List of international adoption scandals

The following is a partial list, by year, of notable incidents or reports of international adoption scandals, adoption corruption, child harvesting, baby-stealing, legal violations in international adoption, or adoption agency corruption (see child laundering; child trafficking: "In the United States international adoptions are a big business, where many private international adoption agencies are paid on average $30,000 a time to find a child for hopeful parents."
2020.
The United States Department of Justice in August 2020 charged three women in Ohio for their alleged roles in "schemes to corruptly and fraudulently procure adoptions of Ugandan and Polish children through bribing Ugandan officials and defrauding U.S. adoptive parents, U.S. authorities, and a Polish regulatory authority."
2019.
The then-serving assessor of Maricopa County, Arizona, Paul D. Petersen, was accused of running an illegal adoption scheme where he recruited, transported, and offered payment to dozens of pregnant women from Marshall Islands to give their babies up for adoption in the United States over the course of three years. Adoptions between the US and Marshall Islands are banned by an agreement between the two countries.
2017.
Ethiopia indefinitely suspended, and later banned, all adoptions to the United States.
2001.
This followed investigations by a local human rights group and the Phnom Penh Post exposing baby-buying and abduction through Lauryn Galindo's adoption operations, as well as others. In 2004, Galindo pleaded guilty to federal charges and was sentenced to 18 months in prison and also ordered to forfeit more than $1.4 million in property in Hawaii.