Posted on 06/27/2004 7:34:11 AM PDT by television is just wrong
Angelina Jolie's adoption agent admits fraud
SEATTLE - A Hawaii woman who helped Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie adopt a Cambodian boy pleaded guilty on Wednesday (Thursday in Manila) to visa fraud and money laundering as part of a ring that paid poor women as little as $100 for their children, her attorney said.
Lauryn Galindo, 53, and her sister in Seattle, Lynn Devin, received fees of $10,000 or more to arrange adoptions by U.S. residents of children described as orphans, even though many still had parents, according to the documents.
Devin, who pleaded guilty in December, but has not yet been sentenced, and Galindo have agreed to surrender all property associated with the crimes, including a home in Hawaii and a Jaguar automobile.
Galindo's public defender attorney, Jay Stansell, declined to comment further.
The sisters operated an agency called Seattle International Adoptions, which paired hundreds of children from Cambodia with adoptive parents from 1997 to 2001, when suspicious U.S. immigration authorities halted adoptions from the impoverished Southeast Asian country.
In one instance, Galindo faxed Devin documents with a notation saying "Father dead -- mother very poor -- Kampong Speu," referring to a 4-year-old girl who was with her birth mother in Cambodia, court documents show.
Devin and Galindo then directed the adoptive parents to pay $100 to the birth mother and paid $3,500 to the Kampong Speu orphanage, described as "Cambodian ministry clerks, employees or officials" in the plea agreement.
The adoption ring received a total of $93,700 for the adoptions cited in the case.
Describing children as "abandoned" and misidentifying many of them brought the charges of visa fraud, while financial charges stemmed from efforts to hide the profits in Cambodia and avoid financial reporting of the transactions at a bank in Hawaii.
Galindo could face up to 20 years in prison at a sentencing hearing set for September.
Prosecutors have said that the investigation will not change the status of children adopted through the Seattle adoption agency.
Jolie, who won a best supporting actress Academy Award in 2000 for her role in Girl, Interrupted and more recently starred in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Life or Something Like It, adopted her Cambodian-born son, Maddox, last year after meeting him in an orphanage in November 2001.
I agree with you --- wait till she adopts a little sister for her boy to play with like her brother played with her. Just because she's Hollywood shouldn't not exempt her from being punished for buying a baby even if it only cost $100. Anyone else would lose a child they purchased. Rosie the lesbian probably has a better background with which to raise children.
I am aware of this agency. However we used New Hope Child and Family Agency (affiliated with Crista Ministries),(206) 363-1800, for our adoptions.
Well at least she leaves Maddox at home when she goes to hotels to have sex with her 'buddies'.
No relationships, no dad, just sex buddies.
How will the poor little thing learn about threesomes and rim jobs if she keeps doing that?
Maybe she'll bring him along after she buys him a sister.
At 14 she began to rebel and had a live-in boyfriend at her mother's house. She also began mutilating herself with knives." Tattooing is another enthusiasm. An inventory:
1 Dragon on left arm
2 Black Cross on inner thigh
3 "H" on left wrist
4 Dragon with tribal design on lower back
5 Japanese symbol for death on shoulder
6 Cross on lower front hip
7 "Quod me nutrit me destruit" Latin on stomach [What nourishes me destroys me]
8 "Courage" ... was removed
9 Blue box on lower back, center
10 "A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages" Tennessee Williams quote on left inside forearm
11 "Billy Bob" above dragon on left shoulder.
In harmony with her teenage habit, Angelina and Billy Bob keep a knife under their pillow to slash at each other during sex sessions. They spent last Christmas happily cutting their fingers and daubing messages in blood on the walls above their bed. "I was looking at her asleep," Mr Thornton confides to the News of the World reporters, "and I had to restrain myself from literally squeezing her to death. Sex for us is almost too much. It's so intense that sometimes we can look at each other and think, 'We can't get into this right now or something's going to happen'."
Over the breakfast table, the News of the World reports, he confessed to her that he had come close to doing her in the night before. "Angelina added: 'You know when you love someone so much you can almost kill them? I nearly was killed one night, and it was the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me!'"
Well, isn't that, um, special.
That's cheap compared to the prices agencies charge for US children. They know they have prospective parents over a barrel and can bilk them out of their last dime. Worse than used car salesmen and lawyers.
That's cheap compared to the prices agencies charge for US children. They know they have prospective parents over a barrel and can bilk them out of their last dime. Worse than used car salesmen and lawyers.
Not to mention the things they say and do to pregnant women, the fathers of these babies, the biological grandparents of these babies. White babies are worth a bundle if you can get your hands on them. There is enormous pressure applied to families to give their babies up. If you are pregnant, you are a target.
You talk about the the demand side of the equation in your excerpt, but no one ever talks about the supply side. Do you have a young daughter? Better guard her well. Baby brokers regard her as a producer of an extremely valuable commodity - your grandchild.
You two are just trolls aren't you? Have fun with that.
Why can't these people have children of their own? Why do they have to rely on third world people to give birth for them?
Children might wreck their hollywood figures. Besides it's more "in" to adopt them in hollywood --- makes you look like you have a social conscience and all that.
So will hollywood stars and starlets become a dying breed? Since they refuse to have their own children?
Don't call me a troll when you've been here less time than me. Angelina Jolie is a freak and marries freaks, when she troubles to marry them.
Jolie is a UN shill.
Since I don't pay much attention to celebrities and their stories, I didn't know this about Jolie and Thornton. Mercy me! Makes me shudder. I certainly understand why you believe she shouldn't have children. I feel the same way.
Since you are among the more sensible FReepers, it surprised me at first when you made your comments. As I read further, I understood. I should know better than to question you. :0)
Oh, she is a certifiable one, all right. And question all you like - it makes us both sharper!
Considering the number of times ole Billy Bob's been married, that could amount to a sizeable chunk of the population.
I have yet to try a Kevin Bacon-style game on him, because I don't have a big enough piece of paper.
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