Woman Serving Time in Baby Scam Claims Child : Crime: Angela Andrews says she was the victim when she signed adoption papers.

Her story was so convincing, couples from across the United States sent Angela Andrews money to pay doctor bills and living expenses, each believing that they would eventually adopt the child she was carrying.

After months of buying baby clothes and decorating nurseries, expectant couples learned the truth: Andrews never intended to give up the baby. She and her boyfriend had used the money to pay for a new, 52-inch Magnavox TV, an Ethan Allen living room set and evenings on the town dining at restaurants.

Earlier this year, the 22-year-old woman from Antioch, Ill., confessed to multiple counts of theft, illegal placement of a child and state benefits fraud and was sentenced to a nine-year prison term. Her boyfriend got a four-year term.

But the story of Andrews--and the baby girl born in a Burbank hospital--is far from over.

Andrews claims that while she was in Los Angeles last year, an attorney coerced her into signing adoption papers by threatening to turn her in to authorities if she didn’t give up her baby to his clients, a La Crescenta couple.

“I didn’t want to give her up in the first place and I want her back,” Andrews said in a telephone interview from prison.

Technically, the formal adoption of the baby girl has not been completed. The Los Angeles Department of Children’s Services is reviewing the case, including the documents Andrews initially signed consenting to the adoption.

Discussed on talk shows and in magazine articles, Andrews’ scam and her recent attempts to regain custody of her child have caused anger and protestations throughout the world of private adoption. Her victims, adoption attorneys, prosecutors and her own family members are appalled at even the idea of her getting the child back.

“We’re talking about people who have been convicted for selling a child, who are serving time in jail,” said Sheila Pope-Rice, who is raising Andrews’ baby with her husband in La Crescenta. “They have lied and done horrible things to all these families and now they’re doing it to us.”

While recent high-profile adoption cases--such as those of Baby Jessica and Baby Richard--involved birth parents who had an apparent change of heart about an adoption--the story of Angela Andrews is one of intentional deception and avarice.

“Greed,” Andrews said when asked why she duped would-be parents. “I don’t know how else to say it. I was sick. My thinking was very distorted to think that was an easy way to get money, because a lot of people got hurt.”

Not once revealing the slightest bit of insincerity, she told each couple the same story:

Andrews claimed that a co-worker had raped her in the parking lot of a restaurant where she worked. As a struggling single mother, there was no way she could take care of a baby, and abortion was out of the question. Instead, she had been looking for a couple who wanted to adopt her unborn baby, and after thinking it over, she was convinced that she wanted them to become the parents of her child.

“We were elated,” said one of Andrews’ many victims, Terri Szostek of Las Vegas. “I’d been trying to have kids for 18 years and it was finally coming true.”

Over a three-month period beginning in April of last year, the couple acted as a surrogate family for Andrews, Szostek said.

“She seemed like she had a victim personality. So much had happened to her and she was overwhelmed.”

The prospective adoptive parents listened as Andrews gave advice on what type of diapers to use, and at Andrews’ request they sent her swatches of the wallpaper they had selected for the baby’s nursery.

“We paid for her medical expenses, maternity clothes and on a monthly basis, rent, utilities and food,” Szostek said.

On Mother’s Day, the couple flew to Illinois for a visit, and Andrews gave Terri Szostek a Mother’s Day card, complete with a poem she had penned and a sonogram of the baby.

“Oh gosh, it confirmed everything,” Szostek said, remembering the excitement she felt when she saw the baby. “It was really happening.”

The Mother’s Day card and the sonogram, Andrews admits now, was simply a way to “keep the money coming in.”

And come it did.

In all, Andrews received $65,000 in cash, trips and gifts from five couples and an adoption agency in four states, all for expenses related to the upcoming birth of her child--a child whose father was her boyfriend, Terry Pounds, prosecutors said.

The rape tale was “a story that was just believable about why a birth mother would give up her baby,” she said.

Andrews, who was also on welfare, said she made copies of all hospital bills, rental, lease and other expenses and sent a set to each of the couples and the agency. She kept records on her personal computer in a file marked “Invoices.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Richard Schwind, who prosecuted the case. “This was a full-time job for her and she did it well.”

The Szosteks eventually learned that Rose and Ed Garguilo, a couple in Connecticut, had been told the same rape story. The Garguilos’ attorney, Lawrence Raphael, said Andrews even gave the couple a “police report” detailing the crime.

In each case Andrews established a relationship, received payments, then simply broke off contact--refusing to answer letters or accept phone calls.

Police estimate that she contacted about 100 couples and agencies throughout the country about adopting her child. It is unknown how many couples actually may have given her money.

Adoption attorneys say they fear the high-profile case will scare away potential adoptive parents and breed distrust of a system that works well in most cases.

