby had died minutes after birth. Julie deeply mourned the loss. She now suspected, though it was all a lie, that Tara Lee had made up the baby and the birth mother, that it was all for money. While Courtney listened in, Julie told Talia and Tanya about their Facebook group of Tara Lee's former clients and all their failed adoptions. A graveyard of failures. When they hung up, it was early evening in Detroit. Talia and Tanya had a million questions. This was serious. This was potentially criminal. It was also, Thalia told me, personal. Talia had been adopted, and she had an adopted daughter. She said Julie's accusations not only scared her, they upset her. That night, Thalia remembered that Tara Lee had given her access to Always Hope's email account. She wasn't sure if the login would still work, but it did. Thalia and Tanya began reading over 4000 emails Tara Lee had sent and received from her clients. They created a spreadsheet of names, dates, and payments. Leaning against their office wall was another piece of evidence in a frame. Tara Lee's diploma for her master's in social work from Northwestern. Months earlier, Talia said she'd asked Tara Lee for proof of this degree. And after weeks of these requests, she said Tara Lee presented them with the frame diploma for display. But the FBI would discover that the diploma and her degree were fake. Pure fiction. Talia and Tanya shared what they found with another attorney, Maria Penchenko, who represented the birth mothers in many of Tara Lee's adoptions. They took matters into their own hands and together reached out to the FBI's Detroit field office to report Tara Lee. Days later, they were sitting with Special Agent Matt sluss and Assistant U.S. attorney Sarah Woodward. And that's how the three prongs of the investigation, the Facebook group, the lawyers, and the Department of Justice came together. To stop Tara Lee. For three weeks in October, Agents Matt Sluss and Mark Krieg conducted as many interviews with adoptive parents and birth mothers as possible. The evidence piled up. Agent Sluss's butcher paper chart morphed into a huge digital spreadsheet. Cell by cell, it documented the traumatic stories of more than 150 couples in 24 states and dozens of birth mothers from Detroit. Many of these couples kept good records.

[Matt Sluss]

So they could give us contracts, they could show us exactly how much and when they paid.

[Peter McDonnell]

By early November, Agent sluss and the U.S. attorney's office had enough evidence for a search warrant. On November 9th, multiple FBI agents drove to a middle class neighborhood in New Haven, a semi rural suburb north of Detroit, and parked their unmarked cars in front of Tara Lee's two story house. Someone connected to the Facebook group, whose name remains private, had been tipped off about the raid. They parked out front, too, their cell phone camera aimed at the door. Three, two, one. The agents got out and went in.

[Matt Sluss]

She was there.

[Peter McDonnell]

As the FBI went in, the person secretly recording the raid from her car began posting snippets of video to to the Facebook group. Word traveled fast. Many of the couples Tara Lee had defrauded signed on to watch the raid in real time.

[Julie Falkenberry]

And she's like, oh, oh, now they're bringing in more people, or oh, they're taking out boxes. And we would be like, hey, what.

[Peter McDonnell]

Are they doing now? Courtney Edmond watched from her kitchen in Colorado Springs. She'd been through two failed adoptions with Tara Lee and had slept in the house that was being raided. Teresa Matheny, who'd driven from Atlanta to Detroit in a panic to save her adoption. Watch 2.

[Heather Catallo]

Everybody has speculations on what's going to happen.

[Peter McDonnell]

You know, a lot of emotions.

[Julie Falkenberry]

It was a big moment for all of us. It was emotional, it was exciting, it was, oh my God, we were actually right. She's really doing this stuff.

[Peter McDonnell]

While Courtney watched, she was holding a baby she'd just adopted from another agency.

[Julie Falkenberry]

It was the best. It was the best.

[Heather Catallo]

So we heard about this FBI raid and sent out a daily crew and got the video of the federal agents going in and out of this home. And that's literally all we knew.

