Baby Broker | 5. The Last Adoption

Tara Lee pressures a couple to hand over her final payment, moments after their son is born. They stall. They hide. And for a good reason. The FBI is hot on Tara’s tail and she has no clue. Binge all episodes of Baby Broker, ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. A Sony Music Entertainment & Perfect Cadence production. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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  Listen to all episodes of Baby Broker ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit Subscribe at the top of the page. Or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge: Feed your true crime obsession.

• 0:48Speaker 02

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• 1:00Speaker 01

  Teresa Matheny's initial description of 38-year-old Tara Lee as someone who "cussed like a sailor and was covered in tattoos" was so striking, it almost sounded like a quote. It was, and I found it in the second paragraph of Tara Lee's introductory email to the Mathenys. She wrote, "I swear like a truck driver and am covered in tattoos." She also wrote that she had a master's degree in social work from Northwestern and that her passion was to help birth mothers. She wrote, "I am constantly teaching life skills to these women who have had no one to help them grow and evolve." That phrase, "help them grow and evolve," struck me as pejorative.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  I'm sure she didn't mean it that way, but it sounds a little like social Darwinism, as if the birth mothers she worked with were inferior and primitive. She said her fee for "evolving Stephanie" was $9,000.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  The day after Teresa and Mike had their upsetting call with Courtney Edmond, they drove to Port Huron with their fingers crossed, desperately hoping Tara Lee and Stephanie would show up. They parked, went inside, got a booth, and waited. Then, they spotted a woman with black hair, tattoo sleeves, and bright designer nails walking toward them. Behind her were a petite pregnant woman with brown hair and two men, the birth father and Tara Lee's assistant, Jay. Teresa and Mike exhaled.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  From Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence, this is Baby Broker. I'm Peter McDonald. Episode 5, The Last Adoption.

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• 3:45Speaker 01

  Teresa and Mike stood up, introduced themselves, and gave Stephanie a hug. Everyone, except Tara Lee, was nervous.

• 3:53Speaker 04

  We had never heard anything about this guy named Jay. He was introduced to us as someone that would be witnessing our birth father signing away his rights, because that's what we were doing that night.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Stephanie and her partner sat next to each other.

• 4:09Speaker 04

  You could tell that the birth parents loved each other very much.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Because there'd been so much confusion about Stephanie's due date, Teresa decided to ask the one person at the table who would know for sure. Stephanie said she wasn't due for a few more weeks.

• 4:25Speaker 04

  So then Tara jumps in. She goes, "That's not true. That is not true. That is not what the doctors said. You are 40 weeks." You know, and our birth mom just kind of cowers down.

• 4:38Speaker 05

  It was 100% that the birth mom was terrified of Tara.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Teresa and Mike smiled and nodded through the dinner, but a whole other conversation was happening in their heads. They realized that if Tara Lee really was running a scam, it was perfect. And she had them. She had them good.

• 5:00Speaker 04

  You've got vulnerable birth parents. You've got vulnerable adopted parents.

• 5:05Speaker 05

  Tara's got our money. We're already in Detroit. We're like in the middle of it. You keep asking for more money and it's like, nobody wants to cut ties.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  It's a perfect scam.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  When I started working on this podcast, I reached out to Stephanie through Teresa and Mike, who are now friends with her. But she declined to be interviewed.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  The day after the Mathenys had dinner with Stephanie and Tara Lee, Mike worked from their Airbnb. Teresa hung out with her sister, who was visiting. And it was way too cold to play golf.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Late that night, Stephanie and her partner ran into trouble. It was dark out and below freezing. Stephanie had driven her partner to a grocery store. She idled while he ran in. Then she passed out. A passerby found her slumped over the steering wheel and called 911. EMTs arrived and revived her, but her blood pressure was dangerously high. Teresa told me, rather than take her to the hospital, the police arrived and took Stephanie and her partner home. Then they impounded her car because her insurance had lapsed. The next morning, Stephanie called Tara Lee and asked her for a ride to the hospital. Tara Lee called her an Uber. When Stephanie arrived at Hutzel Women's Hospital in downtown,

• 6:26Speaker 01

  her doctor quickly diagnosed her with preeclampsia and decided to induce.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Stephanie tried calling her partner, but he wouldn't answer. Amidst the chaos the night before, he'd left his cellphone in their impounded car. It was October 25th, Teresa and Mike's third wedding anniversary.

