A Utah man who helped locate children in Samoa to be placed for adoption through a Wellsville agency was sentenced Tuesday to five years of probation and ordered to stay out of the adoption business for life.
Dan Wakefield, who worked with the now-defunct Focus on Children adoption agency, also was ordered by U.S. District Judge David Sam to make monthly contributions to a trust fund that will help adoptive Samoan children stay in touch with their birth parents.
Wakefield, 72, had pleaded guilty to five counts of aiding and abetting the illegal entry of an alien, a misdemeanor immigration violation.
Four defendants who admitted to the same violation were sentenced last week to probation. In addition, the agency, which ceased operations in summer 2007, pleaded guilty to a felony count of conspiracy and was ordered to officially dissolve.
The amount each defendant will pay into the trust fund will be decided at a hearing this spring.
Prosecutors alleged Samoan parents were tricked by the defendants into giving up their children, while adoptive American parents were falsely told the youngsters were orphans. They say relatives or friends in Samoa pushed the adoptions as a program that would educate children in the United States and return them at age 18.
A federal grand jury in Salt Lake City issued a 135-count indictment in the case in February 2007. As part of their deals with prosecutors, Wakefield and the other four pleaded to the misdemeanors and the rest of the charges were dropped.
