Angelina Jolie's Former Friend Is 'Not 100% Sure' Her Son Maddox Was An Orphan, Says He Signed Paperwork Claiming To Be His Dad To Speed Up Adoption Process
July 22 2021, Published 10:52 a.m. ET
Angelina Jolie's former friend says he's "not 100% sure" her oldest child was an orphan when the actress adopted him.
Sarath Mounh ran a non-profit in Cambodia and even helped the Academy Award winner with her 2002 adoption of Maddox.
The legitimacy of the 19-year-old's adoption has come into question after a filmmaker promised to highlight Lauryn Galindo, the woman behind several alleged "unethical" Cambodian adoptions. She is the person who spearheaded Maddox's.
Mounh is speaking out about his former friend, adding to the speculation that Angelina's son's poverty-stricken biological parents may have been alive at the time of his adoption -- and they might have sold him for $100.
"I'm not 100% sure that Maddox was an orphan even though he came from an orphanage. At least one of the parents was possibly alive at the time of his adoption," he told Daily Mail, "But I never asked these difficult questions, nobody did."
Mounh also claims he posed as Maddox's real father, allegedly signing paperwork to speed up the adoption process.
As the outlet points out, there's no evidence to suggest Angelina knew that Mounh was allegedly adding his John Hancock to documents.
"This was happening a lot in Cambodia. There were many babies who were left in orphanages or sold to them by their parents because they couldn't afford to look after them," he explained.
Kek Galibru, who is the head of the human rights agency Licadho, also believed Maddox wasn't an orphan at the time of his adoption. "I'm sure that this child [Maddox] was not a real orphan and was not abandoned," he has said in the past.
In the documentary, The Stolen Children, the filmmaker Elizabeth Jacobs takes a hard look at the woman behind Angelina's adoption of Maddox, as well as hundreds of others -- including her own.
Like Maddox, Jacobs was adopted from Cambodia, and her US parents used Galindo.
One year after Maddox's adoption, Galindo was charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud, conspiracy to launder money, and the structuring of financial transactions.
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Her sister was required to pay a $150,000 fine for falsifying documents to obtain US visas for so-called "orphans.
Angelina has always vowed that Maddox's adoption is legit. "I would never rob a mother of her child. I can only imagine how dreadful that would feel," she's said in the past.
