Original subtitles

Hi there. Good evening.

Happy Sunday. My name is Tara.

We trusted her. She was our friend.

- It's a boy! - It's a boy?

I had met this baby that I thought was mine.

Something didn't sit right with me.

What are you hiding?

The more you peel back the layers,

the more bizarre the story's got.

The amount of people that she had to lie to,

the quantity of lies.

Do we need to be scared?

We had no idea of the scale

this scheme would rise to.

She's like selling babies on the black market.

She is a brilliant monster.

It was devastating.

I truly knew in that moment

that my life would never be the same.

I'm Special Agent Matt Sluss, FBI.

I'm Intelligence Analyst Nishawn Spiller, FBI Detroit.

When serious crime strikes,

the special agents of the FBI answer the call.

Fidelity, bravery, integrity.

This...

is "FEDS."

Hey there, everyone. It's me, Tara,

the founder and director of Always Hope Pregnancy Center.

And we are live with you today from our brand new office.

We're absolutely loving it.

We've got a really nice view of the city now,

which makes me happy.

I met Kyle back in 2014 on a dating app.

We dated for a year,

and then he proposed to me on a pier in Lake Michigan.

And then, a year after that, we were married.

Kyle and I, we are a same-sex couple,

and we really, really wanted to have children.

We talked through all the different options,

fostering is a great route, but it wasn't gonna be for us.

Surrogacy, we didn't

know how to go about that, right?

And adoption kinda just fell into our lap as the best fit.

We went into the whole adoption process with a lot of concerns.

We're a same-sex couple. We're both males.

We heard horror stories of them being very strict

and that you're gonna have to wait years to go

and find an adoption.

But we were both willing to fight for it.

We were talking to a friend of ours, and it was recommended

that there was this woman, Tara Lee, that had

an adoption agency called "Always Hope."

It's been a minute since we've given you an update,

and we wanted to bring you another birth-mom story today.

And today with me, I have Alex, and Alex's beautiful baby boy,

Landon, was born on March 14th.

We looked up Always Hope and Tara Lee,

and what she was doing, and it seemed legit.

So we actually met and sat down with Tara.

We showed our concerns, and she didn't see it

being a problem.

She was very chatty. You could joke around with her.

Everything just kind of looked right.

Curtis and I were high school sweethearts,

and we always knew we wanted a big family.

We had already had four children,

but they were very high-risk pregnancies.

And so we started looking into adoption.

But Colorado is a very hard state to adopt from.

We just weren't having luck.

We came across Tara Lee through Facebook adoption groups.

And they had all loved Tara.

She was a mom of adopted kids.

And I thought, "Well, if she can do it,

and I've heard good things about her, then we can do it."

So, in a matter of three months, we are now matched

with a baby.

We talked with the birth mom,

got to know each other a little bit.

When we were matched, we signed paperwork.

We did have to put money down for birth mother expenses--

rents, utilities, gas, food,

anything that the birth mother could need.

In addition to that, legal fees

and tariffs fee.

And then Tara took control of all of it.

So we went to doctor's appointments

with the birth mom.

We were there the day we found the sex of the baby.

It was great.

Everything that we could have hoped for.

Today with me, I have Alex.

And she's with us today to tell you her story.

So I'm gonna hand it over to Alex.

Hi.

So August of last year, I found out that I was pregnant.

It was only a week later that she had called me

and said that she had had a birth mom that she thought

that we would match well with.

We were excited, and the first thing she said was,

"Now I need money."

At that point, she asked for $3,000.

We knew that that was part of the process.

That's just how adoption works.

OK, this is the gender reveal.

- Should I go? - Go.

We had a gender reveal party with our kids.

Three...

- Oh, wait, is it a girl? - It's a girl?

It's a girl?

- It's a boy! - It's a boy?

We were starting to get ready and excited.

The best thing.

In June, our son was born.

Holding him that first time,

and just having that little life

in your hands

was amazing. And Tara did it.

She did exactly what she said she would do.

It was all because of her.

The baby actually came a month early, and so we got

a phone call from Tara saying, "She's in labor,

she's at the hospital, you need to get on a plane now."

And we flew to Detroit.

And she took us to the hospital, and we were walked to the NICU.

The birth mom said, "Here's your son."

Tara said, "Here's your son."

