ANGELINA Jolie’s son Maddox may not have been an orphan like the actress once claimed, the agent who investigated a Cambodian “baby buying” scandal told The Sun in an exclusive interview.
The Hollywood actress was one of hundreds of American parents to use adoption facilitator Lauryn Galindo, who may have made millions of dollars from her “baby laundering” empire and has been accused of routinely falsifying babies’ identities.
Now, former US Immigration and Customs agent Richard Cross, the lead investigator into one of the adoption scams, is breaking his almost 20-year silence to shed some light on the mystery surrounding Galindo’s dealings.
These include the use of “Stash Houses,” where babies were kept in squalor, with no water or food, and covered in urine and excrement, he claims.
Between 1997 and 2001, Galindo oversaw more than 800 adoptions out of 1,600 country-wide, including that of Maddox, who turns 20 on August 5.
Cross told The Sun exclusively: “I believe that the vast majority of children who were adopted from Cambodia were not ‘orphans’ as defined by the Immigration and Nationality Act.
“An orphan under US immigration law is a foreign-born child who does not have any parents because of the death or disappearance of, abandonment or desertion by, or separation or loss from, both parents or has a sole or surviving parent who is unable to care for the child, who has, in writing, irrevocably released the child for emigration and adoption.”
Prosecutors maintained that Galindo, a US citizen and former Hawaiian hula dancer, may have received as much as $9.2million from adoptive parents, according to claims made in her criminal proceedings.
In 2004, she received an 18-month sentence for visa fraud and money laundering, but has always expressed her innocence, refuting in a recent interview that she ran an unethical practice.
She told The Sun: “Every single day, I wake up and I want to dedicate my body, my speech, my mind, my actions, to doing the best I can to being a force for good.”
Galindo was adamant that Maddox wasn’t “stolen,” adding: “I have no reason to believe that there’s anything about Maddox. They were very careful, especially given his celebrity parent. I think that was double-checked, and I know that Angelina was not in the country during those investigations.”
Jolie backed this up at the time of Galindo’s being charged in 2003, saying: “I would never rob a mother of her child. I can only imagine how dreadful that would feel.”
The Sun has reached out to Galindo and Jolie’s rep for further comment, but did not hear back.
Cross was clear he wouldn’t discuss Maddox’s individual case, saying: “It would be unethical for me to speak individually about any of the 600 plus adoptive mothers who were also victims in this case without their expressed permission.”
His comments come as a new documentary, The Stolen Children, about adoptions in Cambodia will take a fresh look at whether Angelina’s son Maddox may have been stolen from his birth family.
Filmmaker Elizabeth Jacobs, 21, will be traveling to Cambodia later in the year and hopes to get answers about her own adoption, which may help to better understand hundreds of others around that time, including Maddox.
Cross’ story began in March 2002 when he and his colleague, special agent Rick Deasy, were sent to Cambodia – and it didn’t take long for it to become a criminal investigation into Galindo, who oversaw most of the Third World nation’s adoptions.
He said: “The term ‘baby laundering’ to us meant that the true identity of a baby was totally being replaced with a fictitious identity solely for the purpose of an international adoption.
“The baby lost its true name, place of birth, date of birth, and any information about its living relatives in Cambodia. Their actual biographic information was thus changed for forever.
“This made finding biological family members still living in Cambodia almost impossible.”
After raiding Galindo and sister Lynn Devin – who ran an adoption agency in Seattle – he said they found a disturbing pattern of “baby laundering”.
“We seized thousands of records. It was a game changer in the sense that we now had direct evidence of baby laundering. The worst cases involved baby switching, which were typically a result of a sick or a dead baby,” said Cross.
“These children were just products or pieces of meat to them.
“Their true birth identities and family histories were meaningless to the co-conspirators. It was a inhumane business. This is why we called it baby trafficking and baby laundering.”
He explained “baby helpers” would target poor rural villages, showing them pictures of recent adoptees in the US in “loving houses with loving parents and everything is fine.”
He said they’d be told: “When your child becomes an adult, you can come to the United States as an immigrant.
“But as soon as they’re declared orphans, there’s no immigration benefits for the birth parents.
“The birth mothers were victims too. The ones I interviewed all believed that they were giving their child a better life in Europe or the United States.
“None of them believed that they were going to lose contact with their child. This whole criminal case was about lies and tears shed. That is why we named it Operation Broken Hearts.
“Once they had located some potential people from their village, they would contact a baby buyer in Phnom Penh and the baby buyers, who were orphanage directors and drivers for Mrs Galindo’s organization, would come out and get the kids.”
Cross found only two genuine orphanages in Cambodia, where the children were a wide range of ages, the rest were primarily baby-storing facilities, the worst of which were “baby stash houses.”
Cross claimed Galindo would have been aware her babies were coming from these stash houses, but, according to her plea agreement, she admitted to “willful blindness” – a legal term meaning that a person knew exactly what was going on but purposely tried to stay uninformed about the details.
The “Stash houses’ ranged from very clean spaces to metal shipping containers containing decomposing dead human bodies.
After visiting a specific orphanage in March 2002, Cross explained: “There were no adults on the property.
“We dealt with a teenage male guard, who was our tour guide. There were many babies on the first floor of this building.
“The guard would not allow us to take photos of them. There were not cribs, formula, water, or food in sight. There was an abundance of human excrement, urine, filth, and trash spewed about the building. There were also no nannies present to take care of the babies.
“The closest person to being a nanny was a ten-plus year old girl holding one of the babies. Some of the babies were wearing clothing and others were naked. Many of the babies we observed had dried feces on their skin or clothing.
“Almost every time an adoptive family went to Cambodia, they carried with them $3,500 in crisp one hundred-dollar bills as a voluntary orphanage donation. It appeared that almost none of the voluntary orphanage donations ever made it to the ‘stash house.’
“It was only after raids on two stash houses that the US authorities put a temporary ban on all Cambodian adoptions and Galindo was arrested, her baby-selling empire by far and away the largest and most lethal in the war-torn country.
“Ms Galindo’s organization did exponentially more adoptions than all of the other facilitators combined. She was in a league of her own. No one else was ever like Ms Galindo in Cambodia.”
Now, retired and having successfully battled Stage 3 cancer, Cross has spoken to numerous adoptee “victims” and helps wherever he can.
“My heart will always be there for the child victims,” he told The Sun. “Since the case began in 2002, I have spoken privately with hundreds of the victims.
“They found me while I was a federal agent and now as a retiree. I still get emails, Facebook instant messages, and telephone calls from the victims.”
