Chapter Forty

We began to wonder if this wasn’t all some sort of plot by Denise Hubbard and Richard J. Marco Jr. to get us to abandon Anguel’s adoption, to make examples of us for daring to complain to the state of Ohio.

Either way, they had our money, and their actions proved they didn’t care two cents about their clients OR the children they were placing.

The only thing they cared about was how much money they could make — and how much of it was going to build the Hubbards’ new dwelling (also in Medina Township, where they don’t have to pay local income tax).

Since we had the time and now had the growing inclination, we began to search to find where Denise had dug in the dirt and left traces of her malfeasance and duplicity.

We were greatly disturbed by the fact that Denise was roping prospective and ignorant clients from the photolistings.

This is something Denise had told me she would never do, yet here she was in her update to her clients, directing them over to Rainbow Kids, the Welcome Garden And Precious in His Sight to check out the latest batch of kids for sale.

Especially the boys! She was always on the lookout for making a quick sale of all those waiting males in orphanages!

There was a contradiction to this, of course. That summer, if you logged on to the BBAS website (www.bbas.org) and clicked on the icon “Children Available Gallery” the following message popped up on the page:

But, if you did indeed log on to the Internet photolisting sites mentioned above, Building Blocks was right behind AIAA and Angel’s Haven Outreach listing many, many children from Bulgaria.

As a matter of fact, I was able to identify two children from Burgas simply from the couch they were sitting on in their photo.

Was this all an Amrex doing? I also noticed several children from Kazakhstan and Russia listed as well with an i.d. number beginning with the letters “AM.”

I personally know of five clients who identified their children from Rainbow Kids photolisting. It does very heavy traffic.

The clients who identified their children from this site jumped in without understanding the Bulgarian process and the length of time it was taking.

Denise lied to these people. Of course, some of them will never admit to being lied to — some of them still regard her as “St. Denise” who got them their precious angels.

But their timelines were still misrepresentations. Once they made that first trip to Bulgaria, they weren’t going to change their minds.

And then there was a little matter of price increases since Denise signed on with Amrex. You wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t been a client as long as Daniel and I. Before they came down from their website, we printed out the page for Bulgaria.

Note the differences in price for their application fee, program fee, identification fee and documentation fee from August 1999 to August 2000. Their prices increased by $1,755. (This fee schedule is also at odds with what she led BBAS’s board of directors to believe it was at the time).

	August 1999	August 2000
Application Fee	$200 (we paid $150)	$275
BBAS Program Fee	$2,000	$3,000
I.D. Fee	$1,000	$1,500
Documentation Fee	$500 (we paid $680)	$680
Bulgarian Program Fee	$12,000 (we paid $11,000)	$12,000

We located a URL to the Hubbards’ former residence on findahouse.com, set up by Medina Ohio Real Estate and Homes for Sale by Owner. “Ohio Cape Cod on 2.1 acres in Lovely Medina Twp” the top line read.

Looks like the Hubbards were moving on up with Denise now trying her hand as a real estate agent!

Wasn’t this a piece of news for us? The home where I had visited her in May 1999 was now on the market for the asking price of $217,000.

A nice blurb about this home and its 2.1 acres described it as “a must-see property” with “2 plus acres landscaped, property offers seclusion, relaxation and location, location, location. This home offers 4 bedrooms, first floor master, 2 full baths, full basement, eat-in kitchen, family room, dining room, fireplace, security system, fire system, central vac hook-up, privacy, large play area for kids, pool, deck, out building, frogs, crickets, birds, ducks, etc…all the sounds of country living with the convenience of city amenities …email Denise Hubbard at…”

The property was not transferred until Oct. 4, 2001 at a price of $172,000. Seems that Denise did not get the profit she was looking for out their old dwelling.

The Hubbard’s newly built dwelling was a vast improvement from their former Cape Cod which had been built in 1988 with “love, care and lots of room for kids to roam.”

Their newly built home, which they moved into in the summer of 2000, was built in the City of Medina, painted yellow and green. Denise herself would later refer to it as a “giant succotash.”

According to Medina County tax records, this new building is valued at approximately $332,400, had almost 4,000 square feet of living space (Denise claims 5,000, unsurprisingly), a 624-square-foot garage, an open porch with 218 square feet, 3.5 bathrooms and a full basement.

They’d moved on up to that McMansion in the city. They’d finally got their piece of the pie.

Meanwhile, we still had no son. Just a tunnel that seemed to get longer the closer BBAS said we were to the end.

Angry people are resourceful people. It was during the month of July that Daniel and I began to look closely at Building Blocks to document the silencing lies Denise Hubbard told her clients.

We hit upon a plan: wouldn’t the Minister of Health and the Minister of Justice in Sofia be interested in just what went on during the adoption of their children to Americans — and who these children were being funneled through?

We were able to obtain the street addresses for both the Ministries of Health and Justice on the Internet. Right in plain view. In Bulgarian of course (our knowledge of Russian was still a plus).

Once again, we contacted Hudson-Neva, but this time, requested a translation into Bulgarian.

We wrote up our experience in Russia and all the “information” that BBAS was giving the US public, via the Internet, about Bulgarian children. Of particular interest would be the photolistings and the prices that BBAS charged for a Bulgarian Adoption.

This little translation cost us over $1,000, and every penny was well spent. Make no mistake: we would only mail this once Anguel was safely home.

The last thing we had heard from BBAS about Anguel’s paperwork process was in a terse, one-line email forwarded by Denise from Vladimir Kamenov.

Anguel’s court date would be June 13. Our documents had apparently cleared the Ministry of Justice. On June 9, we were informed by email that they had.

On June 14, we got another terse, one-sentence email: “Court case completed, Judge SHOULD sign off on case in approx. 14 days.”

However brief this was, at least Denise was upholding her end of the “agreement.” We were somewhat happy about this. We knew from the Building Blocks timeline that the judge had approximately 30 days to sign the decree declaring Anguel ours.

We should have been happier about this, especially since unlike some others waiting with other agencies at the same time, there had been no cancellation due to bomb threats.

But like everyone else adopting from Bulgaria we knew that it wouldn’t truly be over until we were on a plane with Anguel leaving for America. We allowed ourselves a few smiles at the most, and maybe a steak dinner one night.

A month later, and still no word on the court case (who knew if that had been canceled as so many other BBAS clients had been), we contacted Richard J. Marco, Jr., to inquire about it on July 14.

We received Mr. Marco’s response in the mail on July 27 assuring us that the judge had indeed signed the decree formalizing Anguel’s adoption; however, due to the summer months, there were many delays due to vacations.

He did say that we could be expected to travel “some time in late September, beginning of October.”

We would believe that when we saw it — and we did. We did indeed travel exactly in late September and came home in early October with Anguel. That is about the only true comment Mr. Marco ever made to us.

On July 29, we received the following, short email from the Bulgarian reps, forwarded on by Denise Hubbard: “Case — The court decree came in power. They are for a birth certificate.” No other information was given.