The FBI is investigating a distinguished surrogacy company that shuttered abruptly earlier this month, leaving determined parents-to-be out of tens of hundreds of {dollars} and surrogates lacking funds as their pregnancies progressed.
The company’s proprietor, Megan Corridor-Greenberg, 49, successfully disappeared — she deleted her social media accounts, and purchasers and staff say she hasn’t replied to their messages since Dec. 3.
Final week, FBI brokers descended on Corridor-Greenberg’s house and the Camas, Washington, headquarters of Surro Connections, which was based in 2010 and billed itself as a top-tier surrogacy company with purchasers world wide.
A neighbor mentioned he noticed FBI brokers escort somebody from the house right into a automobile however wasn’t positive of the individual’s id. Brokers have additionally interviewed Surro Connections’ former staff, who abruptly misplaced entry to their firm electronic mail and data techniques a day earlier than it shut down.
Certainly one of them, Sarah Shaffer, was the company’s advertising and marketing supervisor and lead surrogate coordinator. She estimates that some 150 households might have had cash within the firm’s in-house escrow system, totaling between $2 million and $5 million.
“Some supposed dad and mom had simply funded an evening earlier than this occurred,” Shaffer mentioned, including: “A whole lot of them have taken out financial savings to have the ability to afford this journey.”
In interviews, three supposed dad and mom and 6 present and former surrogates — two of whom are pregnant — described a way of whole shock after Surro Connections unexpectedly collapsed.
Mariana Klaveno, 46, had transferred greater than $66,000 to the company’s in-house escrow for an embryo switch, which was deliberate for subsequent month.
However then, her surrogate (often known as a gestational provider) instructed her that one thing was improper.
“‘Different surrogates aren’t getting paid. Everybody’s freaking out. Everybody says to get a lawyer,’” Klaveno recalled her saying. “After which come to seek out out that nobody can come up with Megan … and not one of the supposed dad and mom can entry the supposed escrow account that we had been assured was protected.”
An electronic mail got here two days later: Surro Connections was “ceasing all operations” due to “monetary and operational difficulties,” Corridor-Greenberg wrote to supposed dad and mom Dec. 5. The corporate had “no liquid capital” to pay them again, the message mentioned.
In a separate electronic mail, she instructed the company’s workers that their employment was “terminated efficient instantly.”
Corridor-Greenberg didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark by telephone and textual content message.
An FBI spokesperson mentioned that per the bureau’s coverage, “We can’t affirm or deny the existence of any particular investigation.”
Klaveno, who works as an actor in Los Angeles, had already been on a expensive and emotionally draining 12-year infertility curler coaster. Now, the embryo switch is on maintain as she and her husband work to get their surrogacy course of again on observe.
Pink flags
For households pursuing surrogacy, the method might be emotional and extremely costly. Meant dad and mom usually spend upward of $100,000, with giant sums stored in escrow to compensate surrogates and canopy their medical payments.
For all events concerned, the journey relies on belief. Klaveno mentioned Corridor-Greenberg had earned hers.
“No person arrives at surrogacy having had a simple go of it. Everyone comes right here having had difficulties and losses,” she mentioned. “I used to be capable of name her cellphone after I had questions, and he or she was out there — till all of a sudden she wasn’t.”
That non-public connection made Corridor-Greenberg’s current actions particularly hurtful, she added: “We weren’t simply faceless names or numbers on a ledger. She knew us. She knew our tales.”
Shaffer, who counted Corridor-Greenberg as a pal in addition to a boss, mentioned she feels dumbfounded and betrayed. “It was all about connection and constructing bonds and having this close-knit relationship with these supposed dad and mom and surrogates,” she mentioned. “That’s what she preached.”
Surro Connections shouldn’t be the primary surrogacy-related agency to be rocked by a scandal: Within the final three years, there have been at the very least 4 situations by which keepers of surrogacy-related escrow accounts stole funds from hopeful dad and mom.
