Friday, January 9, 2009

Too Good to Be True

What is the best way to celebrate being approved for adoption for one full year? To be approached by not 1, not 2, but 3 seperate people trying to scam us!
Last week one of my online support groups mentioned an adoption website that would let you publish your profile for free for 1 year. It's makingfamilies.org. The website is very "simple" and really all we can do is post one picture of us and our email address. It didn't look like much, but I thought it was worth a shot. I was a little disappointed that the first couple you see is a family of 2 dads looking for another child. Personally, we are trying to adopt because we believe that a child needs a MOTHER and a FATHER.
Then earlier this week the same support group mentioned that they had been contacted by scammers. Sure enough, I had heard from the exact same person too! I have since been contacted by two more scammers. That was my biggest worry when I signed up for this website and I am actually thinking of pulling our profile from it.
I am so glad to know before hand about this scams, or I might be going through heartache right now. We are aware of the fact that scammers see adoptive couples as very good targets; that is exactly why we choose an agency we know we can trust.
The two red flags that we have seen with these scams is that they have poor English skills. Someone in my group mentioned that they speak English English instead of American English. The other flag to watch for is that they need money now. We haven't had anyone ask for that yet, but I'm sure if we had tried to pursue these supposed "opportunities" that they would have been quick to mention that.

1 comment:

Meka said...

Oh wow I didn't realize that was so common! I am glad you wrote this post. I don't get it though, is it people pretending to be birth mothers wanting to place or pretending to be agency's?