Georgia bolted from her bedroom, so much adrenaline pumping through her that she wasn’t sure what to do first. She hurried to her desktop and began to search online. It wasn’t something people talked about much, but illegal baby-breeding rings, also called baby factories or baby farms, were a burgeoning industry. They catered to couples who’d been rejected from legitimate adoption agencies or were so desperate for a child they elected not to go through the system.
She pored through the references on Google. Most couples who did go through the system adopted from Africa, Central America, or China. White couples who wanted their babies to resemble them biologically got babies from Russia and Eastern Europe. But Russia closed its doors at the end of 2012, and adoptions from Eastern European countries had dropped sixty percent in the past few years.
Was that what Savannah was caught up in? Not a sex-trafficking ring, but a baby-breeding operation? Actually, it might be both, she realized as she read on. Once the babies had been born and sold, the girls who birthed them were often thrown into forced prostitution. She ran a hand through her hair.
Most of the baby rings were overseas and run by organized crime. But those were the rings that had been busted. What about those that hadn’t been? There was no reason why a ring couldn’t be operating here in the US. Even in Chicago.
Georgia tapped her fingers on the desk: one, two, three, four. That might explain why a lawyer like Chad Coe was involved. Contacts had to be made, buyers found, birth certificates forged, documents prepared. Money needed to change hands. And it all had to appear legal. Was that what Chad Coe was doing? Applying a brush coat to the paperwork so it looked authentic? Most of his “clients” probably wouldn’t check to see that everything was legal. He was a lawyer; they’d assume it was.
How much would it cost to buy a baby? The girls had to be housed and fed for nine months. They had to have medical care and checkups. The babies couldn’t be delivered in a hospital, so the ringleaders had to have either their own facility or access to one. They would need a doctor or a midwife. Then, of course, there were the legal fees. And that was before any profit.
She pored through legitimate adoption websites, but the dollar figure was hard to ballpark; there were too many variables: whether the adoption was open, closed, local, domestic, or intercountry, private, licensed, or unlicensed. She went back to the baby-farm articles. One estimated that adoptions could cost up to fifty thousand dollars. But the article was written eight years ago. She mentally added twenty-five grand to the price. Which meant if the ringleaders had fifteen or more girls delivering babies, they could be grossing more than a million a year.
Not too shabby.
She tapped her fingers on the desk again. She wouldn’t be surprised if some couples paid more than a hundred thousand for a baby.
By the time she finished reading, it was nearly three in the morning. She printed out the articles. She would go through them again tomorrow. As she got ready for bed, it occurred to her she hadn’t heard from Jimmy.