It is alleged that a Texas adoption lawyer attempted to purchase two children from jailed mothers by making payments into their commissary accounts.
Two counts of selling or purchasing a kid, a third-degree felony carrying a ten-year jail sentence, are brought against Jody Hall, 68. Detectives from the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office intercepted messages between Hall and a pregnant woman, age 29, via her cell tablet beginning on March 13, according to an arrest document published by Dallas NBC affiliate KXAS.
Hall invites her to call her and identifies herself as the “Director of the Adoption Agency that you have signed with” in the message. She has “cash for your commissary,” Hall continues. Hall talked with the prisoner about the adoption over the following two months, even asking if her boyfriend would sign a release giving up his parental rights. But with time, the connection seemed to deteriorate.
Allegedly, Hall wrote, “I don’t need birth moms that lie to me just to get financial support. And I can’t give you anymore if he’s not willing to sign the paperwork. That means he wants the baby if he’s the father.”
Investigators discovered that Hall had $846 in her commissary. Texas law permits potential adoptive parents to cover the housing and medical costs of expecting mothers who are offering their newborns for adoption.
However, detectives claim that Hall’s donation of cash falls short of those requirements because Tarrant County was responsible for paying those costs while the mother was a jail inmate.
When the prisoner decided to keep her baby after he was born in early May, Hall reportedly lost her cool. The arrest report said that the lawyer referred to the prisoner as a “drug addict.”
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The purported letter from Hall said, “You are a scammer and I will be telling the prosecutor in your case all about how this family supported you since November and you scammed them WITH THE HELP OF YOUR BOYFRIEND. He’s got pictures all over FB of him holding the baby. You are such a liar!!!”
Hall was taken into the Hays County Jail by deputies on July 23 and has since bonded out.
According to the local ABC affiliate WFAA, Hall’s agency was barred from adopting children abroad in 2019 by the Intercountry Adoption Accreditation and Maintenance Entity for “failing to maintain substantial compliance with accreditation standards.”
