July 11, 2008

Vietnam Suspends Acceptance of New Adoption Dossiers – USDOS

Prospective
adoptive parents and adoption service providers should be aware that
the Vietnamese Department of International Adoptions (DIA) suspended
the acceptance of new adoption dossiers on July 1, 2008.  The DIA will
continue to process cases received prior to July 1, 2008.  The
bilateral adoption agreement, required by Vietnamese law to authorize
adoptions between the United States and Vietnam, expires on September
1, 2008.  Prospective adoptive parents who have been matched with a
child (received a formal referral) by September 1 will be allowed to
process their adoption to conclusion.  Dossiers that have not received
a referral by September 1 will be closed and returned to the adoption
service provider.      Read More Here

Settlement Serves States’ Children
Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm directed me to hammer out and negotiate
the successful agreement with the New York-based Children’s Rights
organization in the best of interest of the state. This agreement puts
children first. It reflects the shared goals of improved safety for
children, stronger supports for those who care for them, and more
promising outcomes for their future.

Embattled Adoption Agency Gives Up License
ACKSONVILLE, FL — The baby room is ready for the little boy and
girl the Ernfridssons were hoping to adopt with the help of Adoption
Blessings Worldwide.

But $40,000 later, that room sits empty and their dreams are on hold.

“We
don’t want anymore families to go through what we went through. We lost
our entire life savings. We were promised children and that didn’t
happen,” says Lori Ernfridsson.

They are just one of the families
who stepped forward to make complaints about the agency to state
authorities. The complaints were made weeks ago, but First Coast News
learned that on Thursday, Georgia officials received notification that
ABW was relinquishing its license.  Read More Here

Feds Arrest Five in city ACS embezzlement scheme
Federal prosecutors from Brooklyn and Manhattan
arrested five people on charges they embezzled hundreds of thousands of
dollars from the city Administration for Children’s Services, officials
said yesterday.

The schemes included making counterfeit city checks, as well as a fake
adoption subsidy account, according to complaints unsealed in Brooklyn
and Manhattan federal courts.

In one case, ACS worker Darly
Estinval, 35, was arrested on charges that she stole city checks
normally used to pay vendors. According to a federal criminal
complaint, Estinval gave the checks to accomplices who forged their own
names on them as payees or used the routing numbers to create
counterfeits.

Some 22 stolen checks were used to create 66
altered or counterfeit financial instruments with a face value of $2.7
million, investigators said. The scheme netted about $500,000, with up
to half going to Estinval, prosecutors said.  Read More Here

300 Vietnamese Infants Illegally Put Up For Adoption
NAM DINH — Around 300
under five-year-olds have allegedly been falsely put up for adoption abroad in
the northern province of Nam Dinh since 2006, provincial police reported.

The heads of two communal
healthcare centres were arrested last month under suspicion of forging State
adoption documents and of making up bogus histories for the infants, said Nam
Dinh Investigative Police Department.

Tran Ngoc Lam, who lives
in Nam Dinh City, allegedly picked up abandoned children in the province and
took them to healthcare centres in Yen Tien and Yen Luong communes. The centres’
directors, Vu Dinh Loi and Truong Cong Lich, allegedly forged fake birth
certificates for the children so they could be put up for adoption.

The children were then
sent to centres for disabled children in Y Yen and Truc Ninh districts.

It is believed Y Yen’s
Centre for Disabled Children, which was established two years ago and which has
a seasonal nursing staff of just four, had, by June 21, sold 100 infants to
foreign child adoption organisations.

Meanwhile, Truc Ninh’s
Social Protection Centre, which was established in early 2005, has allegedly put
221 infants illegally up for foreign adoption.  Read More Here