![]() Frost explained over WhatsApp that “the funds go to pay for the multiple IVfs and donor expenses.” In the spring of 2020, he noticed that $53,000 he had in escrow had been withdrawn even though he was still early in the process. ![]() “Keep in mind this is a full guarantee program regardless of miscarriage,” she emailed one client, Miguel Bravo, a 43-year-old real estate investor from San Diego. The greatest financial threat to her surrogacy business was also what came to be her biggest selling point: the promised guarantee. In all, the 51-year-old banker spent $55,000.įrost was falling into financial distress, even as she looked for new business opportunities, including a yoga and sensory deprivation tank studio she opened in 2019. “We simply don’t provide them to clients.” “Of course we track the expenses,” she told him in an email. Increasingly skeptical, he asked for a record of how his cash deposit had been spent and how much was left. But she repeatedly tested positive for sexually transmitted infections.Īfter Frost denied his request for a refund, Serratore agreed to a new surrogate - who came back with the same infections. In Switzerland, Enzo Serratore and his partner, who found their dreams of parenthood blocked by a ban on adoption by same-sex couples, turned to Frost and were matched with a surrogate in 2018. Frost said nothing remained in the escrow account, but she promised to personally deliver the ashes.Īckerman’s experience with Frost was not unique: The business’ efforts to save money were backfiring elsewhere. “From the day we started there have been so many mistakes in our program, mixed stories and wrong decisions,” she wrote. Ackerman replied with a plea for answers. “This things are always terrible and I never get used to it,” he wrote.įrost emailed her condolences. José Gaytán, who treated the surrogate, wrote an email to Ackerman explaining that the medical infrastructure in Cancun was ill-equipped to handle infants born prematurely and that his team decided “to try to keep the pregnancy going as long as possible.” for embryo implantation and to give birth.ĭr. Rather than offer a fixed-price guarantee, Frost sold them on a deal in which a surrogate from Mexico would make trips to the U.S. In 2016, she and her husband, Matt, an investment broker, chose to do IVF with American doctors. Or that the co-founders of the ethics group refused to let her join after discovering her cross-border work.ĭoctors had told Ackerman that the removal of tumors on her uterus made it unlikely she could ever give birth, but her eggs were still healthy. She had no easy way of knowing that Frost had never graduated from Portland State. Various bios she posted online said that she had a business degree from Portland State University in Oregon and that she had helped found the Society for Ethics in Egg Donation and Surrogacy, a nonprofit set up to promote fair treatment of donors, surrogates and parents.Īckerman, a business consultant from Colorado, was impressed. At the top of one staff page was a headshot of Frost grinning, her blonde hair tumbling down her crisp white blouse. ![]() On the websites for that company and her newer venture, Surrogacy Beyond Borders, Frost listed several doctors in California and Mexico, plus a team of lawyers, social workers and field coordinators. Neither Frost nor her company were charged with a crime. One of its contractors was Frost’s egg business, My Donor Cycle. In 2017, Acharyya Rupak, the founder of Planet Hospital, a company based in Southern California that coordinated cross-border surrogacy, was sentenced to prison for international racketeering for mismanaging client funds. Five years later, conspirators in a baby-selling ring pleaded guilty to wire fraud after they’d coaxed women to Ukraine to bear children and sold their babies for more than $100,000 each. In 2006, a surrogacy coordinator in California was arrested for stealing tens of thousands of dollars from clients. With little government oversight, the industry has been prone to scandal.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |