Woman Convicted on Adoption Fraud Charges : Courts: The Arkansas resident took money from several Valley couples to whom she had promised her unborn children.

In a case sparked by tabloid television reports of angry would-be parents frustrated in attempts to adopt babies, an Arkansas woman charged with bilking couples in the San Fernando Valley was convicted Friday in Los Angeles federal court of six of 14 fraud counts.

Leanne Dees, 28, of Paragould, Ark., accused of falsely promising to give up her unborn children in exchange for living expenses while pregnant, was convicted of one count of mail fraud and five counts of wire fraud.

She was acquitted of two counts of mail fraud. The jury deadlocked on two counts of mail fraud and four of wire fraud, and Chief U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real dismissed those six counts immediately after the verdict was announced. Prosecutors had dismissed a 15th count, alleging wire fraud, before the case went to the jury.

Dees could draw up to 30 years in federal prison. But sentencing guidelines, the controversial rules by which federal judges have figured prison terms imposed since 1987, suggest a term of 1 1/2 to two years. Real set sentencing for April 5.

Though the verdict was mixed, Assistant U.S. Atty. Alka Sagar, the prosecutor in the case, said there should be no doubt about the significance.

“We prosecuted it to send a message to birth mothers that they simply can’t be defrauding victims like this,” Sagar said. “People desperately wanting to adopt a child are very vulnerable, one of the most vulnerable in our society. And she was preying on their vulnerability.”

Defense attorney Jerry L. Newton, a Hermosa Beach lawyer, said Dees plans to appeal.

California law, Newton said, allows someone to pay for a birth mother’s living expenses during pregnancy, but that payment does not guarantee any legal right to adoption.

Any such guarantee would be a crime under state law, meaning the birth mother always has the right to walk away from any arrangement, and that’s all Dees did, he said.

“When she does back out, obviously the prospective parents are hurt,” Newton said. “They’re also mad. But I don’t think this is an important prosecution at all. I think it sends the wrong message. It says only that the more sophisticated can get around the prohibitions on the purchase of children.”

Dees was charged with calling prospective parents in Granada Hills, Van Nuys, Los Angeles, Diamond Bar and elsewhere during two pregnancies, in 1989 and 1990, offering her unborn children for adoption, according to the indictment.

Couples agreed to pay Dees’ living expenses while she was pregnant. But after the children were born, Dees failed to give either baby to any of the couples, the indictment alleged.

Dees and her husband, Charles Franklin (Frankie) Dees, came to the attention of Los Angeles police in November, 1990, after Debbie Freeman of West Los Angeles reported she had paid $9,400 to support the couple and their 1-year-old son for six months in a Van Nuys apartment.

Freeman, a 39-year-old psychotherapist, said she regularly took them shopping for food and clothing and accompanied Leanne Dees on every doctor’s visit.

A month before the baby was due, Freeman reported to authorities, her hopes of adoption were dashed when she learned Leanne Dees was allegedly negotiating with other couples for financial support in exchange for the child’s adoption.

Freeman’s attorney, anxious to confront Leanne Dees, tried to call the couple on the phone. But they had vanished, Freeman said.

Ultimately, police discovered that Leanne Dees had given birth to a boy in December, 1990, in Las Vegas, while yet another couple expecting to adopt the child waited in the hospital. Dees checked out of the hospital without giving that couple the child either, police said.

Soon after Leanne and Frankie Dees vanished, stories about them appeared on the tabloid television shows “Hard Copy” and “Inside Edition,” prompting numerous calls to police from people who said they also had been defrauded.

The callers, Sagar said, included the Las Vegas doctor who delivered the baby. The doctor, she said, had seen a story about Leanne Dees on “Hard Copy.”

The FBI joined the investigation because Leanne Dees allegedly negotiated for money with 12 to 14 people in at least three states, all of whom believed they would adopt the child she was carrying, Sagar said.

Leanne Dees was arrested in December in Arkansas.

The mail and wire fraud counts allege that she used the U.S. mail and the telephones to defraud prospective parents.

The six guilty counts, Sagar said, apparently were the only ones on which the jury was positive it had the evidence Leanne Dees was being supported by one couple while she negotiated for cash from another source.

Leanne Dees is being held without bail.