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AnnaMaria Gallozzi and her husband wanted to have a second child last year. Because Gallozzi has advanced breast cancer, the couple sought out a surrogate who could carry their baby.
They used crowdfunding and took out a second mortgage on their home to scrape together $100,000 to pay for the procedure, setting $55,000 aside in what they thought was a safe escrow account. Then they began the delicate process of transferring an embryo to the woman that would hopefully carry and deliver their baby.
Two months later, before the procedure was successful, the money disappeared.
“Instantly, my heart just kind of stopped,” Gallozzi, who lives in Austin, Texas, said of the moment she learned the account was drained. Her hopes of expanding her family seemed to vanish with the money.
Like thousands of other couples who have navigated the intensely intimate, complex and almost entirely unregulated process of surrogacy, Gallozzi and her husband had placed those funds in escrow. They used a company that specialized in an obscure but vital component of the business: managing the large sums of...
