Irvine Case Puts Adoptions in Spotlight

Unable to have children of their own, Kathy Stasiowski and her husband placed their names on a list of prospective adoptive parents and waited for two years without success.

Then they heard about Marianne Gati, an Irvine woman who was in the business of arranging for American families to adopt Hungarian babies. Stasiowski, a banker from Nashville, said she telephoned Gati, who wasted no time in naming her terms.

“I could get you a Hungarian baby, a Polish baby, a Romanian baby or a Russian baby,” Stasiowski quoted the Irvine woman as telling her. “All you need to do is pay $25,000--cash,” Stasiowski said she was told.

Because “it didn’t feel right,” Stasiowski, 37, said she declined to accept the deal Gati offered.

“There are a lot of people willing to pay whatever it takes to get a baby,” Stasiowski said, “but you have to draw the line and say babies should not go to the highest bidders.”

Stasiowski, who adopted a baby boy through a Catholic agency, says she is glad she followed her instincts.

Last week, Gati was arrested by federal agents who contend that she was in the business of arranging for pregnant Hungarian women to come to the United States and allow their babies to be sold--sometimes for as much as $80,000--to adoptive parents. She was accused in a criminal complaint of one count of wire and mail fraud.

Federal agents, who were first tipped off to the possibility of a baby-selling ring by an Irvine detective and were later asked to investigate Gati’s activities by the Hungarian National Police, say the Irvine woman might have sold as many as 30 babies, mainly to couples in Southern California.

Gati, who was denied bail last week, has denied the government’s allegations. Her attorneys say she was providing a needed service, placing the babies of underprivileged Hungarian mothers with loving American families.

Gati’s attorney, H. Dean Steward, declined to comment on Stasiowski’s account of her dealings with his client but said Gati’s adoption operation was “absolutely legal.”

Steward, who heads the federal Public Defender’s Office in Santa Ana, said a number of Orange County attorneys helped Gati run a legitimate business by providing legal advice and other services.

Gati “was never more than a facilitator,” the attorney said, describing the wire fraud complaint against his client as “unusual and weak.”

Gati’s arrest has sparked major investigations on two continents.

Assistant U. S. Atty. Daniel J. McCurrie said that while Gati has been charged with only a single count of mail and wire fraud, the 48-year-old woman was also being investigated for tax evasion, money laundering and harboring people who illegally obtained visas to enter the United States.

Budapest newspapers reported last week that Hungarian investigators have targeted a network of obstetricians and social workers who allegedly placed Gati in contact with poor pregnant women from mainly rural communities in Hungary and the Transylvania region of Romania.

In this country, agents of the FBI, the IRS and Irvine police have been involved in a wide-ranging investigation that has also attracted the attention of the state Department of Social Services, which has jurisdiction over the adoption process in California.

Rich Hemstreet, head of the department’s adoptions policy bureau, said his agency was reviewing its files in connection with the Gati matter.

Even if violations of state law are found, Hemstreet said, the agency would not seek to nullify any of the adoptions. “If some other party wishes to nullify an adoption, they would have to take their own action in court,” Hemstreet said. “Those matters are out of our hands.”

Law enforcement officials said Gati’s arrest has opened a window onto some unsettling questions surrounding international adoptions. Rushing to take advantage of intense demand for healthy, white babies, many have started putting adoptive parents in contact with birth parents, a business that doesn’t require any special license and is virtually unregulated.

Some so-called adoption facilitators, who often advertise in telephone directories, routinely collect $5,000 or more for each set of adoptive parents they put in touch with a pregnant woman.

If that’s all that is done, it’s legal. But California law prohibits birth parents from receiving any compensation in exchange for putting a child up for adoption--except for medical, living and related expenses.

Recent reports of baby-selling scandals, unconscionable fee practices and adoption law violations have triggered a move by state legislators to regulate the industry.

A bill being considered by the California Senate would require adoption facilitators to detail the services they plan to provide and to divulge to prospective clients that they are not a licensed adoption agency, which must employ state-accredited counselors.

“Some of these people are basically toll collectors,” said Karen Lane, a Santa Monica adoption attorney who helped draft the bill. “Basically they say, ‘If you want to talk to the birth mother, pay me first.’ It’s brokering in flesh.

“Where do you draw the line between the services that are being provided and selling a baby?”

