Prosecutors say the baby was apparently part of an illegal adoption ring that ensnared destitute young Mexican women trying to earn more for their children and childless Irish couples desperate to become parents.
Life seemed to give Karla Zepeda a break when a woman came to her dusty neighborhood of cinderblock homes and dirt roads looking for babies to photograph in an anti-abortion ad campaign.
The woman asked to use the 15-year-old’s baby girl in a two-week photo shoot for $755 ($10,000 pesos), a small fortune for a teen mother who earns $180 a month at a sandwich stand and shares a cramped, one-story house with her disabled mother, stepfather, and three brothers.
But 9-month-old Camila wasn’t just posing for photographs when she was taken away.
Jalisco state investigators say the child was left for weeks at a time in the care of an Irish couple who had come to Ajijic, a town of cobblestone streets and gated communities 37 miles (60 kilometers) away, thinking they were adopting her.
Prosecutors say the baby was apparently part of an illegal adoption ring that ensnared destitute young Mexican women trying to earn more for their children and childless Irish couples desperate to become parents.
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