Woman Jailed for Fraud in Adoption Pacts : Courts: The Arkansas native gets the maximum term of 30 months for false promises to hand over unborn children to multiple adoptive parents.

An Arkansas woman convicted of federal fraud charges for falsely promising to give up her unborn children to would-be adoptive parents in exchange for living expenses while pregnant was sentenced Monday to the maximum 30 months in prison.

Chief U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real also took the unusual step of ordering Leanne Dees, 28, of Paragould, Ark., who has borne nine children and given up seven for adoption, to report to federal authorities if she ever gets pregnant again. Prospective adoptive parents, he said, should be on guard.

Real added that Dees, convicted on six of 14 felony counts, deserved to go to prison for a long time. She brought “misery” to “so many susceptible women,” he said, rejecting her tearful plea for mercy.

Dabbing at her eyes with tissues, she said she was “sorry for the pain we’ve all suffered” and told Real, “I just want to say I’m not a bad person.”

Dees was convicted Feb. 12 in Los Angeles federal court of one count of mail fraud and five counts of wire fraud.

The six guilty verdicts came on counts in which the jury concluded that Dees was being supported by one couple while she negotiated for cash from another source. The wire and mail fraud counts alleged she used the U.S. mail and telephone systems to defraud prospective parents.

Dees was acquitted of two counts of mail fraud. The jury deadlocked on two counts of mail fraud and four of wire fraud, and 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.

Defense attorney Jerry L. Newton said Dees plans to appeal.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Alka Sagar, the prosecutor in the case, said Monday that she was pleased Real gave Dees the maximum sentence.

Referring to the prospective parents, Sagar said, “These were people who desperately wanted to have children. This was their only hope of having a child. And she knew how vulnerable they were.”

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, and offering her unborn children for adoption.

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 against her 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.

A month before the baby was due, Freeman told 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.

Ultimately, police discovered that 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, police said.

Soon after Dees and her husband vanished, stories about them appeared on national television, prompting numerous calls to police from people who said they had been defrauded--and a call from the Las Vegas doctor who delivered the baby.

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

Dees was arrested in December in Arkansas. Her husband has custody of her two remaining children.

Newton, Leanne Dees’ defense lawyer, blamed Dees’ husband for her problems. Urging the judge to be lenient, Newton pointed out in court Monday that Leanne Dees had endured unwanted pregnancies and managed to place seven of nine children with adoptive parents.

Real took a different view, ordering Leanne Dees to repay a total of $20,511 to a half-dozen prospective parents and to the Las Vegas hospital.

“She was selling her inventory,” the judge said of the seven children Dees gave up for adoption.