Orson Mozes response

The story in the San Antonio Express News was titled Adoption Executive Leads Legacy of Complaints Adoption Services Associates located in San Antonio. Orson Mozes was not referenced or his opinion included in the story. In this document, Mozes comments are in red.

In a lawsuit filed in March, the nonprofit agency accuses its former director of international adoptions of failing to disclose medical problems of children to adoptive couples, mistreating and threatening prospective parents, separating siblings without informing the adoptive parents, and costing the agency $300,000 in damages.

All medical problems had to be disclosed to parents. The parents saw medicals on each child. If he mistreated parents and threatened them then why did Adoption Services Associates work with him for ten years? If he knew about siblings he would work hard to keep them together and inform the parents.

During three years, according to the lawsuit, Adoption Services Associates "received at least one complaint a week, every week, calculating to approximately 156 complaints," against the international adoption director, Orson Mozes.

He worked with Adoption Services Associates for 10 years but if they received all the complaints in only the last three years don't you think as a reputable agency they would have separated from him? Isn't it odd that in the first seven years there were no complaints? Alternatively, could it be that all these bogus complaints came in just as Adoption Services Associates was looking to file a lawsuit against him. The lawsuit was filed right after Orson got Adoption Services Associates accredited in Russia. Convenient timing was it not?

Mozes, one of the leading brokers of foreign adoptions in the United States, handled foreign adoptions for ASA for 10 years before agency director Linda Zuflacht fired him in March. Based in Santa Barbara, Calif., Mozes continues to coordinate foreign adoptions as the international director of Life Adoptions International.

Orson Mozes was "fired" only after Mozes spent several years working to get Adoption Services Associates accredited to work in Russia. Mozes worked as an independent contractor due to his vast knowledge of the International adoption process, paid his own rent, overhead, and employee salaries. When Mozes was out of his office 5 men appeared and ordered everyone out of his office. They took his computers and files and loaded them up in a U Haul and drove them all to Texas. They also served Orson with a lawsuit that same day. Many clients were in the middle of adoptions and many of them were very upset. For they had every right to be, the man they trusted was just fired without cause, to boost the bottom line.

Mozes declined to respond to Zuflacht's charges in several requests for an interview. He referred questions to his lawyer, who also declined to respond.

Mozes did call the reporter at the San Antonio News Press one Paul Radu but his calls were left un-returned If you ask Mozes his reasons today for not responding to Zuflacht's felonious charges he will tell you the same thing today as he would have then. "To dignify the accusations and lies, would only bring hurt to the families he had helped while believing in the company he was working with at the time."

In the Adoption Services lawsuit, Zuflacht said one adoptive couple was threatening to sue her after adopting three siblings from Russia through Mozes. "The three children have a 17-year-old sister who was left behind in Russia. The older sister was viewed as a parental figure to the three younger children. The adoptive couple claims (Mozes) was aware of the older sister and proceeded with the adoption and subsequent separation of the children without advising them," the suit claims. "This separation has caused the three children to be hostile and violent with the couple."

The parents wanted the three children removed from their home, according to the lawsuit, contributing to the growing problem of disrupted adoptions from Eastern Europe.

Mozes never knew about the older girl until the other three were adopted. He did tell Adoption Services Associates about this and even told them that the people in Russia would help do this adoption for no fee so the siblings could be together, but Adoption Services Associates declined to handle this issue and later accused Mozes of not dealing with it, written documents support this.

Zuflacht says in her complaint that adoptive couples spend $10,000 to $12,000 in countries where they are adopting children to cover legal work, government fees, drivers, translators and gifts to orphanages. On top of that, Mozes received $7,000 per placement, and parents paid Adoption Services Associates $1,750 or $3,500 in fees, depending on the age and needs of the adopted child.

Zuflacht had her own contract for every adoption and the couples paid her themselves with a check made out to her company.

Zuflacht said the money parents spent overseas disappeared without an accounting from Mozes.

"Without such an accounting, ASA is unable to verify whether these cash amounts are being spent to further adoptions and help the orphanages, or whether it is taken by Defendant," the lawsuit says.

Adoption Services Associates is a non profit agency and all of the money in America and abroad has to be strictly accounted for to the IRS.

Financial records on file with the Internal Revenue Service do not show any gifts or donations made to orphanages by Adoptions Services Associates between 1997 and 1999. As a nonprofit organization, ASA is required to make the records available to the public.

The financial reports show ASA earned $1.79 million to $1.97 million a year between 1997 and 1999. As the executive director, Zuflacht earned between $70,000 and $158,000 a year for running the agency and providing legal services to adoptive parents. In 1996, Mozes and Adoption Services Associates were temporarily banned from performing adoptions in Romania, according to a former Romanian Adoption Committee official who asked to remain anonymous.

The former official said Mozes tried to adopt a Romanian orphan for a Mexican couple, which was illegal because Mozes was working for a U.S. agency and Mexico is a "children donor" country like Romania. Parents in children donor countries are not supposed to adopt foreign children, because the countries already are overburdened with orphans awaiting adoption.

As a representative of Adoption Services Associates, Mozes inquired about doing an adoption for a Mexican couple in Romania and was told it could not be done. Mozes has no knowledge that Adoption Services Associates was ever banned from doing adoptions in Romania.

Several parents contacted by the San Antonio Express-News said they had complaints about their experience with Mozes and Adoption Services Associates, but they asked to remain anonymous out of concern for their children.

One woman said she and her husband tried to adopt a Russian girl through Mozes this year after seeing the girl's picture on Mozes' Web site.

"Before I dialed the phone I prayed, 'Lord, make it clear if we are to work with this agency.' My hands shook as I dialed the phone. I was calling to say, 'Yes, she is our daughter.'

"Before I even finished getting the words out of my mouth, this man - the agency director - demanded that we immediately Federal Express three checks to three separate addresses totaling a very large amount of money if we wanted them to hold this child for us," the woman wrote in a lengthy Internet message, which she verified in a telephone interview.

"I began to question him about the large amount of money (that we didn't have) and the three separate addresses," she said. "He became irate. He yelled and called me names and his final words were, 'Somebody will pay this much for that little girl!' Slam! He hung up the phone."

Adoption Services Associates fired Mozes soon after the incident. The couple said they subsequently had similar problems trying to arrange the adoption with Zuflacht.

In the approximately 1000 adoptions Mozes has done for Adoption Services Associates Mozes has tried to treat people with love and respect. He would never slam down the phone or yell at anyone or call people names. He has also never had three separate addresses to send checks to. However, the bigger picture is that if these lies were true, how in the world did Mozes manage 1000 adoptions, without complaint! Ask yourself this question, the answer is clear. Adoption Services Associates with their new Russian accreditation no longer needed Mozes help, or to pay for his services which no doubt would cut into their earnings. We all know the only cheap way out of a 10-year business association without liability is to create doubt through slander! Is it any wonder that over 25% of the NPO adoption agencies today are being investigated as to the truth of their NPO status. We ask only that you let the truth speak for itself!