T hree cribs stand empty in the unused bedroom of Suann Hibbs' Edina home, and the closet is full of unworn baby clothes.
Sad reminders, Hibbs says, of her broken dream of bringing home three orphans from Guatemala to raise as her daughters.
She spent three years and thousands of dollars on what she thought were legitimate adoption expenses. Instead, Hibbs says, she discovered a trail of lies, altered birth records and evidence that a Guatemalan family was paid to turn over three children to an unscrupulous baby broker.
"It was heartbreaking that I had been so deceived when I was trying to do something good," said Hibbs, a longtime flight attendant for Northwest Airlines.
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She is one of thousands of Americans who each year wade into the sometimes treacherous waters of international adoption. It is a world where greed, fraud and child-trafficking often intersect with the good intentions of people looking for orphans to raise as their own.
Adoption-related payoffs and even kidnapping have cropped up in Vietnam, Cambodia, China, India and Liberia in recent years. Some countries temporarily stopped international adoptions to clean up the process. U.S. officials are hoping a newly implemented treaty will rein in abuses, but critics say the new system still isn't sufficient to root out problems.
It's impossible to know how many children have fallen prey to corrupt operators in America or abroad. While the federal government tracks foreign adoptions, it doesn't report how many go bad.
Cleaning up the business could be difficult. In Minnesota, which has the highest rate of international adoptions in the country, some families have encountered little but grief in their quests to bring home children.