• 6:46Speaker 05

  We met Tara in Chick-fil-A downstairs, which was like, we're like on pins and needles. And Tara was like, I'm famished, you know? Like, we're gonna go sit in Chick-fil-A and have a chicken sandwich.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  They said Tara Lee wore a black Lululemon tracksuit, Prada reading glasses, a Rolex watch, and a large diamond ring. She also had diamonds painted on her nails.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  As Tara Lee dug into her lunch, she told them a story.

• 7:11Speaker 05

  This bullshit story about how, you know, that morning, she was at the bank at Bank of America, blah, blah, blah, like conducting some business. And she, you know, she blacked out and she fell and she hit her head. And she had to go get multiple stitches. And she was telling us that she probably had a concussion and that the doctor told her that she needed bad rest. But it was so important for her to be there for us, for the birth of this baby. And the reason I say that's important is because there were so many of those type of stories.

• 7:43Speaker 04

  Heart attack, stroke, cancer.

• 7:45Speaker 05

  Gunshot.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Did she seem like she had a concussion?

• 7:48Speaker 05

  No.

• 7:49Speaker 04

  Oh, no, not at all. And we knew it was bullshit. We knew.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  It seemed like every time someone else was in the spotlight, in this case Stephanie, Tara Lee would try to redirect everyone's attention to herself.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  When she was done eating, they went up to labor and delivery.

• 8:06Speaker 04

  Our birth mom is hooked up to the monitors. She is frantically trying to get a hold of her partner who doesn't have the phone. She's terrified. She's alone. She doesn't know us. She has no support there.

• 8:21Speaker 05

  Tara's sitting in the corner of the table. Teresa and I are literally sitting in chairs against the wall.

• 8:26Speaker 04

  Facing the bed.

• 8:27Speaker 05

  While Tara is, you know, on her cellphone.

• 8:33Speaker 05

  Like, the whole dynamic was just so freaking weird.

• 8:37Speaker 04

  And that's when I started recording.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  I love Steve Harvey. He makes me laugh on an hourly basis. Okay, well, we got some TV. We got some clear fluids coming.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Life is good.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Then Tara Lee made a phone call to someone to vent about a set of adoptive parents. She called them APs. It sounded like a birth mother was wavering in her decision.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  I specifically told the APs, "No communication. Let her breathe." And they didn't listen. They sent text messages. Please, 22 to 3206, please. Please, 22, 3206. My give a shit filter today is at a very, very, very low, low, low fuel left, right? The little fuel light's on.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  I protect my mothers till the ends of the earth.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  My biggest takeaway from 30 minutes of recordings that Teresa shared with me was that despite Tara Lee saying to someone on the phone that she protected her "mothers" till the ends of the earth, I didn't hear her give Stephanie any emotional support. Stephanie was in labor. All the attention should be on her. She couldn't get hold of her partner, and although the Mathinis were adopting her baby, she'd only met them once. The person she knew best in the room was Tara Lee, who was supposed to be her doula. Even during the birth of a baby, Tara Lee stole the spotlight. Stephanie, who says almost nothing in these recordings, seems in the shadows, alone, almost as if she wasn't there.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  As the Mathinis sat anxiously in the room, trying not to say the wrong thing, Teresa said Tara Lee leaned over to her.

• 10:24Speaker 04

  She whispered to me and said, "You know you still have a balance due to me."

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Teresa just nodded. The two attorneys, Talia and Tanya, had told the Mathinis not to give Tara Lee any more money. Hours passed. Around 7:00 PM, Tara Lee said Stephanie probably wouldn't deliver until the middle of the night. She encouraged them to go get some sleep, and promised she'd call when Stephanie was close. Mike and Teresa went to a nearby restaurant to wait it out. And it was a good thing they didn't go back to their Airbnb to take a nap, because an hour later Tara Lee texted to say it was happening.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  The Methanis paid their bill and rushed back to the hospital. They ran up to the delivery room and found Stephanie sobbing. He'd been born. They'd missed it. The birth father was on his way.

• 11:15Speaker 05

  And you don't see Tara empathizing with the birth mother?

