A Couple Believed They Were Adopting Twin Girls After Struggling To Have Kids But The Birth Mom Was Never Pregnant
They learned that she had deceived multiple families and adoption agencies, providing fake ultrasound photos and pregnancy verification.
YouTube & Instagram Influencer couple Bella and Dallin Lambert have opened up about falling victim to an adoption scam after documenting their years-long fertility struggles online.
Yearning to be parents, the Lamberts were ecstatic to learn that an expectant mother wanted them to adopt her unborn twin baby girls. The couple prepared a nursery, bought double the baby supplies, and even threw a gender reveal party and included the birth mother.
Unfortunately, their dreams were crushed after they learned that the entire adoption process had been a scam, and the “birth mother” was never even pregnant. They shared the devastating news on their YouTube channel with their 1.42 million subscribers.
Bella and Dallin Lambert posted an adoption journey update, revealing they were scammed.
Photo: YouTube
Fans who have followed along with their journey know that the couple, who are based in Gilbert, Arizona, tied the knot in 2017 and began trying for a baby several years later but struggled to conceive for over a year before turning to IVF treatments, which ultimately failed. Bella was eventually diagnosed with diminished ovarian reserve, which was determined the culprit of their infertility.
"For six months, we did a bunch of different procedures. We did an IUI. We did some medicated cycles, we did injections…. And all were unsuccessful,” Bella told Good Morning America earlier this year. “It was really mentally draining and exhausting."
After years of heartbreak and negative pregnancy tests, the couple decided to take a different path to become parents. They took to their social media to announce that they were turning to adoption to start their family.
Photo: Instagram
A woman pretending to be pregnant reached out to Bella and Dallin asking them to adopt her twin baby girls.
After sharing with their followers their next step in the road to parenthood, they received countless messages from people who were looking to place their babies up for adoption or knew someone interested in placing them for adoption including one from an unidentified woman. “I am pregnant with twins and I am looking for someone to adopt them,” the message read, according to the couple.
The woman, who claimed she was a 20-year-old college student living in Southern California, met Dallin and Bella in person after several messages exchanged online.
“She looked us in the eyes and said that we would be perfect parents for her girls and that she wanted us to adopt them,” Bella recalled in a YouTube video. “She had tears in her eyes telling us this, saying how she had been praying to find people like us to adopt these babies and we were a miracle for her.”
Photo: YouTube
They continued to keep in touch, and the woman encouraged Bella and Dallin to get everything ready in their home for the babies since twins are often born before their due date. “She said it would make her feel more comfortable if we were completely ready on our end,” Dallin explained.
The woman also told the couple she wanted to be involved in aspects including a gender reveal party and a baby shower so that she could see “how loved the babies are gonna be.” She attended Bella and Dallin’s gender reveal party which Bella referred to as the gender reveal of her dreams. “We wanted to make it special because we’d been waiting to be able to celebrate this baby or babies for about five years now,” Bella said.
However, Bella and Dallin began to notice cracks in the birth mom's story.
According to Bella and Dallin, the woman was reluctant to meet their adoption agency and social workers in person to arrange all the paperwork and details to make the adoption official. Still, the couple pushed forward until a disturbing truth came to light.
One night, Dallin received an email from a stranger who was familiar with the birth mother's alleged scam.
“I’m in a group of hopeful adoptive parents and we all have been talking with her [the woman] and she’s telling everyone they are the top of her list,” the message read. “SEVERAL families think they have a chance to adopt her twins.” The woman had also allegedly been talking to ten different adoption agencies misleading multiple families into thinking they would be the parents of her babies.
“I never expected the information that we got,” Bella admits. Over the next few days, the couple connected with other families the woman had scammed and learned that not only was she lying to multiple hopeful couples about placing her babies with them, but she also was not even pregnant.
A photo of her was spread among the group depicting her at a concert in a crop top, clearly not 26 weeks pregnant with twins as she had claimed she was.
She had sent couples fake ultrasound photos, fake pregnancy bump photos, and even a fake verification of pregnancy letter. Bella and Dallin were able to get in contact with the woman’s mother via Facebook, who confirmed that her daughter was not and never was pregnant.
“It just blows my mind. I don’t know why somebody would fake pregnancy, I don't know why someone would go through eight hours of in-person birthing classes… and go through all of that, for what?” Dallin says.
Adoption scams, while not extremely common, do occur in the realm of adoption. It's important to note that adoption scams can take different forms, including false birth parents, fraudulent agencies, and misrepresentation of a child.
To protect against adoption scams, it is crucial to work with reputable adoption professionals and agencies by researching and verifying the identity of birth parents, maintaining open communication, and seeking legal advice.
While Bella and Dallin are heartbroken over the situation, they remain hopeful that their baby will arrive one day. “At the end of the day, this is a big trial for us but we still have hope that this is gonna work out somehow,” Bella reports. “I still have faith at the end of this knowing that our happy ending is gonna come one day.”
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.