To catch a baby broker

When Rick Wageman and his wife found out their adoption facilitator in Guatemala had been banned by the U.S. embassy since 2005, they tried to meet with him to get some answers.
Rick: He never showed up cause he knew we wanted to corner him and ask him specific, hard questions that he didn't have answers to.

But we weren't going to let Thanassis Kollias off the hook so easily.  He met us for coffee, still believing we were a new agency looking to do business with him -- until we revealed the truth.

Victoria Corderi: My name is Victoria Corderi and I work for Dateline NBC and I am a reporter in the United States.
Thanassis: I knew it. I knew it.
Victoria Corderi: So what I wanted to do was interview you about all of these things on camera, is that OK?
Thanassis: Yeah.
Victoria Corderi: Are you ok? You seem a little nervous? Are you OK?
Thanassis: I am fine, look, you know, I am not scared.
Victoria Corderi: You're not scared. Good, then let's talk about it.
Thanassis: I’m not scared.

Maybe he's not scared, but after first agreeing to talk, he walks off in a huff, saying he'll be in touch. A few hours later, he calls, demanding an interview on his terms.  And we were ready.

We wanted to ask him about allegations that he forged paperwork, lied about health care, and took money for children he knew he couldn't deliver. And why is he still doing business with Americans when he is banned by the U.S. embassy?

Thanassis arrived with half a dozen confused-looking women toting babies. But instead of an interview, what took place was a bizarre spectacle.

Thanassis: I hate talking to liars.
Victoria Corderi: After all this, you bring a wave of people to tell me that you're not going to do the interview because I’m a liar?
Thanassis: Exactly.
Victoria Corderi: I would love for you to explain that to me. I would love for you to explain about the complaints that we've got. We have documentation from complaints. We have doctor's records. We have canceled checks. So I have all these things.
Thanassis: Absolutely not.
Victoria Corderi: Don't touch the camera. Don't touch the camera, sir.
Thanassis: OK, vamonos!
Victoria Corderi: Sir, I am giving you the opportunity to talk to us.
Thanassis: You a liar! You lied to us.
Victoria Corderi: Excuse me.
Thanassis: And I can prove it.
Victoria Corderi: OK, can we talk about it? You want to come and talk about it?
Thanassis: No.

In the hallway, things became even more heated.

Thanassis: You should be honest and don't lie to people.
Victoria Corderi: Well you know what, a lot of families would say that you should be honest and not lie as well.
Thanassis: I’m very honest and I -
Victoria Corderi: Well you know what, I have evidence that you're not, so if you want to come here and see the evidence, and talk about it, I’d be happy to do so.

Thanassis stalked off, continuing to rant directly to the cameras following him.

Thanassis (into camera): This lady, she's a tramp, she's a liar, liar, and I can prove it. Take it in your camera, there.  I like to know to whom I’m talking? To whom I’m talking I like to know? I like to know to whom I’m talking? To this person - or to this person?

So these people in the United States, would not hear an explanation from the adoption facilitator they say caused them so much heartache.

Victoria Corderi: What would you like to see happen to Thanassis?
Stacy: The nice place for him is in jail.
Victoria Corderi: The nice place?
Stacy: The nice place. I'd rather not say what I’d like to happen to him.

Both Sean Walsh and Rick Wageman eventually found ways to get their children home, but it cost them each about $50,000 more than they'd already paid and, they say, required extraordinary effort.

Rick: When I held those kids in my arms and changed their diapers, there was no turning back.
Victoria Corderi: No matter what?
Rick (tears in eyes): Nothing. Nothing was going to stop us.

Sean (tears in eyes): It was not an easy decision. You know, it could have been easy to just kind of close that door. And something inside me and my wife said "we just can't do that."

Jill Cassasa and Stacy Bernstein weren't so lucky. All they're left with, they say, are bills and bitter memories.

Jill: They have destroyed our ability to trust people in this adoption world because we have been so abused.
Stacy (crying): I feel like my daughter was taken away from me.

But what about the adoption agencies in the U.S. that keep this banned facilitator in business?  Sean applauds his agency - Children of the World in Missouri - for reporting Thanassis to the U.S. embassy.

But the others are angry with theirs. Jill is part of a civil lawsuit against Waiting Angels of Michigan, which also faces criminal charges. Its directors deny any wrongdoing and never responded when Dateline asked why they continued to work with Thanassis. Neither did Rick’s agency, Adoption Covenant of Texas, nor Stacy’s, Adoption Partners of South Carolina.

So we contacted Thanassis again, and this time he responded with a letter blaming the agencies for any problems. He claims he returned Jill’s $18,000 check to her and was upfront with Stacy’s about issues with the birth mother's ID.

In Sean Walsh’s case, he says "knew nothing of fixed papers." And as for the boy Rick Wageman adopted, Thanassis denies ignoring his health problems, claiming  "he was not very ill."

Troy: There's a few people who are ruining the system.  And they're doing it for greed. 

Troy Webb is an adoptive dad who writes for GuatAdopt, a popular website about Guatemalan adoption. He says not enough is being done to crack down on unscrupulous agencies or facilitators.

Troy Webb: People need to be put in jail. Whether it's on the Guatemalan side or the American side, they need to be put in jail.

Webb and his wife have adopted three little girls from Guatemala.

He says the negative publicity about a few corrupt operators makes people assume - wrongly - that all Guatemalan adoptions are tainted.

Troy: For me as an adoptive dad, to see all the negative press, and people really blowing things out of proportion, it's an attack on my family. We don't want to be stigmatized. The majority of adoptions in Guatemala are perfectly legal and legitimate.

Still, adoption in Guatemala is now in the middle of a major upheaval. Under a law that just went into effect, the government is taking over, eliminating private operators in an effort to clean up corruption. Webb says many adoptive parents fear this new plan will be disastrous, grinding adoptions to a halt. As it is, 80 percent of the children here live in poverty and there is almost no social welfare.

Troy Webb: It's a death sentence. Thirty thousand kids die a year in Guatemala.  And only four to 5,000 are adopted.  We should be adopting more children.

The new law is especially unnerving for the 3,000 plus American families who had already started adoptions -- people like Jason and Jennell, who are adopting another little girl from Guatemala. Surprisingly, they are still using the same agency that handled their failed adoption of the kidnapped child. They say they can't walk away - because the agency has all of their paperwork and money.

Jennell: These people also have your lives in their hands too, because things can go smoothly or they cannot go smoothly.

Victoria Corderi: In other words if you were to say "Why did you lie to me?" yu would lose this little girl?

Jennell: It is a fear.

The agency, Adoption Blessings of Macon, Georgia, told Dateline it didn't lie intentionally -- it just passed on bad information that came from Guatemala.

Jason and Jennell say they're hopeful, but the loss of the girl whose photos had already been put in their family album, the girl they once called their daughter, still haunts them.

Jason: I still have a very large portion of my heart devoted to that girl.
Jennell: Yeah.
Victoria Corderi: Did you take the pictures out of the album?
Jennell: No, actually, I still have one in my backpack. I carry it back and forth to work with me.
Victoria: She's still very much with you?
Jennell: Yeah.

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