NZ grandmother sold unborn babies

Carla Lee Chambers. Photo / Robert Paterson

A grandmother's elaborate baby selling business in California has been stopped by the FBI.

Kiwi Carla Lee Chambers is in prison after being convicted in San Diego for similar surrogacy-related crimes she committed in New Zealand.

Chambers sold parental rights to unborn children in the US for five years, working alongside prominent international surrogacy attorney Theresa Erickson and Maryland attorney Hilary Neiman.

Californian law forbids the sale of parental rights but permits surrogacy where an agreement between the carrier of the baby and the intended parents was made before any embryonic transfer.

The women created an inventory of unborn babies they could sell for $120,000 each once parents were found.

Chambers found women who would be sent to the Ukraine for embryonic transfer where an embryo is transferred into a surrogate's uterus to establish a pregnancy. The women were paid up to $60,000 if they successfully gave birth.

If the pregnancy made it through to its third trimester, Chambers would find prospective parents to buy the unborn babies. Parents were told the babies were from a legitimate surrogacy arrangement and the original parents had pulled out.

In 2001, Chambers was struck off the Nurses Council roll after she was convicted in the Lower Hutt District Court for misrepresenting herself to a gynaecologist, obtaining a prescription for clomiphene citrate tablets and supplying them to a 16-year-old woman to increase her chances of becoming pregnant. She later needed surgery to remove ovarian cysts believed to be the result of the medication.

FBI special agent Keith Slotter said it was disturbing victims had been taken advantage of because of their desire to create a family.

"In this case, the victims were exploited at a time in their lives when they were in a most vulnerable situation and trusting in legal counsel to abide by the laws of this country to provide them with legitimate services."

Chambers, originally from Lower Hutt and known under the names Carla Lee Gansbauer and Carla Lee Staples, is serving five months in prison and seven months' home detention and had been ordered to pay $220,000 in damages.