A program director of International Adoption Guides Inc. (IAG), an adoption agency placing children from Ethiopia, pleaded guilty to conspiring with others to defraud the United States by paying bribes to foreign officials and submitting fraudulent documents to the State Department for adoptions from Ethiopia.
Alisa Bivens admitted as part of her plea that she and her co-conspirators submitted fraudulent documents to the State Department to facilitate adoptions of Ethiopian children by U.S. parents from 2006 until 2009. In support of U.S. visa applications for the Ethiopian children, Bivens and others submitted false documentation, including contracts of adoption signed by orphanages that could not properly give the children up for adoption because, for example, the child in question was never cared for or never resided at the orphanage. Mary Mooney (IAG Exec. Director) and James Harding (an IAG employee) were also charged in this fraud, and are scheduled for trial.
Image credit: D-Stanley
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