By Gray News staff and Michaela Redmond
Published: Jun. 23, 2024 at 6:55 AM CDT
(Gray News) - The Palladino family in Florida is among those looking for answers after they invested about $70,000 and said they have no idea where it is.
WWSB reported that Kelly Palladino, one of the intended parents, said they invested the money with Surrogacy Escrow Account Management, or SEAM, based out of Houston. According to the company’s website, the owner is Dominique Side.
“It’s sad that she hasn’t said anything because we’re really vulnerable. You know, this process makes you vulnerable,” Palladino said.
She said the money is most likely gone.
“A lot of us have health issues. We’ve had miscarriages. We’ve been heartbroken. You know, we have hope. You know, we have dreams to have a family, and this woman right now has stolen more than just that money,” said Palladino.
She said they won’t let this situation stop them from moving forward.
“The good news is that she (the surrogate mother) is pregnant, and so that brought joy. So, yeah it’s just been, it’s definitely been up and down,” said Palladino.
A Utah family who used a surrogate to have their baby said they are also out thousands.
Little baby Monroe Trost came into the world three months ago.
“It was a wild ride, lots of different emotions,” Ashley Trost said. “I get really tearful because I didn’t think I would ever get the opportunity to be a mom.”
Ashley Trost knew since she was 15 years old, when she battled uterine cancer, she wouldn’t be able to carry.
“Like our fertility doctor said, we’ve got all the ingredients. We just don’t have the oven,” she said.
So with the help their support system, Ashley and husband Conner Trost saved up for a surrogate.
“To get her here was quite the journey, and I just think about love. There was a lot of love that went into getting her here,” Conner Trost said.
The Trosts used SEAM to manage the $80,000 in financial transactions during the surrogate process.
Two weeks ago, Ashley Trost said she got an email from the owner of SEAM, saying that due to legal action, all operations have been placed on hold, including payments, and was unable to provide further details.
“I Just got this pit in my stomach like and I knew, right away, it clicked that something was off,” Ashley Trost said.
“Essentially the company’s disappeared overnight. It’s frustrating,” Conner Trost said.
Angela Haymond is the Trosts’ surrogate, and a week ago on the final bill reimbursem*nt, she also got payment delay messages from SEAM.
“To take advantage of a vulnerable group of people who have scraped and saved every penny so that they can have a family just makes me absolutely sick,” Haymond said.
This is the fourth time Haymond has been a surrogate, and she said she has never seen this before.
“Everyone just needs their money back; it’s as simple as that,” she said.
For the Trosts, Monroe is here, and while they’re out $5,400, they fear others who haven’t delivered yet are out so much more,
“it’s vulnerable to come on here and just talk about it, and I just want to make sure people are protected,” Ashley Trost said.
Texas-based attorney Andrew Bluebond represents a couple in Austin, Texas in a similar situation to the Palladinos and Trosts.
Bluebond said the family he represents is also out thousands of dollars. He said by talking to people and investigating the situation, it’s clear that the owner, Side, was not managing the money.
“They were not in individual accounts for them, and it’s not even clear they were in any kind of meaningful order. It looks like the funds that were being shown to the parents through their portal and the balances that were being shown were not accurately representative of the accounts,” he said .
He also mentioned Florida attorney Zachary Eisne of Miami, who filed a lawsuit on June 18 in New York on behalf of Side’s creditors. That document showed Side was loaned more than $600,000 with a high interest rate. It carried on to say Side now owes close to $1,000,000.
“What I would call a payday business loan for her company, for her companies. Frankly, she defaulted on those loans in very short order,” Bluebond said .
He said not everyone might be able to make a claim against SEAM.
“Who knows how much money is left, but there are other people that were involved in this process of their surrogacy, and those parents should start looking at all of the relationships they had, agencies that they worked with, and try to understand how those agencies referred them to SEAM,” said Bluebond.
Other agencies, like SurrogacyFirst, are speaking out about the ongoing struggles with which these families are now faced. Jeffrey Hu, one of the co-founders, said all the families are victims.
“This is not a, let’s say, surrogacy-specific incident, but it’s really a fraud and a crime going on,” said Hu.
He said there is no way these families could have known this would have been the outcome, especially since SEAM had been around for 10 to 12 years.
“In hindsight, if you look at the size of the company and what they are doing, and the volumes, that it would potentially be risky for a one-person kind of company and not a bigger financial kind of institution that could hedge the risk better,” said Hu. “That being said, you know, more professional escrow companies would have a multi-banking system. Even if one account or one bank, you would never be in jeopardy or not getting paid.”
Hu said that regardless, families should not let this unthinkable situation stop them from having a family.
“Our goal is to help you start a family. Our objective is to make sure that you have a smooth journey, and just like any complicated process that deals with medical, deals with lawyers, deals with medical clinics, and people, there’s always going to be something going on that’s going to be challenging,” he said. “In this specific case, it’s very, very unfortunate that there was escrow that decided that, at this time, they were going to do something fraudulent.”
SEAM has not responded to requests for comment.
Copyright 2024 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. WWSB and CNN Newsource contributed to this report.
