Surrogate Pleads No Contest to Welfare Fraud : Courts: Elvira Jordan failed to report the $10,000 she received from the couple for whom she bore a baby. She agrees to repay government $8,500.

A surrogate mother who won joint custody of a baby she bore for a former Orange County couple admitted Thursday that she committed welfare fraud and agreed to repay the government more than $8,500.

Under an agreement with the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, Elvira Jordan, 42, pleaded no contest to one count of welfare fraud and will be placed on three years’ formal probation. She will also have to pay a fine, the amount of which will be determined by a Superior Court judge when she is sentenced July 23.

The fraud occurred in 1989, when Jordan failed to report on her welfare applications that she had received $10,000 for agreeing to be a surrogate mother for Cynthia and Robert Moschetta. Two other charges of perjury and filing forged documents were dropped as part of the plea agreement.

“Elvie is a victim in this case,” said her attorney, Richard C. Gilbert. He blamed Jordan’s trouble with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services on the surrogate broker who arranged the contract between Jordan and the Moschettas.

“She was told not to report the money,” Gilbert said. “She was told by the flesh peddlers that it wasn’t income and that it was for medical care and legal aid.”

Gilbert charged that the prosecution was “politically motivated” because Jordan reneged on her surrogate contract and fought for custody of her now-2-year-old child.

Jordan’s no-contest plea is the legal equivalent of an admission of guilt but cannot be used against her in any civil proceeding relating to her custody situation, Gilbert said.

That may become an important factor in the future, if Robert Moschetta, the child’s biological father, continues to challenge the court-ordered joint-custody arrangement between him and Jordan.

“I can’t use that (conviction) for any purpose against her because of the plea,” Robert Moschetta’s attorney, Edie W. Warren, said. However, “that doesn’t mean that this entire matter is closed.”

Warren said that her client is still unhappy with the joint-custody arrangement because “he doesn’t think it’s the most beneficial situation for his child.”

Robert Moschetta, who has since moved to Lakewood, was unavailable for comment Thursday.

Jordan, who lives in the Los Angeles County suburb of Cudahy, entered into a surrogate contract with the Moschettas in 1989. Through artificial insemination, Jordan gave birth to Marissa Jordan Moschetta on May, 28, 1990.

She sued the Moschettas for custody of the baby girl in December, 1990, after she discovered that the couple had separated. In court papers, Jordan contended that she only agreed to be a surrogate because she thought the baby would go to a happy, committed couple.

A bitter three-way custody battle among Jordan, Cynthia and Robert Moschetta concluded last September when an Orange County Superior Court judge ruled that Jordan and Robert Moschetta should share custody of the girl. Cynthia Moschetta was denied any rights to the child.