[Peter McDonnell]

That's Heather Catallo, an Investigative reporter for WXYZ Channel 7, a popular TV news station in Detroit. Heather didn't know who owned the house and why the FBI was there. She just knew that whoever lived there was being investigated for fraud, and she wanted to find out why.

[Heather Catallo]

I think that when you've been Bamboozled. You want to know what happened? I mean, I've covered horrible crimes. I've covered public corruption. I've covered a lot of awful things. And this, this is in its own category.

[Peter McDonnell]

The FBI hauled out box after box from Tara Lee's home. But they were most interested in one small item. A sophisticated criminal who needs to communicate with their victims or associates might use a burner phone, text and code, use a pseudonym, and delete everything. Tara Lee's fraud depended on communication, and she'd saved everything. Every text change she'd monitored, every sketchy or fictitious update she'd sent to anxious adoptive parents. Every credit card payment she received on an app was visible on her iPhone. When Assistant U.S. attorney Sarah Woodward read through it, she saw the individual strands in Tara Lee's web of fraud.

[Sarah Woodward]

She definitely wasn't cautious. I mean, she was constantly texting. And so you can see in chronological order what the user is doing. So for a particular couple or a particular victim, I could see the beginning. I could see maybe the first failed match, the second failed match.

[Peter McDonnell]

She also saw how Tara Lee used her personality to bamboozle people.

[Sarah Woodward]

Her personality was sort of like, I'm a foul mouthed, tattooed woman, but I'm doing adoptions and you wouldn't expect that. And I know how to relate to people and I can kind of give you the real talk that you're not getting other places. And I think that personality maybe helped people ignore some red flags that they might have otherwise seen.

[Peter McDonnell]

Tara Lee had invented a lot of stories, lies, rather, to make her fraud work because her con took so long. Here's Mat Sluss.

[Matt Sluss]

In most fraud schemes, you've made the lie, you've taken the money. The communications are often done in this particular situation. You have a whole pregnancy now where you have somebody on the hook for fraud early on, that you have to continue to lie, continue to make misrepresentations, and continue to make something very sensitive feel very real for months.

[Peter McDonnell]

One of the ways Tara Lee made fake pregnancies feel real was by sending out ultrasound images purported to be of the baby the couple was adopting. The ultrasound image she sent to Tammy and Nick Granith of Sabrina's baby is an example. It wasn't actually an image of Sabrina's baby because Sabrina didn't exist. Tara Lee found these images online and she'd repurposed them for different families. Matt Sluss traced them to a website selling ultrasound images for pranks. But these images were the middle, not the end of her lie.

[Matt Sluss]

At the end of those, you know, Six to eight months. Now Tara has a problem because there's no baby and she has to lie to them again in order to end or fail that adoption match.

[Peter McDonnell]

Her most common lie was that the birth mother changed her mind and was going to keep the baby. It's believable because it happens. If it was a closed adoption, Tara Lee just told the lie. Like she lied to the Granites about Sabrina. But if it was an open adoption and the baby wasn't real, or if she diverted a baby to another family in a double or triple match, Tara Lee might impersonate the birth mother in fake texts, saying she was keeping the baby. Tara Lee would send the devastated couple a screenshot of the fake texts as proof the match failed. And then she'd commiserate with them. In other situations, she'd say the birth mother miscarried. She even paid a woman to pretend to be pregnant. I think the real reason Tara Lee wanted to limit communication between the birth mothers and adoptive parents was that when it came time to lie, she had to control the narrative. All of Tara Lee's lies were egregious, but some were extreme. Remember when she told the Grannis that she couldn't come to Chicago to have dinner with them because a birth mother named Rashonda and her baby had been murdered in Detroit? Tara Lee matched Rashonda with a couple in Georgia who paid her about $15,000. She also sent them details about Rashonda and photos.

[Matt Sluss]

And then, over the next months, as Tara typically would do, she would provide updates about the pregnancy, making the adoption situation feel as real as she could. In this particular situation, Tara failed the match by telling the adoptive parents that Rashonda, the birth mother, had been shot and killed and the baby died in utero.

