An Arizona elected official ran an illegal adoption scheme: How big was the 'baby mill'?
Lily Altavena and Jessica Boehm | Arizona Republic
PHOENIX – Dozens of birth mothers.
Dozens of adoptive parents.
Dozens of children.
More than 70 pregnant women from the Marshall Islands may have traveled to the United States to give birth in an adoption scheme orchestrated by Arizona official Paul Petersen, court documents from three states allege.
The county assessor has been indicted in Arizona, Arkansas and Utah in cases that became public Tuesday, accused of running a multimillion-dollar operation that involved adoption fraud.
Prosecutors in the three states allege that Petersen committed a range of offenses as an adoption attorney, from wire fraud in Arkansas to human smuggling in Utah to fraudulent schemes in Arizona, 62 charges in all.
Petersen in his private-sector career had been involved in arranging adoptions from the Marshall Islands as early as 2005, although the charges involve actions starting in 2015, according to court records.
It is illegal for Marshallese women to travel to the United States for the purpose of adoption — it's also how prosecutors claim Petersen made a living.
Utah's attorney general, Sean Reyes, said victims fall into three categories: the mothers from the Marshall Islands who traveled 5,000 miles to give birth in the U.S.; the adoptive parents who paid Petersen as much as $40,000 to facilitate an adoption; and the children at the center of the complex scheme.
"The commercialization of children is illegal, and the commoditization of children is simply evil," Reyes said.
The total number of victims involved is unknown. But the scale of Petersen's adoption operation has started to emerge with the flurry of court records.
More than 70 pregnant women
Investigators in Utah and Arizona say they tracked dozens of Marshallese women who gave birth in both states, which suggests dozens of families adopted children through Petersen's firm.
In the scheme, the attorney first paid individuals in the Marshall Islands to locate pregnant women interested in adoption, then matched them with adoptive families in the U.S., according to court records.
Investigators in Arizona found:
- 28 women from the Marshall Islands gave birth in Phoenix-area hospitals between Nov. 30, 2015, and May 30, 2019, according to court documents.
- The women, as they waited as long as six months to deliver their children, lived in a Mesa home owned by Petersen. Eight pregnant women were found at the residence in Mesa on Tuesday night when Arizona Department of Public Safety investigators executed a search warrant.
Investigators in Utah found:
- More than 40 women traveled from the Marshall Islands to Utah to give birth, according to court documents. Petersen, in hospital paperwork, claimed to be the facilitator for the adoptions of their babies.
- Records of plane tickets paid for by a credit card in Petersen's name were found for 28 of the Marshallese women who gave birth in Utah hospitals and placed their babies for adoption.
- Two adoptive parents told investigators they visited a home owned by Petersen in a suburb of Salt Lake City where the pregnant women lived. They said they saw as many as 15 pregnant women living in the house, some sleeping on mattresses on a bare floor.
One of the adoptive parents interviewed by investigators in Utah who visited the home where the pregnant women lived said they had no idea Petersen was processing adoptions for so many women at a time, comparing the operation to a "baby mill."
Investigators in Arkansas found:
- Four women, identified by their initials, were brought to the U.S. from the Marshall Islands to give up their babies for adoption in Arkansas.
- Similar to the cases in Arizona and Utah, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas said the women were placed in a single-family home and sometimes confined to a room.
$2.7 million in payments alleged
Adoptions through Petersen weren't cheap.
Adoptive parents paid anywhere from $25,000 to $41,000 for Petersen's adoption services, according to the court records.
Petersen indicated the cost covered medical expenses. However, according to Arizona court documents, the attorney instead falsely claimed the pregnant women were Arizona residents so they could access state-funded medical benefits.
The medical costs for the 28 pregnant women total more than $800,000, according to the court documents.
Meanwhile, investigators in Utah found that Petersen took in millions of dollars in nearly two years from the adoption deals. Between December 2016 and September 2018, bank account records subpoenaed by an investigator show a little more than $2.7 million going into an account Petersen told families was for wire transfers. Most of the transfers, the investigator with the Utah Attorney General's Office wrote, included notes that indicated they were adoption payments.
Petersen also offered money to the mothers coming from the Marshall Islands, according to the court documents. Arizona court documents state that birth mothers were promised $1,000 for every month they were pregnant in the U.S and up to $10,000 to place their child for adoption.
Four Marshallese women interviewed by the investigator in Utah said they were offered $10,000 for the adoption. They all told the investigator that the money significantly influenced their decision to go through with the adoptions, according to the court documents.
60-plus charges filed against him
Petersen, arrested Tuesday, is now tangled in a legal mess. He will have to contend with three indictments in three states that accuse him of committing dozens of felonies.
The charges follow different themes in every state. In Arizona, accusations focus on illegal use of state medical benefits on women who were not residents. Investigators could not find any of the women still living in Arizona.
In Arkansas, authorities characterized Petersen's operation as a scheme to defraud and take advantage of Marshallese women and families to make quick money.
And in Utah, charges against Petersen include human smuggling, communication fraud and the sale of a child.
Reyes, the Utah attorney general, said prosecutors do not intend to overturn any completed adoptions as a result of this case.
If Petersen is found guilty of all the federal charges in Arkansas alone, he could be sentenced up to 315 years in prison and be assessed a $5 million fine, Duane Kees, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, said during a news conference Wednesday.
It is unclear how much prison time he would face if convicted in Arizona or Utah.
Follow Lily Altavena on Twitter @LilyAlta.