Poway Attorney Pleads Guilty to Participating in Baby-Selling Ring

A Poway attorney specializing in reproductive law pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to being part of a baby-selling ring that deceived the San Diego Superior Court and prospective parents about unborn babies.

Theresa Erickson, 43, submitted false declarations and pleadings in Superior Court in order to obtain pre-birth judgments establishing parental rights for Intended Parents, or IPs, according to court records.

California law prohibits the sale of parental rights to babies and children but permits surrogacy arrangements if the women expecting to carry the babies, called Gestational Carriers (GC), and the Intended Parents enter into an agreement prior to an embryonic transfer, authorities said. If the GC and IPs do not reach an agreement before the GC receives the embryonic transfer, the GC cannot transfer parental rights except through a formal adoption procedure.

In her guilty plea, Erickson admitted that she and her co-conspirators used GCs to create an inventory of unborn babies that they would sell for more than $100,000 each. They accomplished that by paying women to become implanted with embryos in overseas clinics, authorities said.

If the women (now GCs) sustained their pregnancies into the second trimester, the conspirators offered the babies to prospective parents by falsely representing that the unborn babies were the result of legitimate surrogacy arrangements, but that the original IPs had backed out.

Erickson is the third member of the conspiracy to plead guilty. Hilary Neiman, a 32-year-old Maryland attorney specializing in reproductive law, is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 14. Carla Chambers, 51, of Las Vegas, is scheduled for sentencing Oct. 28, the same day as Erickson.

City News Service contributed to this report.