Word: furlow
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Adoption lawyers and advocates say Furlow's scam is unusual because of the number of victims and the degree of her deception. But they report hearing more and more fraud stories, partly because of the Internet's way of lending legitimacy to anyone who can type. And since there are many states where facilitators are perfectly legal and completely unregulated, experts expect the rip-offs to keep happening...
...important as adoption," says William Pierce, founding president of the National Council for Adoption. In fact, even states that outlaw or regulate facilitators find it is extremely difficult to enforce the rules, Pierce says. "It's easy money," says Jeanne Carroll, who claims she lost $15,500 to Furlow. "You're not dealing with selling a car. You're dealing with people's emotions...
...Furlow started Tender Hearts in 1997, at age 40. She set up a convincing website and took out a small ad in the Yellow Pages, decorated with tiny hearts. It is a testament to how ripe the adoption world is for fraud that within months Furlow was part of the industry buzz, getting referrals from lawyers and other facilitators across the U.S. In reality, Tender Hearts is not a registered corporation. The two addresses she gave for her business are both residences. Furlow's website--which remains up despite a court directive to dismantle it--goes deep and long. Upon...
...Furlow's background may have helped school her in the language of adoption. Right around the time she started her business, she worked briefly at Philadelphia's Thomas Jefferson University Hospital as an account representative, greeting patients at an admitting desk. Before that, she attended Manatee Community College in Florida, studying "pre-nursing," according to the college's records...
About two weeks after the first disappointing round with Furlow, Kiser-Mostrom flew back to the East Coast one more time at Furlow's behest. She says Furlow told her Roxanne had changed her mind. But in the end, Roxanne's mother supposedly took the child. When Kiser-Mostrom returned home to Nebraska, she noticed an Internet posting that made inquiries about Furlow. She replied and met Charles Elliott, a Philadelphia fraud examiner who had been hired to investigate Furlow by another victimized couple. He had posted the inquiry to find Furlow's other clients. Within weeks, he handed over...