The FBI is investigating a prominent surrogacy agency that abruptly shut down earlier this month, leaving desperate expectant parents without tens of thousands of dollars and without paying surrogates as their pregnancies progressed.
The agency's owner, Megan Hall-Greenberg, 49, has effectively disappeared—she deleted her social media accounts, and clients and employees say she hasn't responded to their messages since Dec. 3.
Last week, FBI agents raided Hall-Greenberg's home and the Camas, Wash., headquarters of Surro Connections, which was founded in 2010 and bills itself as a top-tier surrogacy agency with clients around the world.
A neighbor said he saw FBI agents escort someone from the house to a car but was unsure of the person's identity. Agents also interviewed former Surro Connections employees who suddenly lost access to their company's email and records systems the day before it closed.
One of them, Sarah Shaffer, was the agency's marketing manager and lead surrogacy coordinator. She estimates that about 150 families may have had money in the company's internal escrow system, totaling between $2 million and $5 million.
“Some of the intended parents only paid the money the night before this happened,” Shaffer said, adding, “Many of them took savings to be able to afford this trip.”
In interviews, three intended parents and six current and former surrogates (two of whom are pregnant) described a feeling of complete shock following the unexpected collapse of Surro Connections.
Mariana Klaveno, 46, deposited more than $66,000 into the agency's internal deposit for an embryo transfer that was scheduled for next month.
But then her surrogate mother (also known as a gestational carrier) told her something was wrong.
“Other surrogate mothers are not paid. Everyone is panicking. Everyone is saying we need to hire a lawyer,” Klaveno recalls her saying. “And then it turned out that no one could contact Megan … and neither of the intended parents could access the supposed escrow account that we were confident was secure.”
Two days later, an email arrived: Surro Connections was “ceasing all operations” due to “financial and operational difficulties,” Hall-Greenberg wrote to the intended parents on Dec. 5. The company “did not have the liquid capital” to pay them back, it said.
In a separate email, she told agency employees that their work had been “terminated immediately.”
Hall-Greenberg did not respond to multiple requests for comment by phone and text message.
An FBI spokesman said that as a matter of bureau policy, “we cannot confirm or deny the existence of any specific investigation.”
Klaveno, who works as an actor in Los Angeles, has already endured a costly and emotionally draining 12-year rollercoaster of infertility. The embryo transfer is currently on hold as she and her husband work to restart the surrogacy process.
Red flags
For families seeking surrogacy, the process can be emotional and incredibly expensive. Intended parents often spend more than $100,000, with large sums held in escrow to compensate the surrogate parents and cover their medical bills.
For all parties involved, the journey depends on trust. Klaveno said Hall-Greenberg deserved her award.
“No one comes to surrogacy with ease. Everyone comes here with difficulties and losses,” she said. “I could call her on her cell phone when I had questions, and she was available—until suddenly she wasn’t.”
That personal connection made Hall-Greenberg's recent actions especially hurtful, she added: “We weren't just faceless names or numbers on a ledger. She knew us. She knew our stories.”
Shaffer, who considered Hall-Greenberg not only her friend but also her boss, said she felt overwhelmed and betrayed. “It was all about connections and building bonds and having close relationships with intended parents and surrogates,” she said. “That's what she preached.”
Surro Connections is not the first surrogacy-related firm to be rocked by scandal: in the past three years, there have been at least four cases in which holders of escrow accounts related to surrogacy stole funds from encouraging parents.
Most of these cases concerned external escrow managers in which money was kept for surrogacy agencies. Despite this, the Society for the Ethics of Egg Donation and Surrogacy, a non-profit organization that publishes standards for surrogacy and egg donation, still reports that a third party is holding escrow to protect intended parents and surrogate mothers.
At Surro Connections, however, Hall-Greenberg used the scandals to convince would-be parents to keep their deposit funds at home, according to clients.
She assured them that the funds were kept separate and kept in a bank insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, according to the email reviewed by NBC News. Invoices and receipts were to be uploaded to a shared folder that the intended parents could access. When parents or surrogates refused the internal system, Hall-Greenberg often insisted, many people said.
“Looking back, it seems like it's kind of a red flag that it was an internal escrow situation, but they kind of sold it as, 'You can save money with us,'” Klaveno said, given that the one-stop shop approach avoided some third-party fees.
There were other warning signs.
Alexis Little, 27, a surrogate from Indiana, said payments were sometimes delayed, prompting her to contact her and ask when they would be put into escrow.
“I just thought, 'It's an agency, they're busy,'” said Lytle, who is 19 weeks pregnant.
She said her parents-to-be assured her they would continue to support her, even though they lost about $40,000.
Public records suggest Hall-Greenberg may have been experiencing financial difficulties.
Last year, she sold several of her support gyms in Oregon and Washington. Between that business and Surro Connections, she owes Oregon more than $84,000 in unpaid taxes, according to the latest Department of Revenue filings.
The documents also show Hall-Greenberg took out at least four loans over the past five years to support her business. In September, she sold a percentage of Surro Connections' future earnings to a lender for $15,000. The creditor sued a few weeks later, accusing her of defaulting on the agreement, and then dropped the case in October for unspecified reasons.
That same month, the court ordered Hall-Greenberg to pay American Express more than $70,000 she owed on her credit card. Less than six months earlier, she was ordered to pay the company more than $30,000.
“It seemed unreal”
Shaffer said when payments to surrogates were delayed last month, Hall-Greenberg told her it was an honest mistake — the result of extra work because an employee was out of the office.
“I gave her the benefit of the doubt,” said Shaffer, who worked for the agency for six years. From her perspective, business seemed good—she said she was offered a promotion about a month ago.
After many payments again weren't made as planned in December, calls and complaints started pouring in, Schaffer said. But Hall-Greenberg asked Shaffer to clear her schedule and then stopped responding to employees and clients altogether. Christopher Foster, a nearby business owner, said he heard the agency's phone ringing nonstop for about 10 hours on Dec. 5.
By the time the FBI searched the office, it appeared to have been cleared, according to Foster, who was on the scene.
“There were empty folders everywhere. Bags of shredded files… All the computers were gone,” he said.
Kama Stauffer, 34, a first-time surrogate from Ashland, Ohio, said she received payment this month but learned of problems at Surro Connections through a Facebook group. Stauffer is nine weeks pregnant.
She estimates her intended parents lost about $50,000.
“It seemed unreal. It seemed impossible that an agency could implode overnight without warning,” Stauffer said.
Several former Surro Connections employees worked to connect clients and trustees with other agencies and organizations, which in turn provided assistance, some offering free services. But many intended parents are still struggling to comprehend the extent of their losses and how to move forward.
Klaveno doubts she'll ever get her money back, but the worst part is that Hall-Greenberg knew what the money represented, she said.
“It was hope. It was the dream of starting a family, and in some cases, maybe the only hope for that,” Klaveno said, “and she knew it.”
