Word: frauds
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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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...
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 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 the names of 10 couples...
Furlow pleaded guilty last month to three counts of mail fraud--part of an agreement with federal prosecutors who had indicted her in April on 20 counts. The charges followed a yearlong FBI investigation in which Furlow was found to have collected approximately $215,000 in fees from unwitting couples, according to the indictment. (Furlow did not respond to TIME's requests for an interview.) Her attorney, Hugh Clark, offered this speculation to a Philadelphia TV station: "I think she started off with the idea that she wanted to place prospective parents with their adoptive children. Obviously at some point...
...Department in its humbling of Microsoft, are leading a syndicate of seasoned plaintiffs' lawyers that is suing seven of the nation's largest HMOs. The lawsuits, which were recently combined before a single federal judge in Miami, allege that the HMOs engage in what Scruggs calls "garden-variety consumer fraud." He argues that HMOs routinely recruit customers by touting their concern for patient health but run their businesses in ways that put cost cutting ahead of optimal care. "What's personally most offensive to me is that the HMOs are creating a fundamental conflict of interest for doctors between their...