The events leading to Gati’s arrest began last October when a police informant told Irvine Det. Lori Teves about a possible illegal adoption ring being operated from a home in the Westpark neighborhood, according to court records.

Teves investigated the tip but later contacted IRS agents because she believed that “if it was an illegal activity, the participants in the ring would not want to report the money,” said Lt. Tom Hume, the department’s spokesman.

Records filed with the county recorder’s office show that Gati was running three adoption businesses from her two Irvine houses--International Adoption Center, International Adoption and Surrogate Center and Adoption Celebritys.

In a federal complaint filed June 21, investigators said the Hungarian-born Gati, who is a Canadian citizen, would lure pregnant Hungarian women to the United States with promises of “$1,000 for a baby with dark features, and $12,000 for a baby with light features.”

Gati housed the women at a pink stucco house on Del Perlatto in Irvine, across the street from her own residence. Gati allegedly earned $20,000 for each adopted baby, according to the complaint.

In one case, a Mailboxes Etc. manager, who was interviewed by federal agents, said he received a fax for Gati “in which someone demanded the return of $80,000 because they had not received a child. . . .”

The complaint alleges that, in some instances, the birth fathers’ signatures were forged on adoption papers.

Federal agents have frozen nearly $500,000 in Gati’s Wells Fargo bank account. Prosecutor McCurrie said Gati had an extensive financial network and recently wired about $250,000 to an account in Spain. She also maintains bank accounts in London and Bangkok, he said.

Interviews with several adoption lawyers, adoptive parents and law enforcement sources provide glimpses into Gati’s adoption operation.

Gati apparently relied on word of mouth to spread news of her ability to secure children for adoption. There are no telephone listings for any of the adoption businesses she registered with the recorder’s office.

Stasiowski, the Nashville woman, said she heard about Gati through her sister, Ilona Callos of Huntington Beach.

Callos, who is also Hungarian born, said that in 1992 she had met and befriended a pregnant 22-year-old Hungarian named Krisztina, who had had been brought to the United States by Gati to give birth and turn over the child to an adoptive family.

Krisztina stayed with Callos’ neighbors, relatives of the couple who eventually adopted her baby, Callos said.

On one occasion, Callos said, Krisztina asked “if I thought she was a terrible person. I told her I didn’t think so as long as she was giving [the child] up because she couldn’t provide for it.”

“I said, ‘I don’t think you should sell your baby.’ But [Krisztina] said, ‘I’m only getting money for school. I’m going to use it for school.’ ”

Callos said Krisztina told her she was being paid $12,000 to $15,000 for the child.

Krisztina, who told Callos she was not married, said she had not even told the father she was pregnant, because he was seeing another woman, according to Callos.

Callos said she once rushed Krisztina to the emergency room at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo. At first, she was asked to provide proof that Krisztina’s bills would be paid by insurance or that other arrangements had been made.

Then another nurse appeared, Callos said, and asked if the woman was carrying the unborn child being adopted by Robert Amato, one of the hospital’s founders. When Callos explained that she was, the nurse said everything had been taken care of.

County records show that a blond, blue-eyed boy was born on Dec. 2, 1992, at the Mission Viejo hospital. The records show the parents to be Robert Amato and Marilyn Barlow Smith of Laguna Niguel.

Amato acknowledged in an interview with The Times that the child was adopted and insisted “we did nothing illegal,” adding that their “motives were the best motives.”

He also said, “We had a good adoption attorney handle this thing. I paid him what was appropriate.”

Amato said the attorney, whom he declined to name, was recently questioned by federal investigators.

Some adoption attorneys interviewed by The Times said Gati called on a regular basis, asking them to prepare adoption documents for Hungarian women.

Ronald Stoddardt, a Brea attorney who specializes in adoption law, said he never accepted Gati’s legal work because she could never identify the father.

Lane, the Santa Monica attorney, said she worked on one case involving a Hungarian woman who was about to give birth.

In that case, Gati received $5,000 as a fee, Lane said. But shortly after the baby was born, Gati “burst into the hospital room and demanded more money. She said the birth mother would not sign over the baby unless she received more money,” according to Lane.

Lane said she told Gati she would be happy to consider the fee if Gati provided additional information about the birth mother’s immigration status. Gati backed down, Lane said.