[Peter McDonnell]

And Tara Lee took it a step further.

[Matt Sluss]

Tara then even solicited funds from the adoptive parents to help cover funeral costs.

[Peter McDonnell]

Agent Sluss tracked down the real person in Tara Lee's photo. Her name wasn't Rashonda. She wasn't pregnant. She had never been shot. Tara Lee just found her photo online and invented the rest.

[Matt Sluss]

This opportunity was completely fake.

[Peter McDonnell]

If a match failed, Tara Lee often tried to roll the couple into another one. I think she developed a sense of how much money each client had, how far she could push them. She knew where they lived, the kind of house they had, the way they reacted when she matched them and asked them for $14,000. She profiled them. While the FBI was figuring out what Tara Lee did, who she did it to, and how, the question of why she did it permeated everything. The answer is complicated and in a way, unknowable. But inside the drawers of Tara Lee's house and on her credit card statements, the FBI found many ways Tara Lee had benefited. While some of her birth mothers lived in squalid conditions with their children, keeping food in the snow, sleeping on the floor, Tara Lee spent $30,000 to renovate her kitchen. She leased a boat. She flew first class. She bought a Rolex. She had countless velvet baggies of David Yurman jewelry. She had sunglasses and reading glasses from Prada, Valentino, and Tiffany's. She had more jewelry than anyone could find occasions to wear. Some were unopened, the tags still on them. The FBI took photos of all of it. After the raid. The cat was out of the bag, but the FBI hadn't made anything public. So reporters like Heather Catallo were scrambling to figure out what Tara Lee was being accused of. Meanwhile, couples in the Facebook group were anxiously waiting for Tara Lee to be charged. But there was one Detroit couple Tara Lee had worked with, Adam and Kyle Bells Thomas, who refused to join the Facebook group because they were convinced that Tara Lee was completely innocent.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

Oh, we were 100% side, Tara.

[Peter McDonnell]

They felt this way even after Courtney and the Facebook group tried to get them to see the truth. Even after the FBI raided Tara Lee's house, even after Heather Catallo's news reports alleging Tara Lee was a fraudster. And even after they'd been through three failed adoptions with Tara Lee. Because every night they put their adopted son to bed was a reminder of what Tara Lee had done for them in the beginning. Their gratitude for that successful adoption blinded them to her manipulations. Adam and Kyle lived just 30 minutes away from Tara Lee and had become very close friends as other couples bonded over the shared trauma of being defrauded by Tara Lee. Adam and Kyle bonded with Tara Lee over her trauma of being investigated.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

If a news report came out that Heather Kotalla was doing, as soon as it aired, she would call us and be like, this is crazy. This is the person that's going after me. This is the person that's feeding it. Courtney's name was brought up. Julie Falkenberry's name was brought up. All of these people were the enemy.

[Peter McDonnell]

It would take a lot of time for them to see past what they wanted to believe. It would take reading her indictment to realize they weren't all that different from the other couples she'd defrauded, the couples they thought were the enemy, to realize they'd been duped.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

She can tell a wicked story.

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[Peter McDonnell]

The dupe began in 2017. Adam and Kyle had just gotten married. Kyle had gone to middle school with Tara Lee and heard she facilitated adoptions. They hadn't talked in years, but he reached out to her weeks later. Tara Lee matched them with a 22 year old birth mother who was pregnant with a boy. She was homeless, staying on people's couches and living out of her car. They helped her move into a rental house, they got her furniture and they sent Tara Lee $14,000. That was a lot of money for them. Kyle works in it. Adam had a job at a local bank. They put some of it on their credit cards and it worked out. Adam and Kyle were in the delivery room when their son was born and they had a close relationship with their birth mother.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

Absolutely amazing feeling to have this little tiny human in your arms. I got to change his first diaper and got peed on. We got to do the first feedings, we got to do everything. We spent the next 48 hours in the hospital sharing a room with the baby. Load him in the backseat. I sat in the backseat while Kyle drove about 20 miles per hour up the highways out of Detroit to get us back home. He was a nervous wreck. I kind of was a nervous wreck. Introduced him to our dogs and started our family. It was wonderful. And we're eight months after we got married and we expected this to take years.