Most of these instances concerned exterior escrow managers that held cash for surrogacy companies. Even so, the Society for Ethics in Egg Donation and Surrogacy, a nonprofit that releases requirements for surrogacy and egg donation, nonetheless advises {that a} third get together maintain the escrow to guard supposed dad and mom and surrogates.
At Surro Connections, nonetheless, Corridor-Greenberg used these scandals to steer would-be dad and mom to maintain their escrow funds in-house, purchasers mentioned.
She assured them that the funds had been stored separate and housed at a financial institution insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance coverage Corp., in response to an electronic mail seen by NBC Information. Invoices and receipts had been alleged to be loaded onto a shared folder that the supposed dad and mom may entry. When dad and mom or surrogates pushed again on the in-house system, Corridor-Greenberg would usually insist, a number of folks mentioned.
“In hindsight, it looks like it’s sort of a pink flag that it was an in-house escrow state of affairs, however that they had form of offered it as, ‘You get to economize with us,’” Klaveno mentioned, provided that the one-stop store method averted some third-party charges.
There have been different pink flags, too.
Alexis Lytle, 27, a surrogate primarily based in Indiana, mentioned funds had been typically late, prompting her to succeed in out to ask once they’d be deposited
“I simply figured, ‘It’s an company, they’re busy,’” mentioned Lytle, who is nineteen weeks pregnant.
She mentioned her supposed dad and mom have assured her they’ll proceed to assist her, regardless of them shedding about $40,000.
Public data recommend that Corridor-Greenberg might have been experiencing monetary pressure.
Final yr, she offered a number of cheerleading gyms that she had owned throughout Oregon and Washington. Between that enterprise and Surro Connections, she owes Oregon greater than $84,000 in unpaid taxes, in response to the newest data from its Income Division.
Filings additionally present that Corridor-Greenberg took out at the very least 4 loans over the previous 5 years to assist her companies. In September, she offered a lender a share of Surro Connections’ future income for $15,000. The lender sued weeks later, accusing her of defaulting on the settlement, then discontinued the case in October for unspecified causes.
The identical month, a courtroom ordered Corridor-Greenberg to pay American Specific over $70,000 that she owed in bank card debt. Lower than six months prior, she had been ordered to pay the corporate greater than $30,000.
‘It appeared unreal’
When funds to surrogates had been late final month, Shaffer mentioned, Corridor-Greenberg instructed her it was an trustworthy mistake — a results of additional work as a result of an worker had been out of the workplace.
“I gave her the advantage of the doubt,” mentioned Shaffer, who had labored for the company for six years. From her perspective, enterprise appeared good — she mentioned she was provided a increase a few month in the past.
After many funds didn’t exit as deliberate once more in December, calls and complaints started to pour in, Shaffer mentioned. However Corridor-Greenberg requested Shaffer to clear her schedule, then stopped responding to staff and purchasers altogether. Christopher Foster, the proprietor of a neighboring enterprise, mentioned he heard the company’s telephone ringing off the hook for about 10 hours Dec. 5.
By the point the FBI searched the workplace, it appeared to have been cleared out, in response to Foster, who was on web site on the time.
“There have been empty binders in all places. Baggage of shredded recordsdata … computer systems are all gone,” he mentioned.
Kama Stauffer, 34, a first-time surrogate from Ashland, Ohio, mentioned she acquired her cost this month however came upon concerning the issues at Surro Connections by means of a Fb group. Stauffer is 9 weeks pregnant.
She estimates her supposed dad and mom misplaced about $50,000.
“It appeared unreal. It appeared not possible that an company may principally implode in a single day with no discover,” Stauffer mentioned.
A number of former Surro Connections staff have been working to attach purchasers and surrogates to different companies and organizations, which have in flip stepped as much as assist, with some providing professional bono providers. However many supposed dad and mom are nonetheless struggling to course of the dimensions of their losses and determine the way to transfer ahead.
Klaveno doubts she’ll ever recoup her cash, however worse is that Corridor-Greenberg knew what that cash represented, she mentioned.
“It was the hope. It was the dream of constructing a household, and in some instances, perhaps the one hope of doing that,” Klaveno mentioned, “and he or she knew that.”
