Adoption Fraud

Adoption fraud, also called illegal adoption, occurs when a person or an institution arranges the adoption of a child through illegal means, or illegally coerces a parent into giving up a child for adoption. Common methods documented in connection with adoption fraud include dishonesty toward the parties involved and the payment of bribes. In the United States, critics have pointed to financial incentives built into child welfare funding, such as per-child adoption bonuses paid to child protection organizations, as a structural pressure that can reward removing children from their families ahead of reunification efforts, a dynamic former Georgia state senator Nancy Schaefer identified as a rarely reported and rarely prosecuted form of adoption fraud. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/