The Black Market Baby — First Photo Released
Aug. 18 2011, Published 7:30 a.m. ET
So, THIS is what $180,000 will buy you nowadays.
First pictures have emerged of the socialite with her baby who she bought on the black market for $180,000.
Taylor Stein is seen posing with her gorgeous five-month-old son, Ren Friedrick, who she adopted after unwittingly becoming involved in a sting for cash-strapped surrogates.
She then went on to help the FBI bring down the baby-selling ring and three people have since been arrested.
Stein already had a four-year-old daughter Djuana, with Estée Lauder billionaire William Lauder. She was in the process of adopting a sibling for her little girl when she was contacted by the Feds who informed her that the agency she was using was conducting their business fraudulently.
They asked her to record her conversations with the main ringleaders who were caught and have now pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges and will be sentenced in October.
Surrogacy lawyer Theresa Erickson, 43, former surrogate Carla Chambers, 51, and Hilary Neiman, 32, have all been implicated in the scam that saw at least 12 babies sold in six years.
After the trio were arrested, Stein ensured the surrogate was paid $26,000 and Neiman paid her back the remaining $154,000.
Taylor, who is the daughter of rock music promoter Howard Stein, now wants to have the law changed so adopted children have the right to know the identity of their parents.
The socialite first started the adoption procedure in 2009 but the process became complicated and she was later introduced to the agency through an acquaintance.
Stein said she thought the process was ‘weird’ because she was not allowed to contact the surrogate but wired thousands of dollars in payments to the agency anyway.
The profile she received of the supposed surrogate parents said they had blond hair and blue eyes and included the families’ medical histories – but all the details turned out to be fake.
Potential surrogates were in fact being impregnated with sperm and eggs from the Ukraine where the population is predominantly white.
Surrogate mothers were being offered up to $45,000 for their services and then taken to the Eastern European country to be implanted with fertilized eggs from unknown donors and where health tests were less stringent.
A buyer for a baby was then set up when the surrogate reached 12 weeks into their pregnancy and then taken to California to have the child because the state is one of the few that allows a non-biological parent to easily be put on the birth certificate.
Stein has now formally adopted baby Ren and is working on a documentary called White Collar, Black Market – the Surrogacy Loophole.
‘My son has no information about the identity of his real parents and I think that is a birth right,” she told the New York Post.
She says she wants to go to the Ukraine to find her son’s donors so he can grow up knowing his DNA.
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