• 11:20Speaker 04

  She was like, just, you know, go to the NICU or whatever. And I'm sitting here looking at this human being, a woman, who has carried this baby for nine months, has given this baby up for adoption and has no one there with her. It was heartbreaking. The most important thing to me at that moment was consoling her. And I asked her permission. I said, is this okay? Is it okay for me to go to the NICU? And she said, yes. And so that's when I went to the NICU.

• 11:47Speaker 05

  And Tara comes to me and was basically like, so can I get that check? I walked past her like she didn't exist.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  They went into the NICU and for the first time, saw their son.

• 11:58Speaker 04

  And I saw his little face and he was just so sweet.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Mike reached in and touched him.

• 12:09Speaker 04

  His hand was as big as his body and he was just precious. He was five pounds, four ounces. Mm-hmm. He was a tiny little thing. And yeah, he was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. He was so sweet. He had like the cutest little nose. He was just perfect to my eyes. I mean, he was just, you know, he also seemed like he was very alert, you know? He was just beautiful. I don't know. It felt like he was mine, if that makes sense, like.

• 12:45Speaker 05

  Like, here we are. This is real.

• 12:47Speaker 04

  I couldn't believe it. I was like, oh, my gosh, like, this is real. Like, we have a son. Like, this is crazy.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Their son's Ballard score was just 34 weeks, meaning Stephanie was right about her due date. She delivered early. The Mathenies didn't want to leave their son alone. They worried that if they stepped away, something might happen. They told me they just had a gut feeling about it.

• 13:09Speaker 05

  Well, I think she had every intention of having us drive to Detroit. I don't think she had any intention of us going home with the baby.

• 13:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, no intentions at all.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  But the adoption paperwork couldn't be signed for three days. And they needed sleep. The Mathenies went back to their rental house and crashed. In the morning, they rushed back to the hospital. Baby S was still in the NICU. And Tara Lee was still sitting right next to Stephanie in her recovery room.

• 13:35Speaker 05

  She's camped out waiting for us. And she is pissed off because she wants her money.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Teresa said they ignored Tara Lee's demand for her final $4,000 payment.

• 13:46Speaker 05

  And that's when we put the hospital on notice.

• 13:53Speaker 05

  That we didn't want Tara anywhere near the NICU.

• 13:55Speaker 04

  So no one knew about the FBI, so the hospital, they thought we were crazy.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Later that morning, the lawyers, Talia Gedding and Tanya Carrato, surreptitiously arrived. They messaged the Mathenies to meet them on another floor where they could talk in secret. When they were all out of Tara Lee's earshot, the lawyers said the FBI's investigation was very serious, and this might be Tara Lee's last adoption. They gave the Mathenies the phone number for FBI Special Agent Matt Sluss.

• 14:25Speaker 05

  And so I called what turned out to be Matt's cellphone, left him a voicemail. And then it was like, I don't know, probably lunchtime. I was walking into the hospital by myself. I had just parked the car. It was snowing. I see this 313 number.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Mike answered. He had his first conversation with the FBI.

• 14:49Speaker 06

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• 15:48Speaker 01

  Last summer, I reached out to the FBI to ask if they'd speak with me about their investigation into Tara Lee. They don't always talk to reporters, but this case was very important to them. Special Agent Matt Sluss is thin, with a neat beard, and talks in a thoughtful and precise way. In 2018, he was a newish agent, working white-collar crime. And he said, when he got this case, he knew nothing about how adoption works.

• 16:13Speaker 04

  It was early October of 2018. There was an individual who was intimately connected with Tara Lee's adoption business that brought information to our FBI Detroit field office.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  They wouldn't tell me who tipped them off, though. They don't want to discourage people from reporting crimes to the FBI. Regardless, someone told them that Tara Lee was taking money for an adoption that was designed to fail. The FBI had never come across a case like it. The first person to review it was Supervisory Special Agent Mark Krieg.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  Okay, what is the exact violation here?

• 16:57Speaker 01

  As Agent Krieg chewed it over in the office, Agent Sluss came in.

• 17:01Speaker 04

  It was a Friday afternoon, and I had returned from a meeting with a prosecutor in a different case.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  They didn't know if this was a federal crime, or a state crime, or if it was a crime at all. But it seemed like it should be. And if you're curious about the timeline of this meeting, it happened about a week before the Methanese got to Detroit. Agent Krieg called the US Attorney's Office and asked to talk with Assistant US Attorney Sarah Woodward. And he just said, "We have this allegations that are really unusual, and we're not sure..."