We took photos and videos and sent them to the kids,

introduced him as if he were their little brother.

And on the way back to the hotel,

we got a phone call from Tara

saying that the birth mom was changing her mind.

Families know that adoptions can fail.

Nothing is guaranteed.

But I had met this baby that I thought was mine,

but wasn't mine.

We were in the parking lot.

And I just dropped to my knees, because I knew

it was over. At that point.

That's it. I'm done.

And I just wanted to go home.

I had actually thought I had built a friendship with Tara.

I still believed in her.

I was matched with another birth mom.

And Tara was asking for more money right away.

And if you questioned her on that, she would say,

"Well, if you don't pay this money, you may lose this match."

The birth mother had asked me to come out for the delivery.

And I was the first one to hold the baby.

And Tara was in the birth mom's room

talking to her.

And it was the next morning that we tried to go back

to the hospital to see the baby. And we learned that...

the birth mom had told the hospital,

"Do not allow Cortney to my room."

It was devastating.

Mad at myself for allowing it to happen again.

And it was also the feeling of betrayal from Tara.

Something's just not right. This is not how this works.

I met this woman online, named Sarah.

She actually had a failed adoption before with Tara.

We related in a lot of ways.

It felt like she'd been through the same experience.

So we started a Facebook group, a private Facebook group

that started out with three families.

In a month, it was 20 families, and then in a couple months,

it was 100 families.

Far bigger than we ever imagined.

It was really hard to believe at first.

More than one of them had been matched with one woman.

So this one woman and Tara were promising this one baby

to three different families at the same time.

Who thinks of that? Just disgusting.

At the time of this case, I had been an FBI agent

for about one year.

I was assigned to our complex financial crime squad,

where I investigate an array of financial crimes.

This unit is comprised of very talented,

experienced individuals trying to uncover

highly complex fraud.

Some of the common things we'd investigate would be--

romance scams, business email compromise,

embezzlement, and corporate securities

and commodities fraud.

Unfortunately, scams are pretty common

across the United States.

In October of 2018, an individual

who was closely associated

with Tara Lee's adoption practice came forward

and brought information to the FBI that there appeared

to be some irregularities with Tara's adoption process.

And some of those irregularities

were alleged to potentially be fraudulent.

Adoption fraud is not something that I had heard of

prior to this case.

So we talked with the United States Attorney's Office up front.

Matt Sluss said, "We're hearing some pretty wild allegations

"about adoptions taking place in Michigan, that Tara Lee

"double matched prospective adoptive parents

with birth mothers."

I was, you know, shocked and appalled.

Even without knowing that much about adoption law,

I could tell that that's not right.

We learned that Tara Lee was a mom

and that she seemed to have started to engage in adoptions

in this unconventional way, driven by her Facebook page.

And it really accelerated over the years.

We learned that she did have successful adoptions.

Always Hope was a registered business

with the state of Michigan, but Lee was not licensed

to provide those services.

And it appeared that Lee was engaging in more fraud

than successful adoptions.

This appears to be a wire fraud scheme, based on adoptions.

We need to investigate. We need to investigate quickly.

We interview dozens of victims,

and it starts to snowball.

They took it very seriously.

They came to our house, other families' houses.

They were calling families.

We gave the FBI everything that we had found.

You could hear the pain in their voice, in their words,

how Tara would draw them in to these adoption matches,

would make them feel real to them, how she would collect

her fees, and would hear their stories about how then

Tara would fail the match.

She would tell simple stories, such as--

your birth mother miscarried

or your birth mother changed her mind.

Things that are very plausible to the victims,

so they wouldn't grow suspicious.

The fraud here was so blatant

and, in many ways,

just a classic scam.

It is common to see that a fraudster,

they start by building rapport with you.

Lee was very good

at being charismatic, being believable.

Lee would make it seem like there was this close bond.

We shared everything with Tara.

We trusted her.

She became one of our closest friends.

So now you trust them, you believe them,

and then they use that trust to exploit you.

She said, "Hey, guys, your son's birth mother is

"pregnant again, and are you guys interested

in adopting another child?"

"You'll be a great match. You'll be a great match.

So pay today. Pay today."

And so we wrote her a giant check.

And we were head over heels.

She was giving us updates multiple times a day.

