Couple charged with selling Peruvian babies
Couple charged with selling Peruvian babies
For $16,870, European couples could adopt a Peruvian baby through an Internet site run by a German man and his Peruvian wife. That's what police in Peru alleged Friday while describing the arrests that ended the transcontinental trafficking operation, the Associated Press reports. It isn't yet known how many infants were involved.
German-Peruvian couple charged with trafficking babies to Europe
By RICK VECCHIO
Associated Press Writer
LIMA, Peru (AP) - A German man and his Peruvian wife have been charged with trafficking Peruvian babies to adoptive parents in Europe through an Internet site, police said Friday.
Arndt Hubert Kupper, 36, and Eva Noruzka la Torre, 22, were arrested Wednesday. They allegedly offered to sell the infants for $16,870 each.
A lead investigator in the case told The Associated Press that police obtained evidence of fraudulent birth certificates allegedly used in the trafficking of multiple babies, but authorities were still trying to determine how many children may have been involved. Police have identified one Peruvian newborn, who was recovered in Ecuador.
"I have information that (Kupper) obtained documentation, original birth certificate forms, in a town in the jungle," said police Lt. Anibal Torres. "I calculate that he took several, more than 10 babies," he said.
The couple faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted of baby trafficking, he added.
Kupper and la Torre offered adoptions in German, English and Spanish on a Web site called "Adoption Shilfe Peru," which has been in operation since December 2004, authorities said.
Police said they recently obtained a court order to access the couple's Peruvian banking records to see how many deposits they may have received from European customers seeking children.
The arrests capped a seven-month investigation that began when a woman was stopped at Lima's Jorge Chavez International Airport as she tried to board a KLM flight to Germany with a 15-day-old girl, police said.
Airport employees became suspicious when they saw the dark-skinned baby crying and refusing to take a bottle from the fair-featured woman, and asked her why she did not try to breast-feed the child.
The woman, identified by police as Simone Buhner of Germany, refused to undergo a medical examination to determine if she had given birth to the child by cesarean section, as the medical records and birth certificate that she carried indicated, police said.
Buhner, whom police believe was a would-be adoptive mother, was later detained in Ecuador, where she remains under arrest for baby trafficking, Torres said, adding that police were still trying to identify and locate the real mother in Peru.
Torres said Kupper has multiple fraud convictions in Germany and served a three-year prison sentence there, and is wanted in Romania, Argentina, Panama, and Paraguay to answer charges related to an illegal financing scheme.
Police said Kupper's brother-in-law, Weninger la Torre, 27, bribed a municipal civil registry official in the jungle city of Pucallpa, to fake the birth certificate showing Buhner was the baby's birth mother. Police said a warrant for Weninger la Torre's arrest had been issued. The official's name has not been released.
Torres said Kupper acknowledged under questioning that he swindled would-be adoptive parents out of down payments for adoptions, but denied being involved in a baby trafficking ring.
Kupper's wife maintained they were both innocent of any wrongdoing, police said.