[Peter McDonnell]

Adam lives in the semi rural plains north of Detroit. I met him at a recording studio above a Walgreens near his house. He drove there in an old pickup truck after dropping his son off at school. Adam's a visual artist like his mom. He's around 40, kind and outgoing. He had a coffee from Tim Hortons, the Canadian Starbucks. Adam explained to me how after their successful adoption, he and Kyle became close with Tara Lee. They broke bread with her husband and children. Her oldest daughter babysat for them. Her husband fixed their H vac. And they talked and texted with her almost every day, the way you do with your closest friends. Then in early 2018, Tara Lee told Adam and Kyle that their son's birth mother was pregnant again and that she.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

Wanted us to adopt this baby as well. And we weren't sure that we financially could do it.

[Peter McDonnell]

But Tara Lee didn't like that answer. She flashed a side of herself that they hadn't seen before and questioned their love for their son.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

And what are you going to tell him down the road when he finds out that you could have adopted his sibling, but you chose to pay your bills instead and pay off your credit cards? So we decided to jump on board again.

[Peter McDonnell]

They looked the other way and put it on credit and got excited again. And they broke the great news to their family. It was all going well until the delivery, when, to their surprise, Tara Lee said the birth mother had changed her mind.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

A decision's made and she's no longer yours. And it hit both Kyle and I extremely hard. And she right away said, listen, I understand this is really hard. This isn't over. I have birth moms and different opportunities coming all the time. We need to keep going forward with this. We can get you another baby.

[Peter McDonnell]

She matched them again. They put $9,000 more on their credit card to cover the woman's living expenses. But when they found evidence that the birth mother was using drugs during her pregnancy, they backed out of the match. Tara Lee said any money left over would be rolled over to the next match. They recommitted. The next match happened fast. The birth mother had been through an adoption before. She knew the steps, and she was due soon. Adam and Kyle felt good about it. A few weeks later, though, Tara Lee told them that the woman had stopped returning her calls. So Kyle, the it whiz and armchair sleuth, got on Facebook and he found a profile of the family who'd adopted the woman's previous baby. And their posts showed them celebrating the adoption of her next baby. The birth mom had even liked the posts. Kyle sent the family a message. Hey, not sure if you know what's going on, but we were under the impression that we were adopting this baby. He got a response from the birth mother's boyfriend. Back off. This baby's not yours. I don't know who you are or what you're doing. When Adam and Kyle told Tara Lee this, she expressed shock and outrageous. But the match failed. Adam and Kyle were emotionally and financially exhausted. Days later, the FBI raided Tara Lee's house. When Adam and Kyle found out about it, they called her. And despite all the trauma they'd been through with three failed matches in a row, they were still on side Tara. And they listened as Tara Lee explained to them what in her mind was really going on.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

It was these crazy women who had failed adoptions who were out to get her.

[Peter McDonnell]

She said the lawyers, Talia and Tanya, were out to get her, too, and.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

They wanted to steal her business. And everybody was making up all of this stuff about her.

[Peter McDonnell]

Tarlee asked Adam to write her a letter of support. He did, and he focused entirely on their successful adoption, leaving out the three successive failures. He wrote, Tara was upfront, honest and trustworthy with every penny that she spent to help our birth mother. 7 Investigator Heather Catalo is here now.

[Matt Sluss]

With how authorities are closing in on.

[Peter McDonnell]

This Macomb county mother, Heather.

[Heather Catallo]

Families across the country are reeling after learning the woman who promised them babies isn't licensed by the state to do adoption work.

[Peter McDonnell]

For weeks, WXYZ Channel 7 aired Heather Catallo's investigative reports about Tara Lee, including this one about a birth mother named Mariah.