We talked all the time.

We start to see that pattern.

That kind of over-the-top communication.

Love bombing.

In May of that year,

the birth mom decided that she was gonna keep the baby.

We knew it was gonna be a little girl.

I never knew I wanted a daughter

until it was in front of my face.

And Tara saw that. Tara knew that.

A savvy criminal is able to defraud

the same victim multiple times.

And Tara said, "Listen,

"I'm on board, I'm here to help you guys.

"I have birth moms and different opportunities coming up

all the time."

So there was always hope that this was gonna happen.

She lets them down. They're disappointed.

"I'm sorry that that one didn't work,

"but I have another one for you.

"I'll be able to use some of the money that you already

gave me, but I'm gonna need some more."

And so we sent Tara the money.

But we never heard from this birth mother again.

There was no offer for money to come back.

It was over.

Just like that.

We had a wealth of information coming in to us,

and in a short amount of time.

The list of victims grew.

We had a map of the United States,

and we were putting a star on each state where there was

a victim associated with Lee.

I thought...

"This is getting much bigger."

We're so convinced that there's fraud going on,

so, we moved to how do we get the evidence we need to prove

what's really going on here.

We need to investigate actual adoptions in process.

My husband and I met 13 years ago on a dating app.

We've been married almost 10 years.

We knew that we wanted to start having kids right away,

and it didn't work out really well for us,

so we went straight into adoption.

Hi, there. My name is Tara, and I am

the owner and director of Always Hope Pregnancy Center.

A week after we signed, we were matched.

Tara said to me, "I need you to send me two credit card

transactions, one for $8,000 for Sheila,

"which is our birth mother, one for $5,000 for my services.

$3,000 would be due after the baby was born."

And then, in addition to that, we would have attorney's fees,

close to $10,000.

She told us, "She's due in two weeks."

In hindsight, I, you know,

feel like there were red flags.

At the time, I didn't.

I just... We didn't have experience with it.

I didn't know.

And that's when all hell broke loose.

I get an email from one of the referral agencies

that we had signed with, and it said, "Has anyone here

worked with Tara Lee and Always Hope?"

I called Tanya, one of the attorneys that we are

paying to do our adoption.

And she said, "You cannot tell anyone

what I'm about to tell you."

She said, "Tara Lee is under FBI investigation

"for double matching families

and matching families to babies that don't exist."

And I just lost it.

I could not

keep myself together.

We're just, like, we don't know what to believe.

Mike called the FBI.

He said, "I don't know what to do."

"Is our birth mom involved in this?

Do we need to be scared?"

They're asking us, "What should I do?"

Now, at this point, we don't know if their match is real.

We don't know if it's a double match.

We don't know if the entire thing is fabricated.

We started to realize that there were times

that she made up women that didn't exist.

There was a situation where Tara told an adoptive parents

that their pregnant birth mother had been shot and killed

and that their baby died in utero.

But in reality, there is no birth mother at all.

There's no pregnancy. The whole thing is fabricated.

Lee even asked one of the prospective parents

to cover funeral costs.

It started to sink in just how outlandish,

how cruel the fraud here was.

Mike called the attorney and asked her, "What do we do?"

and she said, "Get in the car and drive up."

But you cannot let Tara know anything that's going on.

Otherwise, that'll interfere with the FBI investigation.

You have to pretend everything is good.

Tara was waiting for us at the hospital.

Our birth mom was already in a room.

They had her hooked up.

And so I was like, "Oh, thank God, she's real!"

You know, "It is really real."

I'd never known anybody who's done this before,

putting their child up for adoption.

I was scared.

We were living paycheck to paycheck.

Everything was just falling apart.

How I met Tara

is I got her phone number from a therapist.

Tara came to my house, she was nice, she was pretty,

she seemed like she cared.

Tara made a lot of promises to me.

"Your bills are gonna get taken care of, rent's gonna be paid,

utilities," you know, groceries, anything I need,

my pregnancy, you know?

That's her way of, you know, luring you in.

At that point, I felt like our birth mom wasn't involved,

but I still wasn't sure.

We didn't know who to trust during this.

Mike and I wanted time to just talk with her,

and Tara would not give us that time.

And then the first thing that Tara said to me was,

"You know that you owe me, you know, $3,000."

