North Dakota Couple Claim Victim of Adoption Fraud From Marshall Islands

Yet they did adopt a newborn from the Marshall Islands after all.
“Roxane Cartwright never met Angela Emos in person.

But for about four months last year, the two women were in near-constant communication with what Cartwright thought was the intention of meeting for the birth of Emos’s baby.

The two were matched through an adoption attorney in Arkansas, and Cartwright and her husband, expecting to adopt the baby and bring her back to their Williston home, had set up an expense account for Emos to use until her August 2016 due date.

Soon, though, Cartwright said, Emos’s requests for money turned into demands, far exceeding the original agreement of $1,400 a month. Finally, Cartwright drew the line when the other woman asked her to fly her family from the Marshall Islands to the United States.

Emos stopped responding to texts and returning phone calls for about a week, then contacted Cartwright in mid-July 2016. In an emotional phone call, Cartwright said Emos told her that she’d agreed to the adoption in order to get money, and that she’d promised the child to at least one other family. She’d never intended to give the baby to her and her husband, Cartwright said.

“All along she was matched with other people,” she said, adding that the alleged truth was especially stinging because Emos was in such close contact. “She would constantly be sending me text messages.”

Emos, 33, was arrested Oct. 31 in Arkansas and charged with defrauding a prospective parent, a felony. She is accused of bilking the Cartwrights out of more than $10,000, and is being held at the Benton County Jail on $2,500 bond. Her next court date in the case is Dec. 11.

Arkansas authorities say Emos used money from the Cartwrights for food, car expenses and “adoption support” from April 2016 through early July 2016.

In a text message exchange between the two women that is included in an affidavit of probable cause, Cartwright pleaded with Emos for the return of the money, and threatened to press charges.

Emos wrote that she planned to repay the couple with her income tax return.

Charges have not been filed against Emos’s husband or the attorney who matched Emos with the Cartwrights, but an investigation is ongoing, Detective Benjamin Scott of the Rogers Police Department said.

“We have a few cases involving this matter,” he said.

The realization that their dealings with Emos was not going to result in an adoption was crushing for Cartwright, who, along with her husband Timothy, had been trying to adopt a child from the Marshall Islands for the past five years.

The couple, parents to four boys, felt that a baby girl would complete their family, and they’d settled on the Pacific Islands nation because it offered open adoptions.

They registered with an adoption agency with ties to the Marshall Islands, paying thousands to submit an application. The most taxing part, though, turned out to be the wait — it gradually became clear that an addition to the family was likely not coming soon from the island nation. Then, the agency told Roxane Cartwright that she’d have a better chance at an international adoption if she completed the expensive process again in India.

Frustrated, Cartwright told her husband that she wanted to try something different. She’d heard that pregnant women from the Marshall Islands often traveled to Arkansas, where attorneys would arrange for domestic adoptions.

[What? I thought that DOS said  “Although the “Compact of Free Association” between the Marshall Islands and the United States permits Marshallese citizens to travel to and live in the United States without a U.S. visa, this provision is not applicable to adopted children who will reside permanently with U.S. families in the United States.  Prospective adoptive parents of Marshallese children must go through the appropriate Marshallese adoption procedures as well as the relevant U.S. immigration procedures related to adopted foreign orphans.  Adopted Marshallese children who enter the United States without a visa may later have difficulties adjusting their U.S. immigration status and, eventually, acquiring U.S. citizenship.“]

Vaughn Cordes, an attorney in Rogers, Arkansas, connected the Cartwrights with Emos. The financial loss from the alleged fraud seemed to threaten to end to their dream, though.

“I just thought we’re never going to get a baby. I was defeated,” Cartwright said.

Then, weeks later, Cordes found another expectant mother from the Marshall Islands looking to give up her baby. The woman gave birth to Sofia in August 2016, and the Cartwrights finalized the adoption the next month.

“I want her to grow up knowing her mom and her dad, it is exactly what we wanted in an open adoption,” Cartwright said.”
Williston couple claims they were victims of adoption fraud

[Williston Herald 11/7/17 by Elizabeth Hackenberg]

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