A California lawyer who was a respected reproductive law specialist was sentenced on Friday to five months in prison and nine months of home confinement for her role in what prosecutors say was a baby-selling scheme.
US District Court Judge Anthony Bataglia also ordered Theresa Erickson, 44, to pay a $70,000 fine.
Co-defendant Carla Chambers was sentenced to five months in prison and seven months in home confinement. Both women had faced up to five years in prison.
Erickson's reputation as a leading reproductive law specialist had eased the concerns of surrogate mothers and intended parents who were desperate to have children.
But prosecutors say that trust also let her lure couples into a baby-selling scam that netted millions of dollars by dealing in genetically desirable babies conceived in Ukraine by anonymous donors and carried by surrogates.
"These were criminals that were creating human life for sale," said surrogacy attorney Andrew Vorzimer, who represented surrogates who helped blow the whistle on the scam. "Many people consider this to be a surrogacy arrangement gone awry. But this was not surrogacy in any shape or form."
Erickson built her clientele by writing books and speaking on TV about fertility issues. In California's thriving surrogacy industry, she managed to persuade couples to pay up to $150,000 for each child, federal prosecutors say.
The aspiring parents believed they were adopting legally by entering into an arrangement with a surrogate mother before the pregnancy.
In fact, Erickson was working with Chambers, a surrogate, and respected Maryland attorney Hilary Neiman to line up parents for babies that had already been created by sending U.S. surrogates to Ukraine to be implanted with sperm and embryos from anonymous donors, prosecutors say.
Vorzimer said no one knows how many babies were created that way, and important genetic information for the infants may have been lost forever. The surrogates were also unaware of the scam, federal prosecutors say.
"They attempted to create the most marketable baby available, which was blond hair, blue-eyed baby, while simultaneously pulling on the heart strings of intended parents," Vorzimer said. "It defies description the immorality that was involved in this ongoing operation that went on for years."
Erickson pleaded guilty to fraud and acknowledged filing false applications for the surrogates to California's state insurance program to subsidize the medical costs of the deliveries.
Chambers pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in monetary transactions derived from unlawful activity and also will be sentenced Friday.
Neiman was sentenced in December to one year in custody that included five months in prison and the rest under home confinement.