Surrogate Mother in Custody Fight Accused of Welfare Fraud

Anna L. Johnson, the surrogate mother who is fighting to keep the unborn child she agreed to carry for another couple, is facing welfare fraud charges for collecting about $5,000 more in public assistance than she was entitled to.

Lawyers for Mark and Crispina Calvert, the couple whose baby Johnson is due to deliver in October, said the revelations about her alleged conduct show that Johnson cannot be trusted when she claims that the couple mistreated her. Johnson, 29, is using a “fetal neglect” argument to fight for the baby, which was implanted in her womb in January after the Calverts’ sperm and egg were united in a laboratory.

“It makes you wonder about everything she’s said so far,” said Christian R. Van Deusen, attorney for the Calverts.

Johnson’s lawsuit for custody, filed Monday, marks the first time in the country that a judge will be asked to decide whether a woman can claim a child as her own when she has no genetic relationship to it. Johnson claims that the Calverts, who agreed to pay her $10,000 to bear the child, breached the contract by making late payments, failing to buy life insurance for her and not caring adequately for her and the fetus.

Johnson’s attorney, Richard C. Gilbert, called the welfare fraud charges “a complete misunderstanding” that stemmed largely from the Orange County Social Service Agency’s own mistakes.

“The reason this case was filed is that the D.A. (district attorney) likes to make a mountain out of a molehill,” Gilbert said. “They make it look like the crime of the century.”

Johnson, a licensed vocational nurse and a single mother, was charged with two felony counts of welfare fraud last month after officials found that she was earning more than she told the Orange County Social Services Agency when she began receiving food stamps and Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

She allegedly failed to fully report her income from jobs with Nursing Services International, a Santa Ana nursing registry, from January through March of 1989, and with Western Medical Center in Santa Ana from March through November of 1989, officials said.

The criminal complaint said that Johnson received excess benefits of at least $400 each from food stamps and AFDC between January and October of 1989, but Gilbert said the total amount of overpayment was about $5,000.

If convicted on either count, Johnson faces a maximum of three years in jail, but if she is convicted on both counts, the law permits her to serve no more than three years and eight months.

Johnson will be arraigned Sept. 5 in Westminster Municipal Court.

Gilbert said Johnson is willing to plead no contest to the charges and repay the money, but he added that prosecutors had not yet agreed to that arrangement.