Kayla Elliott, a Corpus Christi woman who carried a child for a Southern California couple who have been accused of coordinating a widespread surrogacy scam, is pushing for answers about what led to the incident.
The 27-year-old recently set up a GoFundMe campaign to cover legal fees as she tries to obtain custody of her daughter, who is in foster care after allegations of child abuse surfaced at the couple’s residence in Arcadia, California, in early May.
Arcadia police on May 9 arrested the two people who adopted the child — Silvia Zhang, 38, and Guojun Xuan, 65 — both of whom are facing charges of felony child endangerment/neglect with warrants served.
Elliott said she didn’t know what she was getting into when an agency called Mark Surrogacy matched her with the couple online.
“I missed being pregnant,” she said. “I loved being pregnant. I have four kids of my own.”
After a successful embryo transfer through in vitro fertilization and what Elliott describes as a great pregnancy, she gave birth to the baby, Hays, on March 13 and flew to California to move her to the intended parents.
Two months later, she learned the child had been placed in foster care.
Later, Elliott found out that the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services had removed a total of 21 children from the home and taken them into protective custody.
“DCFS said they’ve never encountered anything like this — the whole situation is so new to everyone,” she said.
Public records from the California Secretary of State show that the address for Mark Surrogacy, 612 W. Camino Real Ave., is the same as Zhang’s address.
Arcadia police visited the residence when a Los Angeles hospital notified them of a potential child abuse case involving a 2-month-old baby, according to Arcadia Lt. Kollin Cieadlo.
The baby was admitted to the emergency room with a serious head injury, and the ER staff believed it was a result of a deliberate act, Cieadlo said.
Detectives discovered 15 children living in the home, with ages ranging from 2 months to 13 years old, he said, along with nannies who were responsible for taking care of them.
The officer described the home as a single-family residence with several bedrooms and other rooms that had been set up as classrooms containing desks and learning materials.
Footage from a surveillance camera system that detectives obtained through a search warrant revealed evidence of child abuse, and police issued warrants to the mother, father and nanny responsible for the infant who had been admitted to the hospital.
Police are still looking for the nanny, who fled the location, Cieadlo said.
The Department of Children and Family Services conducted an investigation and removed 15 more children from the home, he said.
During their investigation, they found six more children who were with friends of the family and took them into protective custody.
Police have not identified other suspects, Cieadlo said.
“The case was presented to the district attorney, and it was determined that the best course of action was release the mother and father pending additional review of evidence,” Cieadlo said July 25. “This process is almost complete, and we anticipate filing charges with the DA within the next two to three weeks.”
The department is also working with the FBI in the surrogacy investigation, though no additional information is currently available, he said.
Mark Surrogacy has filed paperwork to terminate the company, according to public records from the California Secretary of State.
Elliott, whom the FBI interviewed, said that she anticipates the possibility of gaining custody of her child.
Her conversations with other women on social media revealed that her experience with Mark Surrogacy was not an isolated incident. The women found that they were all surrogates for the same couple, some at the same time, with the babies now in foster care.
She said she’d spoken with a woman on Facebook when she was 17 weeks pregnant who told her that the agency was conducting dual surrogacies without informing surrogates. She also spoke to other women acting as surrogates for the couple: one in Florida, two women in California, one woman in Pennsylvania and another in Georgia.
The women had all given birth within weeks of each other, she said.
Meanwhile, several of the surrogates in her group chat are pregnant. One is expected to deliver a baby in a couple of weeks, while two others who are 28 or 29 weeks pregnant are working with their attorneys to weigh legal options for retaining custody of their children, Elliott said.
Her 8-year-old daughter asks her when they are getting Hays back, she said.
“It’s heartbreaking because that was my first experience being a surrogate and it’s supposed to be something magical for both sides — parents and surrogate — and it was literally quite the opposite of that,” she said.
The Department of Children and Family Services could not be reached for comment.
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This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Corpus Christi woman embroiled in surrogacy scam fights for custody of daughter
Reporting by Katie Nickas, Corpus Christi Caller Times / Corpus Christi Caller Times
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