[Heather Catallo]

Mariah says as soon as she found out she was pregnant, she turned to her longtime friend Leigh because she believed Lee was a social worker.

[Peter McDonnell]

She had me signing papers at five or six weeks pregnant.

[Heather Catallo]

Adoption experts say legitimate agencies never match birth moms with adoptive parents until at least 12 weeks due to miscarriage concerns. Marias Lee told her to lie to the adoptive parents about her due date. Why do you think she wanted you to lie about how far along you were?

[Peter McDonnell]

Because the moment I met, she could start charging people for money. Every time. One of Heather Catallo's news reports came out, Adam said Tara Lee would call them and rant. And then one night in December, they got home from work and found a note from Heather Catalo taped to their door. It terrified them. Heather was the enemy and they did not want to talk to the enemy. They circled the wagons and then a few nights before Christmas 2018, Tara Lee called them and sounded excited.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

My in laws were over for dinner. So I answer it because again, we're in the middle of all of this. And it is Tara FaceTiming us, sobbing in her car, thrilled because she just got a call from her lawyer and the case was being dropped. That they had proven that she was not guilty of any of it, that she was clear.

[Peter McDonnell]

Was that story a lie?

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

100%.

[Peter McDonnell]

After New Year's, Tara Lee called them with the opposite message and she tells.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

Us that she's got to go to court tomorrow and this is absolute bullshit. And I can't believe this is happening to me.

[Peter McDonnell]

By the way, I interviewed Adam in two different places on two different mics. Sorry, you'll notice it. The day of the court hearing, Adam texted Tara Lee, good luck today.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

We are here for you. Her response was, I didn't do anything. Adam, I am so sorry I let all of you down. I never meant for any of this. My response was, you haven't let us down. You just have to keep dealing with the bullshit in these bitches. Karma will turn. Just a matter of time. We trust and believe you. We are in your corner. Stay strong. Be the tatted, foul mouth woman we love.

[Peter McDonnell]

Adam sent the text and went to work. Meanwhile, at the FBI's Detroit field office, Agent Matt Sluss clicked save on the 31 page criminal complaint he'd written. He distilled all the evidence into one monstrous story of probable cause.

[Matt Sluss]

She's taking adoptive parents to the point that they're remodeling their houses to create nurseries. People are raising money through church fundraisers. They're cashing out their retirement funds. You have birth mothers that are being coerced, pressured into giving up their babies or dealing with the loss of their children. You have adoptive parents that do have kids. And you know, these kids are expecting to be a big brother or a big sister. And now you have to explain to them, you know, why that's not going to happen. You know, Tara would bring people to the point of traveling across the country to Detroit, Michigan, to complete my family, and then that doesn't happen.

[Peter McDonnell]

Here's Sarah Woodward.

[Sarah Woodward]

They were a sophisticated, well educated group of people that were adept at navigating the world and successful in life. And that's what made it so heartbreaking, because she knew that they would do anything for the hope of having a child.

[Peter McDonnell]

On January 11, 2019, Sarah Woodward and the FBI made their evidence public.

[Heather Catallo]

Tara Lee turned herself into the FBI this morning. And this 31 page criminal complaint against her was just unsealed. The allegations in here are shocking.

[Peter McDonnell]

And the FBI took Tara Lee to court the same day.

[Heather Catallo]

Court calls case number 19 30015.

[Peter McDonnell]

United States America versus Tara Lee. Ready?

[Sarah Woodward]

Good afternoon, your honor. Sarah Woodward, on behalf of the United States.

[Peter McDonnell]

Good afternoon. Will the defendant please state her name to the court? Tara Lindley. All right, let me make it very clear that you will not be leaving the country. You will not be going to Ghana, and you will not not be using your passport or your visa. No. For any purposes. Ms. Lee, you are here this afternoon.

[Heather Catallo]

Making your initial appearance on a federal criminal complaint.

[Peter McDonnell]

You are charged in the federal criminal.

