Noted Surrogacy Lawyer Sentenced in Baby-Selling Scheme

Noted surrogacy lawyer Theresa Erickson sentenced for her role in baby-selling scheme
The New York Daily News by Nancy Dillon  -  February 24, 2012
Erickson cried during her sentencing
The internationally renowned surrogacy lawyer got five months in prison and nine months of home confinement for her role in a baby-selling scheme.  A renowned California lawyer and a surrogate mom each got hit with jail time Friday for their roles in a black market operation that sold unborn fetuses to prospective parents for upwards of $100,000.  Surrogacy attorney Theresa Erickson and repeat surrogate Carla Chambers had faced the possibility of five years behind bars, but both ultimately received just five months in federal custody along with subsequent stints of house arrest.  Prosecutors said the women promised candidates to be surrogate mothers up to $45,000 each to travel to the Ukraine and be implanted with fertilized embryos that would then be offered for sale during the third trimester.  The law requires prospective parents to reach surrogacy agreements with gestational carriers before embryo implantation.  Erickson pleaded guilty to wire fraud last year, and Chambers copped to knowingly receiving money from an illegal enterprise that raked in millions.  Former New York socialite Taylor Stein, the daughter of rock promoter Howard Stein, said last summer that she was on the verge of paying $180,000 for an infant supplied by the ring when the FBI suddenly came knocking.  The single mother said she agreed to help investigators when she learned the extent of the ring’s illegal methods.  Stein, who now lives in Los Angeles, said she fell victim to the scam because she desperately wanted to expand her family.  “I was raw,” she told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in August. “When you want a family, and your dreams are, you know, sort of dangling like a carrot, you just get caught up in emotion and you lose your judgment.”  She said she became almost “obsessed” with receiving a son promised by the ring and willfully held her suspicions at bay.  After wearing a wire to collect incriminating evidence, Stein, 45, went through the correct legal channels to adopt the same infant boy, now about a year old.  A Maryland lawyer who was last to join the conspiracy was slapped last December with five months in prison and seven months of house arrest. That defendant, Hilary Neiman, is now an inmate at a minimum-security prison in Kentucky.  Erickson, who must also pay a $70,000 fine, cried during her sentencing Friday in San Diego, Calif., and told the federal judge she “truly lost” her way.  “I want to personally tell you that I know I have done horribly wrong,” she said.  With News Wire Services  -  ndillon@nydailynews.com>/span>