The worst part was when I went into labor,

because Tara, the whole time I'm, like, in labor,

all she keeps telling me is that she wants more money

from Teresa and Michael.

Want me to tell them they need to give her more money.

And I was like, "What?"

The next day, the baby was born.

I couldn't contain myself.

He was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

But he was tiny. He was sick.

So he wasn't doing very well. It was very difficult.

And Tara comes in behind us and immediately starts asking

for the money again.

At one point, Mike and I were downstairs eating and we were

walking back up and we just so happened to run into Sheila

and we took that opportunity to, you know, just talk with her.

And I told her, I said, "She's up there yelling at me,"

telling me if they're not paying her the money,

then they're not getting the baby.

I just couldn't believe it.

And then we learned that none of their utilities

had been paid.

They owed $1,000 on their electric bill.

And our birth mom did not have a coat.

Teresa noticed it right away. She asked me where my coat was.

- So I didn't have one. - She didn't have proper shoes.

It was, you know, winter in Michigan, and she didn't have

clothes.

We were in complete shock.

You know, we had given her $8,000 for Sheila.

And in that moment, we knew that Tara had not given

her the money.

She's a terrible person.

We began to discover birth mothers being neglected

while Tara is promising care and counseling

that they're just not receiving.

The prospective parents were paying a lot of money,

for the birth mothers that went straight to Lee's pocket.

The paranoia, the anxiety, it was just, it was terrible.

We stayed at that NIC unit night and day.

We joined the private Facebook group with all of the families.

And then there's a picture that comes up of our son

that was just born.

And we found out that

you know, Tara was trying to adopt our son out

to other families while we were in the hospital.

So then it was like panic.

At this point in the investigation,

we began to learn a lot more about Tara's relationship

with the actual birth mothers.

Tara was very manipulative. She was very coercive.

That's Tara's house over there.

It's been a long time since I have been back here.

When I walked in the house the first time,

I knew something was going on.

First thing I noticed, there's like six girls pregnant

at this table,

and they were eating Hungry Howie's pizza and pop.

Tara says to me, "Oh, these are girls from out of state."

So I was like, "What the heck?"

And she had a big camper in the back.

And a couple of them were staying in the camper.

And I was just like, "What the hell?"

It's just, it's wintertime, you know?

And these girls are getting ready to have a baby,

and she's got them in a camper.

It's like selling babies on the black market.

She went after girls that were desperate, that didn't have

any other way out of the situation.

Tara advertised herself at local jails.

She would advertise herself at methadone clinics.

She would exploit people that had deep vulnerabilities

in order to manipulate them to do what she wanted them to do

so she could profit.

And then I found out that Tara was doing more than I thought

she was doing, like, terrible, terrible stuff.

One of the girls wasn't even frickin' pregnant, and she was

pretending she was, and Tara was paying her to lie.

There was a lot of rumor surrounding Tara Lee,

that she was manipulating people to lie.

But it wasn't concrete evidence

that a crime had been committed.

But then we got a very compelling piece of evidence.

We were able to obtain a copy of a telephone call.

An individual brought this information to our office.

This was a three-way telephone call hosted by Tara Lee,

where Tara had a call with a adoptive parent,

and Tara had another individual named Enhelica Wiggins

on the call, pretending to be somebody else, pretending to be

a different birth mother named Chantal.

Tara had actually asked a woman to pretend to be pregnant.

We know that she's not pregnant.

I thought...

"Wow, Lee's actually doing this."

That was a turning point.

It was concrete evidence that a crime had been committed.

We're ready to go to the next stage in the investigation.

We can search her house.

We knock on her door.

Tara comes to her door, and she answers.

And we execute a search warrant of Tara Lee's residence.

We talk to her about her business, which then slowly

evolves into us asking her about more specifics.

And through this conversation,

it becomes clear that Tara is lying.

Families across the country are reeling after learning

the woman who promised them babies isn't licensed

by the state to do adoption work.

We saw them taking boxes and boxes of material out.

FBI agents searched this home in New Haven, Michigan.

How did this happen?

One of the most significant pieces of evidence

that we collected that morning was Tara Lee's cell phone.

We found exactly what we were hoping for.

Text message conversations between herself

and numerous sets of adoptive parents.

Text messages between herself and birth mothers.