[Heather Catallo]

Complaint with wire fraud. Have you seen a copy of the complaint?

[Peter McDonnell]

I did, your honor. And have you read it? I did, your honor. Miles to the north, Adam Bell's Thomas was at his desk at work, but all he could think about was that the criminal complaint against his friend Tara Lee was about to be publicly released. When it was, Adam printed it out and asked his boss if he could take a short break.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

And I drove to a parking lot near my office and I read every word and felt my life fall apart. Because everything, everything that she had done in this document is all stuff that had happened to us over the last year, and everything had been a lie. All of it. I called Kyle. He was at work, and I said, kyle, she did this. She did all of this. You have to stop talking to her. And he's like, I've already talked to her. She's already called me today, Kyle. Every bit of this is what she's done to us. This is our life for the last year in a document issued by the government. He had a really hard time believing me. But we were so manipulated and we were so brainwashed, and she had us. I couldn't drive away from that parking lot for two hours because I sat there and cried because how does someone do that to someone else and not fucking care?

[Peter McDonnell]

That night, after they put their son to bed, Tara Lee called. Reluctantly, Kyle picked up. Tara Lee ranted, they listened, and then they hung up forever.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

And we called the FBI.

[Happy Mammoth Representative]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

We were ready to take her down.

[Courtney Edmond]

Please hang up and dial 91 1.

[Peter McDonnell]

Please listen to your. Adam told me that in their conversations with the FBI and the two lawyers, Talia Getting and Tanya Corrado they learned their matches didn't fail for the reasons they originally thought. The birth mother in their second failed adoption wasn't even pregnant.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

Images, doctors notes, ultrasounds, everything was stuff that she was reusing from the first pregnancy a couple years prior.

[Peter McDonnell]

And in the last failure, the birth mother said she. She told Tara Lee that she was not going to give her baby to Adam and Kyle. But Tara Lee never gave them the message.

[Adam Bell's Thomas]

Pretty rough weekend, to say the least.

[Peter McDonnell]

In federal court, Tara Lee was charged with 18 counts of wire fraud and freed on a $10,000 bond. She was forbidden from doing any adoption work and from contacting birth mothers and adoptive parents. But then an unfortunate consequence of Tara Lee's alleged crimes surfaced. Thalia Getting the lawyer, called Tammy and Nick Granith in Chicago. Tammy was sitting at her kitchen island holding her infant daughter May when she answered. And she said to me, I have.

[Heather Catallo]

To tell you that you and a few other families may not be able to keep your babies.

[Peter McDonnell]

Next time on Baby Broker. There's no way they're coming and taking.

[Heather Catallo]

My child from you.

[Peter McDonnell]

Tammy and Nick and other couples fight to keep their babies. And Tara Lee goes to court. This is federal court.

[Courtney Edmond]

Yes.

[Peter McDonnell]

We don't play games in this court. I agree with Ms. Woodward. This was a. A flagrant violation, an egregious violation.

[Julie Falkenberry]

One of Tara's favorite sayings was, I can't make this up. She would say this all the time when actually she was making everything up.

[Courtney Edmond]

Nick was in the back of the courtroom and heard us read our impact statement, and he was the one that made the connection that, oh my gosh, this is the family. That was matched with Stephanie.

[Peter McDonnell]

Unlock all episodes of Baby Broker ad free right now by subscribing to the binge podcast channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts, all ad free. Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series that's all episodes all at once. Search for the binge on Apple podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page, not on apple. Head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. Baby Broker is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence. It was hosted and reported by me, Peter McDonnell. I'm the executive producer along with Katharine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch of Sony Music Entertainment. Stephen George recorded the narration at the Invisible Studios, West Hollywood. We used music from Audio Network and a few tracks from from Epidemic Sound news clips are courtesy of WXYZ 7 in Detroit, Michigan. Our production managers are Tameka Balance Kolosny and Sammy Allison. Our lawyers are Allison Sherry and Kathleen Farley. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rasik and Jamie Myers.