SCAM: Couple flies to Houston to adopt baby that didn’t exist
A couple discovered they were scammed out of thousands of dollars when they traveled to Houston to adopt the baby of a woman who had faked her pregnancy. They returned home heartbroken and to an empty manger.
HOUSTON – A family traveled over 1,000 miles from Ohio to Houston adopt a little boy, only to come home empty-handed to find they had been ripped off.
Breanne Paquin and her husband have spent the last few years battling infertility, so they opted for private adoption.
SIGN UP FOR FOX 26 HOUSTON EMAIL ALERTS
They took to social media for someone who wanted to provide a stable home for a new baby, and a woman from Houston, Texas, answered the call. The woman said she was around five months pregnant.
The Paquins are from Akron, Ohio, so they hired a Houston-area lawyer to help them with the process, they also verified the woman’s identity.
“He checked his background, the first thing I made him do was prove his identity by sending in a photo of his ID,” Paquin said.
Along the way, she sent Paquins photos and ultrasound videos updating them on the baby.
“We talked about what the future looked like for all of us. We wanted to have an open adoption where she was always involved in the baby’s life,” she told FOX 26.
The woman also sent them medical bills totaling over $ 9,000, which they reimbursed her.
Fast forward to Christmas Day, the woman told them she was due to be induced later in the week. So they booked flights, rented a car, Airbnb, and drove to Houston, car seat in hand. However, the day she was supposed to be induced, she told the Paquin that her mother was due to have open heart surgery. Then the days passed, and there was still no date set for the baby’s birth. It was then that the Paquins’ lawyer made them sit down and told them that he believed they had been ripped off.
“The lawyer and my husband actually went out to one of his last known addresses which happened to be family members. They spoke with his family, who said they didn’t think he was at all. she was pregnant, and they said her mother was completely fine and not in the hospital, ”Paquin said.
FOR THE LATEST UPDATES, DOWNLOAD THE FOX 26 NEWS APP
Heartbroken, the Paquins packed their bags and left Houston with an empty car seat and returned home to an empty nursery.
“Nothing has changed, we have left an empty house and we walk into an empty house. But at the same time, everything seems to have changed,” Paquin said.
Lawyers for the family are working with the DA’s office and the FBI to prosecute potential wire fraud charges, but more importantly, they say they want to educate the public so it doesn’t happen to anyone else.
We’ll update this story as we learn more.
Comments are closed.