Woman Denied Bail in Baby-Selling Case

Federal agents have frozen more than $400,000 in a bank account held by an Irvine resident accused of running an international baby-selling operation.

A federal magistrate refused Wednesday to set bail for 48-year-old Marianne Gati after a prosecutor described her as a flight risk and detailed extensive financial holdings.

Gati recently wired about $250,000 in cash to Spain, and maintains bank accounts in London and Bangkok, Assistant U.S. Atty. Daniel J. McCurrie said at Wednesday’s hearing. McCurrie said Gati attempted last week to withdraw nearly $60,000 from a $427,000 bank account in Irvine and also tried to elude detectives who were following her.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Elgin Edwards ordered that Gati remain in custody and rejected a federal public defender’s contention that the criminal complaint was not supported by evidence.

Gati, in handcuffs, kissed her husband, Thomas Gati, as she was led out of the courtroom.

Thomas Gati left the courthouse with Jennifer L. Keller, an Orange County lawyer whom he is planning to retain for his wife’s legal defense. “Mrs. Gati was trying to provide good homes for Hungarian babies,” Keller said, adding that the infants would otherwise have been sent to orphanages. “If the government feels they can prove otherwise, let them show it.”

Gati was arrested Friday on one count of mail and wire fraud. Prosecutors have accused her of arranging for pregnant Hungarian women to enter the country illegally and sell their babies--sometimes for as much as $80,000--to adoptive parents. Federal agents who have been working with the Hungarian national police say she arranged to sell as many as 30 babies.

H. Dean Steward, who heads the federal public defender’s office in Santa Ana, said Gati simply arranged adoptions between birth mothers and adoptive parents. These transactions, Steward said, were “absolutely legal” under California law.

“She was always assisted by three or four Orange County attorneys, some of whom physically assisted in the transfer of the babies to the adoptive parents,” Steward said. “She was never more than a facilitator.”