• 17:38Speaker 04

  If this is a federal case, if there's a crime here, how do you think we should move forward? And I think he called me because I had worked on a lot of child exploitation cases and some unusual cases with victims. So, once he told me about it, I said, "Well, that sounds like wire fraud, potentially. So, we should open an investigation and we should try to find out what's going on."

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Wire fraud. You've probably heard of it, but might not know what it means. It's the use of physical or electronic communication systems, like email or text, to commit fraud. The name is kind of outdated. It dates back to when we used wired telephones. Wire fraud is a federal offense, which is why the FBI got involved. Sarah Woodward and Agent Matt Sluss would need to show that Tara Lee used her cellphone or email to defraud people. AUSA Sarah Woodward was sitting at her L-shaped desk on a high floor of the US Attorney's Office in Detroit when we talked. She was surrounded by case files. Woodward told me that this case was so novel that she had to come up with new terminology

• 18:45Speaker 01

  just to describe the alleged fraud. Terms like fabricated match and double match. That first week on the case, Agents Sluss and Krieg interviewed about a dozen people connected with Tara Lee's adoption business. These people were the tip of the iceberg, because each interview introduced the FBI to new names and allegations. The scope of the case beneath the surface was way bigger than they initially thought. By Friday, Matt Sluss felt compelled to visually piece it together.

• 19:15Speaker 04

  And I went into our conference room and I took that big roll-out paper that's, you know, three, four feet wide and tore off like a 10-foot section, put it across the conference table, and then just literally started drawing, hand-drawing, handwriting a roadmap of every name, who was connected to who, doctor parents' names, birth parents' names, match date, how much money was paid, did the match succeed, was it failed, a quick note on how did it fail if it did.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Courtney and Curtis Edman, two failed matches. Tammy and Nick Granath, one failed match, one fabricated match, one success. On October 26th, Agents Sluss added Mike and Teresa Matheny, success.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Twenty blocks away, Mike hung up with Matt's lust and found Teresa in the hospital and told her what had just happened. He now had no doubts that this investigation was real, and it was time to turn the tables on Tara Lee. He and Teresa walked the echoey halls, talking in hushed tones, when they saw two familiar faces coming toward them. It was Stephanie and her partner.

• 20:27Speaker 05

  With no Tara. And so we just kind of start talking, and we find one of those just little random, like, sitting areas. She was like, "Oh, Tara's upset with you guys about something." Okay, I said, "She wants us to pay her more money, and we're not gonna pay her. She's not providing the services." The rent wasn't paid. Their electric was about to be cut off. No insurance on the cars. The tires hadn't been put on. There's no food in the house. I said, "I can do one of two things." I said, "I can either pay Tara so that she goes away, or we can tell Tara to fuck off, and I can put that money to use to help you guys." You know? I had spoken to the attorneys.

• 21:10Speaker 05

  The attorneys confirmed that as long as everything was documented and we weren't, like, giving cash, that, you know, I could pay their rent and then submit receipts, you know, directly myself. And so that was what we chose to do.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  They paid Stephanie's back rent and three months of advance rent. They paid her overdue electric bill and bought a few months of credit. They paid her car insurance and had her driver's license reinstated. They put new tires on her car. They bought her food, clothes, and shoes. And they felt bad that Stephanie had been taken advantage of. She'd been promised support for her pregnancy. Instead, she struggled for months. She collapsed in her car. She was alone during the delivery. The truth was, even after what they'd done for her, Stephanie was going to keep living paycheck to paycheck. Her son was going to grow up with a middle-class family. It was going to be hard, no matter what. Tara Lee had made it so much harder.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  A few days later, Tanya Carrato returned to the hospital in secret so the Mathinis could sign the adoption consent forms. In her last adoption, Tara Lee was going to be cut out.

• 22:21Speaker 05

  Tara was literally marching around the hospital trying to find us. And we're sitting at a table and Tanya's got her phone. Tara called her no less than 15 times.

• 22:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, she's blowing Tanya's phone up.

• 22:35Speaker 05

  Over, just calling over and over and over again.

• 22:39Speaker 05

  Like, this is how convoluted it got. Taliyah called me and said, hey, I've got to send your wife a text. Want you to know, it's not real. I need to send it so I can screenshot it and send it back to Tara.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  It was time to turn Tara Lee's tactics against her.

