Listening to her child’s heartbeat for the primary time throughout a June 10 ultrasound introduced Marisa Iacuzzo to tears.
“It was surreal,” she says — and a dream come true.
For so long as she might keep in mind, the 46-year-old medical gross sales rep from Orlando had needed to develop into a mom.
“I all the time envisioned having a household however was ready for the precise companion,” she says of her determination in 2017 to have her eggs frozen to be used in IVF.
However 5 years later, she was identified with hormone-sensitive breast most cancers and handled with surgical procedure and radiation remedy. When her oncologist advisable that she not pursue IVF, which requires giant doses of hormones, Iacuzzo explored different choices.
Final 12 months she made preparations with a gestational provider — a married 33-year-old mom of two in Florida — to hold an embryo fashioned with Iacuzzo’s egg and donor sperm. Lastly, within the examination room this previous June, she set free a sigh of aid when the physician stated her 6-week-old fetus was wholesome.
“I believed, ‘All the pieces’s going to work out,’” she says.
However Iacuzzo’s journey to motherhood took an surprising flip simply two days later when she acquired troubling information from Surrogacy Escrow Account Administration (SEAM), the Houston-based agency that Iacuzzo and hundreds of different meant mother and father have used for a decade to securely maintain funds in reserve and disburse funds to their surrogates.
The escrow firm stated it was having bother transmitting funds and days later introduced that every one transactions had been “placed on maintain.” Iacuzzo checked her account and was shocked to find, she says, that the steadiness of the $50,000 she had deposited earlier this 12 months to pay her surrogate had vanished.
“It was quite a bit to abdomen,” she says. “I’m not anyone who can simply write $50,000 checks.”
Now Iacuzzo and her surrogate (who requests to stay nameless) are amongst a whole lot of victims of what might be an alleged multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud emotionally susceptible would-be mother and father in addition to the surrogates who’ve agreed to hold their infants.
A lawsuit filed in June on behalf of 34 households and people, together with Iacuzzo, claims that SEAM proprietor Dominique Facet allegedly “lured” victims into coming into right into a fiduciary relationship with the corporate as a way to steal some $11 million in escrow funds.
The criticism alleges that Facet spent her shoppers’ cash to fund different companies, put money into property, take lavish journeys and additional her profession as an aspiring rap and R&B artist. In June the Houston Police Division launched an investigation into Facet’s enterprise practices that was later turned over to the FBI, which has arrange a web-based portal for potential victims to register complaints about Facet’s firm.
The 44-year-old Facet, who describes herself as a “serial entrepreneur,” beforehand advised VoyageHouston that she has began “a number of multimillion-dollar companies.” She additionally works as a music producer, rapper and singer.
Facet has not been charged with any crime. When contacted by electronic mail, her automated response stated that “underneath recommendation of counsel, I’m not permitted to answer any inquiries concerning the investigation.”
Facet has shut down SEAM’s operations, leaving her alleged victims in a determined scramble to place collectively financing for brand spanking new or amended contracts with their surrogates.
“These households have already been by a lot to even get to the purpose of hiring a surrogate to hold their infants,” says Houston lawyer Marianne Robak, who, with regulation companion Lori Hood, filed the lawsuit. “To lose out on a lot at this stage of their journey is devastating.”
And for the surrogates who’re additionally concerned, the uncertainty of not understanding how and when they are going to be paid couldn’t come at a worse time.
“That is so aggravating,” says Iacuzzo’s surrogate, “particularly on a brand new being pregnant.”
After being advised by her physician that IVF was not an choice, Iacuzzo first thought of adoption after which determined that surrogacy, by which she might take part within the being pregnant, was the way in which she would have her child. In December 2022 she met with a advisor who finally launched her in Zoom calls to 2 surrogates. Iacuzzo says she was instantly concerned about studying extra about one of many gestational carriers.
“She had a kindness and a trusting demeanor,” she says. “We had a robust connection.”
As her lawyer was drawing up a contract and making the difficult preparations for her surrogate to start taking drugs in preparation for the embryo switch, Iacuzzo researched escrow firms on-line.
She was impressed by SEAM’s web site, which had a video that includes Facet touting the agency’s benefits. Each worker, together with the proprietor, had as soon as been a surrogate or skilled “third-party replica,” Facet claimed. “It performed on the precise feelings,” remembers Iacuzzo, who borrowed $50,000 from her retirement fund and deposited it in a SEAM escrow account.
However six weeks into the being pregnant, SEAM collapsed, taking with it Iacuzzo’s fastidiously negotiated surrogacy settlement.
“My first thought was my surrogate and ensuring she was okay,” says Iacuzzo.
In a collection of emotional cellphone conversations, Iacuzzo and her surrogate made plans to amend the contract to permit Iacuzzo to make funds in installments to a brand new escrow account.
For extra on the would-be mother and father who say they had been swindled, decide up this week’s situation of PEOPLE on newsstands Friday.
And Iacuzzo will not be alone in her plight.
Aaron and Mindy Herstein had been already dealing with tough instances earlier than their troubles with SEAM.
The Richardson, Texas, couple suffered a heartbreaking loss when their child daughter Elayna — whom a surrogate was carrying for them — was stillborn at 32 weeks in 2022.
The couple’s mother and father gave them $50,000 to pay a surrogate to hold one other little one for them. They are saying that cash has since disappeared at SEAM.
“We undoubtedly get anxious,” says Mindy, 36, who suffers from endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome and extreme migraines — the drugs for which stop her from carrying a baby.
Courtesy Mindy and Aaron Herstein
Understanding how a lot she and Aaron, 34, a software program engineering supervisor, need to begin a household, their mother and father are as soon as once more serving to them cowl the price of surrogacy.
“We’re grateful,” Mindy says, “God prepared, to have our child boy in our arms and listen to that cry.”
Kate and Chris Kettmann, in the meantime, have develop into used to dealing with obstacles of their parenthood journey.
Kate, 30, a marriage photographer, had a hysterectomy due to extreme endometriosis in 2020, dashing her hopes of carrying a child. However nothing ready the Honest Oaks, Calif., couple for the “bombshell electronic mail” they received from SEAM’s Dominique Facet on June 14.
@morganalanna_photography; courtesy Payton Garvey
“It stated her financial institution accounts had been frozen, and there’s no wrongdoing on her employees’s half,” remembers Chris.
“This must be a cheerful time for them,” says surrogate Payton Garvey, 26, who’s 28 weeks pregnant with the couple’s child boy.
As an alternative, after dropping $45,000 they raised by promoting their vehicles, taking a mortgage on their home and draining their financial savings,
“I’ve been working nonstop” to pay the surrogate, Kate says.
“How are we even going to make this work?” asks Chris, 34, chief of employees at a software program start-up. “This particular person did a horrible factor.”
The Kettmanns have since began a GoFundMe with the hopes of elevating sufficient cash to assist pay for his or her parenthood journey. A separate fundraiser has additionally been began to offer aid to households who say they misplaced cash to SEAM.
Iacuzzo has continued to attend each physician’s go to along with her surrogate as she spreads the information amongst household and buddies that she is anticipating a baby due in January. It’s too quickly to embellish the bed room in her residence that can develop into the nursery, she says, however her pleasure is constructing by the day.
“Quickly I will probably be with my child,” she says, “and have the household I’ve all the time dreamed about.”