“It’s rare that you have someone of Angela’s ability to defraud, come into the adoption community and wreak the havoc that she has across the United States,” said Durand Cook, a founder of the California Academy of Adoption Attorneys and the Szosteks’ lawyer.

Andrews targeted couples in California because the state has liberal adoption laws allowing would-be parents to pay for more expenses related to the pregnancy than other states allow, Schwind said.

Until the last days before her pregnancy, Andrews said, she continued to run the scam. Last September, when she was close to delivery, Andrews and Pounds flew to California at the expense of a Northern California couple interested in adopting their child, said the couple’s attorney, Lynne Francis Mann.

After that couple and their attorney refused to pay Andrews and Pounds the $18,600 they were requesting, the two stayed in Los Angeles and contacted other adoption attorneys, including Allen Hultquist of San Diego.

In her signed confession to police, Andrews said Hultquist threatened to turn her in if she did not sign adoption papers and accept a check for $11,000. Somehow, Andrews said, Hultquist had learned of her scheme.

“I was scared,” Andrews said. “I was crying. I didn’t want to sign, but I didn’t want to go to jail.”

Andrews gave birth to a baby girl she called Amber on Sept. 11, 1992, at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. She said she saw her baby, who was renamed Rachelle by her adoptive parents, only briefly before returning to Illinois.

Hultquist refused to comment on the allegations except to call Andrews’ claims “outright lies,” and accuse her of seeking publicity and money.

Back in Illinois, the life that Andrews had lived at the expense of prospective adoptive parents was coming to an end.

Two detectives from Glencoe, Ill., acting on a tip from a woman who said Andrews once tried to sell her a baby too, posed as prospective parents and secretly taped Andrews saying that she would turn over her child if they would cover her expenses.

Using those conversations as well as information gleaned from copies of Andrews’ phone records, they gathered evidence showing that she was telling numerous couples the same story, turning her baby into a commercial enterprise.

Concerned about the possibility of jeopardizing her pregnancy, the detectives waited until after the baby was born to arrest her. She pleaded guilty on Feb. 8 of this year.

Andrews expresses remorse for her victims and said her motivation was money. Apparently, questions about the money Andrews said she received are among the reasons the formal adoption is not final.

According to Andrews, the questions center on the $11,000 she claims Hultquist gave her. The check was postmarked three days after the birth of the child, and that date is the cause of the controversy, because it would indicate impropriety, she said.

Although it is legal to pay for legitimate expenses during a pregnancy, it is illegal to buy a child. The county Department of Children’s Services has declined to comment, citing confidentiality laws.

Schuyler Sprowles, spokesman for Children’s Services, said the role of the department in independent adoptions is to examine the “adoption package, itemize the costs, verify the consent, and if there are irregularities we have to present that to the court.”

Andrews said she has written to several officials in the department and Los Angeles Superior Court, making her allegations against Hultquist and explaining that she wants her baby back. Andrews is in counseling in prison, working to have her sentence reduced. She said her one goal is to be reunited with her two daughters.

“People can change,” she said. “I have changed.”

Her family in Illinois, she added, is willing to take care of her baby while she is in prison. But Andrews’ mother, who is helping to care for Andrews’ other daughter while she is incarcerated, said Rachelle should stay with the La Crescenta couple.

“I have told her to drop the issue, leave the baby where she is,” said Andrews’ mother, Nancy Scott of Cahokia. “To me it is going to be another Baby Jessica case. I do not want to see that.

“What she has done to these people is beyond words. . . . I cannot describe what I feel for them.”

In all, the Szosteks lost about $14,000 and the Garguilos about $5,000. But for both, the emotional toll was even heavier.

“It was awful,” Terri Szostek said. “To me it was the same feeling as if I had lost a baby. We couldn’t sleep. I got an ulcer over it. It was just like a death.”

For the La Crescenta couple, the sleepless nights have not yet ended.

They have watched as Andrews told her story on Oprah Winfrey and “Dateline: NBC” and in numerous publications. “It just makes me cry seeing what she’s done to other people,” said Pope-Rice in her first interview with the media.

But the revelation that Andrews wants Rachelle back was a shock for which they were not prepared.

“We started this thinking we are adopting from someone who wanted to give up her child,” said Jeffrey Rice. “She gave us every indication that it was her intention to go through with the adoption.”

In fact, the couple said, they knew nothing about Andrews wanting the child back until an article appeared in the Chicago Tribune. Her portrayal of a victim is simply not true, they said.

The couple said they are prepared to go the distance to keep their baby. The middle-class couple, who own a business in Burbank and have two other children, described Rachelle as “very well-adjusted and very happy.”

“This is our little girl,” Pope-Rice said. “We are talking about a family. From minute 1 she was our daughter.

“We just want to raise our children and get on with our lives,” she said. “I just want it over with. Enough hurt has happened.”