It permits paying a baby broker to match a would-be parent with a vulnerable mother.

But Bodine is moved by the adoptive mother's anguish when the baby girl is kidnapped and the baby broker demands an additional $10,000 for her return.

The Kirkendalls, the Clintons, walk away with bouncing boys--and their baby broker collects the fees, divvies up the rest of the shares.

Unpaid surrogacy is still legal but there will be little profit in it for the baby brokers, who will have to find a new way of making a dollar.

To build up a book of clients, baby brokers must spend their first 24 months cold calling, 12 hours a day.

I've had fingers pointed at me as a baby broker.

When told of the plea deal and the sentence the baby brokers face, one of their former customers, Sara Kruchkow, seemed disappointed.

Key to that business are jaladoras, as the baby brokers are called locally.

The baby brokers were taken away by the authorities and later released.

But he may have acted as a baby broker before, Mr. Grilli said.