BARDSTOWN, Ky. (WDRB) -- All Bernadette Maha Abdullah wanted was a baby.
Already a parent to several older children, Abdullah grew up with an adopted brother and always wanted to follow in her parents' footsteps. So after having her first miscarriage in July 2021, she decided she was willing to pay thousands of dollars to adopt.
"When I lost the baby, I got back into social media to find support for miscarriages and things," said Abdullah, who lives in Bardstown. "I found this really nice group. The women were so good, and I clicked on it one day, and there was a link for adoption, So I clicked on that and joined that group as well."
Abdullah and her husband wanted to adopt from India to match her his nationality.
"I told my husband 'There's a guy on there. He runs an adoption agency, so let's contact him,'" she said.
Abdullah was given pictures of babies that were supposedly in an Indian orphanage who needed homes.
"He went by the name of Syed Younis," she said. "We became like brothers and sisters. We would share everything about our day, everything with each other, and that's his way of luring me in so I would trust him."
She said he claimed to work for the main adoption agency in India and helped people with their paperwork. From there, she agreed to pay $10,000 to adopt a baby girl and boy. The babies were said to be born on the same day, and Abdullah would think of them as twins.
"He said your first deposit would be $500," she said. "I never hesitated because I trusted him. I had friends in the same part of India where he's from. They checked him and everything."
"He sent me legal documents showing he applied. It's all set up. My friends said it was legitimate. I made my next deposit of $500 two weeks later."
Abdullah's older sister, Marissa Brown, from Louisville, was also interested in adopting. So the same man was helping her with the process as well.
"He had contacted me and seemed legitimate, you know," Brown said. "He was sincere about the babies. He said these babies need homes."
But something still didn't seem right for Abdullah.
"I was saying 'Sir, I want to see live videos of my children. I want to see them in video call,'" she said.
She said the man would make excuse after excuse about why she couldn't see the kids. It went on for months. He said the kids were sick or he had a death in his family.
"The kids are older by that time, and I'm knowing this, and he's sending me updated photos, but I'm never getting to see the children," Abdullah said.
It turns out the whole thing was a scam.
"You feel empty because you're looking at a picture," Brown said. "It was never happening, and I gave up on that part, even adoptions here. I gave up on it."
Abdullah found out later the pictures she was sent were just pictures of the man's own children.
"I did more digging on Facebook and I came across his wife's account," she said. "And there were those pictures of his children from infancy, and those were the pictures he had sent us."
Whitney Adkins with the Better Business Bureau, said just like other scams, make sure you know who you are dealing with, and, in this case, try to verify that with the adoption agency.
"There's a lot of emotions going into adoption, so it's gonna be a little bit easier to scam victims because they are thinking with their hearts. They just want to adopt a child," Adkins said. "We're seeing a lot of scams originate — or at least grow — on social media, Facebook, Instagram, etc."
Adkins said people need to contact an attorney who specializes in adoptions who can lay out the process for legal adoption.
Brown didn't lose any money, but Abdullah gave a total of $1,275.
"We're over here in America and we can't legally do anything to them," Abdullah said. "And they know this. ... I don't even know how to keep tabs on him because he changes his ID's frequently."
For a while, Abdullah knew she'd been scammed but didn't led the man know that. Eventually, she said he agreed to give her some money back. He sent her $250 on PayPal in October 2023 but quickly canceled it and got the money back.
"This time, I'm dealing with Paypal, trying to inform them he scammed me, dealing with Western Union, trying tell them about everything," she said. "They're saying 'He used his ID card when he picked it up. There's nothing we can do.'"
She said the man claimed to be of the same religion as her, trying to use that to convince her he was legitimate.
"He's saying 'I'm your brother. I would never deceive you. You'll never be cheated. You'll get your money back,'" Abdullah said. "And they he said 'I've already lost $10,000 from the adoption you want to cancel.' He's claiming he paid them from what I didn't pay them."
"He has hurt a lot of people and taken so much money from people. He even took pictures I would post to Facebook and made a profile with my father in his truck and tried to say he was selling that. And a man gave him $5,000 for my father's truck. I found out by the other group that's he's in, a group for people selling cars in his country."
And while the whole process played out, Abdullah had another miscarriage. She said there isn't a day that goes by when she doesn't think about what happened.
"You took advantage of me at a time when I lost two children, and that was the worst thing you could have done to someone who is grieving a child," she said.
But from heartache came a blessing. Abdullah gave birth to a baby girl, named Hashira, which she said means "heaven" in Arabic. Her baby is now a toddler.
Abdullah's hope now is that others will learn from what she went through.
"He caught me at a very emotional time in my life, and my head wasn't level," she said. "And it won't happen to me again though. I've learned a lot from this."
WDRB Investigates tried searching for the man on social media but couldn't find him. Abdullah said the scammer has now deleted his Facebook pages and groups he was in. We did find his email address, but he never responded back.
Copyright 2024 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.