We were able to obtain copies of bank statements.

Trying to uncover what the money was that she was

making and then what she did with that money.

Many of the victims, the dollar amounts

that they had lost ranged from $9,000 to upwards of $55,000.

And we identified 70 birth mothers,

160 prospective adoptive parents across 24 states.

After thoroughly analyzing Tara Lee's financial activity,

we discover Tara has yielded

$2.1 million in proceeds from her fraudulent adoptions.

Tara Lee profited millions of dollars by exploiting

extremely vulnerable people.

And she spent the money on essentially spoiling herself

with jewelry, and purses and shoes.

Luxury watches, bracelets, all kinds of jewelry.

Really, really expensive items. There were just stacks of them.

Of course, that money was intended to go

to birth mothers, and knowing that she spent it on herself is

quite appalling.

After the FBI raided her house, Kyle and I were both in shock.

And being that we were her friend,

we called her.

She talked her way out of and explained her way out of

everything that came up.

And we told everybody, "She was innocent."

We still trusted her.

So we stayed on board, and Tara said, "Listen,

we can find you another baby."

At this point in time, in our new attempts to adopt

a second child, we've already paid $38,000.

But we just kind of went along,

'Cause, you know, she was looking out for us.

We got a call from Tara, and we got matched

with another birth mom.

So we were six weeks in the hospital.

It was absolute torture.

We had a sick baby, and there was delay

in the legal part of it. We had been there for so long.

I was terrified that he was gonna be taken away.

We wanted another child. We're gonna grow our family.

She stopped communicating with us.

It was impossible to get her to answer any questions.

So we thought Tara had no intention of us

adopting our son.

She was texting with us.

There was communication back and forth.

We had trusted her through this whole year.

She was our friend.

We got the call.

Our attorneys called us.

I truly knew in that moment that...

that my life would never be the same.

We took a call from the lawyer.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a nervous wreck.

Our attorneys said, "Are you ready

to come home with a baby?"

Tears, you know, emotions, crying.

Sorry.

I think he was only six pounds when he left the hospital.

And so, we got a little, you know,

his little coming-home outfit.

We were so happy and it was beautiful.

The lawyer told us that our fourth match...

was also a scam.

And it was over.

And now we just had to pick up the pieces.

She didn't really care about any of us.

She is a brilliant monster.

Tara Lee faced a federal judge today as she was charged

with wire fraud.

We arrested Tara Lee.

We indicted her with 23 counts of wire fraud

and one count of aggravated identity theft.

This 31-page criminal complaint against her was just unsealed.

The allegations in here are shocking.

Lee pleaded guilty to charges of fabricated matches

and misappropriation of adoption service fees.

The judge was angry.

He sentenced her to 10 years in prison.

But he said to her,

"I wish I could give you life."

It was my hope, and the hope of our whole investigative team,

that that sentence would bring some sort of solace

to the victims, some sort of peace of mind.

We did manage to adopt two more children after this.

We completed our family that way.

We actually did end up adopting a second child

through a different legitimate agency.

Baby girl.

After a few years, we got another call.

Our birth mom was pregnant again, and she asked us

to adopt

her baby again.

And now we have a two-and-a-half year old little boy.

I talk to them all the time.

I'm involved in the kids' lives.

They see my mom. They see my family.

I never met anybody better than Teresa and Michael.

They're like the best people I've ever met in my life.

- Hi. - Hi, how are you?

- Good, how are you? - Good.

- Great to see you. - Great to see you.

We've got close with a lot of people.

Teresa and Mike

and Adam and Kyle.

Oh, you got me.

All of a sudden, we had people that

understood and could relate,

and were going through the same thing.

All of the heartbreak that we all went through,

I could not have gotten through this without any of you guys.

I'm gonna cry. I really couldn't have.

Right off the bat, it felt natural and comfortable.

I never felt awkward with you guys at all.

All the kids call each other cousins, and...

just one big happy family.

Yeah.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Yeah.

She didn't destroy us.

She didn't end all of our dreams and hopes.

We made those still happen.

Next time on FEDS...

I said I need you to open the vault

and get out $200,000.

Do what we ask you to and nobody's going to get hurt.

This was clearly different

than every bank robbery that I've ever worked.

She said "It's my job on the line."

and I said "I don't care about your job."