• 22:54Speaker 05

  And so, Taliyah sends Theresa this text, basically like demanding the attorney's fee, accusing us of being shady and blah, blah, blah. Taliyah was like, now I need your wife to respond back to that text so I can screenshot and send the answer. So like, we answer from Theresa's phone, say, oh, I'm so sorry. We don't mean to be shady. I have to transfer some money from a brokerage account. The transfer is going to take a few days, you know, blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, so that was how we bought time. So of course, you know, I'm like, and, and please let Tara know that she's been such an angel through this whole process, you know, like, just like, really like overplaying the hand. It was like, after Taliyah sends it to Tara, then Tara responds and was like, well, at

• 23:38Speaker 05

  least she recognizes it.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Tara Lee never got her $4,000.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  The Mathinis stayed in Detroit for almost two months. Every day, they visited their son in the NICU, rocked him, read to him, fed him. He doubled his weight. In early December, he was released from the hospital. They could go home.

• 24:02Speaker 04

  I think we still had a week left on our Airbnb and we just said, keep it. Just, we're leaving.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  The only thing that wouldn't fit in the car were the golf clubs. Mike put them on the roof. It was sleeting and snowing as they dressed their son in the monogrammed sailor outfit they bought for him back in Brunswick, Georgia.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  We're so excited. We get in the car. We get on the road. I mean, we were hit the road, dude. We were like out of there.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Teresa squeezed into the backseat next to her son. At a stoplight, Mike aimed his camera at the rearview mirror and snapped a family picture they'd never forget. Teresa and Mike are smiling as if it's the first mile of a spring break road trip.

• 24:45Speaker 05

  It's like my first time driving with a baby.

• 24:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 05

  And it's, and it's-

• 24:50Speaker 04

  He stayed in the slow lane like a grandpa.

• 24:52Speaker 05

  And it's pouring and he screamed like the whole way.

• 24:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. He hates, he hated the car seat.

• 24:57Speaker 05

  He decided that he was over it by the time we hit like Southern Ohio. And then it rained.

• 25:03Speaker 04

  Yes, the entire way home.

• 25:06Speaker 05

  I'm talking port from Southern Ohio through Kentucky.

• 25:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:10Speaker 05

  Through Tennessee, all the way to the doorstep.

• 25:13Speaker 04

  Yep. It's all our friends. I think we're waiting at our house when we got there, right? We had all of our friends there. My dad, yeah, he came down. My sister was there. It was great. Yeah, so that's kind of how it happened.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  The Matheny's dream came true.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  But after they got home, settled in, they said they felt guilty. Even though they'd been through hell to adopt their son, they got him. But one couple didn't. Teresa told me the name of a couple besides the Graniths who she believes Tara Lee might have matched with Stephanie. The couple who didn't get the baby. I reached out to them and have not heard back. So I'm not going to share their names. For many of the couples, the painful experience of working with Tara Lee remains private.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  In November 2018, while the Mathenies were still in Detroit, FBI Agent Matt Sluss was uncovering a trove of evidence of wire fraud, enough to get a search warrant for Tara Lee's house. And Courtney's Facebook group now included the Mathenies and over 100 other couples. But one couple wouldn't reply to Courtney's messages because they firmly believed that Tara Lee was innocent. They believed that her side of the story was the truth.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  It was these angry women who were after her to shut her business down because they had failed adoptions.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Next time on Baby Broker.

• 26:38Speaker 04

  I texted, "We are here for you. You just have to keep dealing with the bullshit and these bitches. Karma will churn, just a matter of time. We trust and believe you. We are in your corner. Stay strong. Be the tatted foul-mouthed woman we love."

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Baby Broker is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence. It was hosted and reported by me, Peter McDonald. I'm the executive

• 27:11Speaker 00

  Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones, like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then sometimes you make great ones, like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Producer, along with Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch of Sony Music Entertainment. Stephen George recorded the narration at the Invisible Studios, West Hollywood. We used music from Audio Network and a few tracks from Epidemic Sound. News clips are courtesy of WXYZ 7 in Detroit, Michigan. Our production managers are Tamika Balance-Kolosny and Sammy Allison. Our lawyers are Allison Sherry and Kathleen Farley. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rassik, and Jamie Myers.

• 28:21Speaker 00

  Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones. Like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then, sometimes you make great ones. Like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.