The
Final Pecuniary Insult
“It’s
all about money ain’t a damn thing funny
You’ve
got to have a con in this land of milk and honey”
-Grand
Master Flash
Be
prepared for the onslaught as you read on. This is where you learn of Denise
Hubbard’s mercenary treatment of us, her heart still
hardened after all that had occurred.
Let me
remind you that at no time did Denise Hubbard or Richard J. Marco, Jr. ever
offer to have the “refund” for Cyril’s adoption transferred to Anguel’s
adoption. This would cause us no small financial strain in the months to
follow.
Mr. Marco had indeed said that we would need to take $3,500 with us to
Bulgaria. We borrowed that amount from Daniel’s father who lent us the
money with no strings attached.
We were under the impression that, since Mr. Marco did not mention any
more monies owed to BBAS in the United States, that the $3,500 would cover the
last of Anguel’s adoption expenses ($3,500 which BBAS should have waived — but didn’t).
This is the last email exchange we had with the Arch Liar herself, Denise
Hubbard. I don’t forgive this woman her greed, I don’t forgive her her
nastiness, I don’t forgive her for her outright LIES
that she had the audacity to tell us.
And I will never, ever forgive her for her uncaring attitude towards us or our
children.
Shouldn’t these emails have come directly from Richard J. Marco himself?
Weren’t we supposed to be dealing directly with him?
No, we were
dealing with a deceitful, dishonest buffoon whose main goal was to fleece us of
our cash. And then call it “adoption” when in reality it was child
brokering.
It should have started out civilly. On the morning of Sept. 11, the same
day we received our long-awaited travel date, Arch Liar Denise sent us the
following, concern-filled email:
Please
note that Atty Marco has sent you the original birth certificate of your son
and your travel itinerary this past Friday. In the packet it states
that you are to travel Oct 7-12. Our international reps have made it
possible for you to leave Sept 30, Arrive into Sofia October 1 and P/U your
child on Oct 2 and have your medical on Oct 3 and Embassy Appt on Oct 4 and
then you will leave to return to the U.S. on October 5. Is the earlier
date ok? Please advise as soon as possible. Also, it is
imperative that we receive via fax your travel intinerary.
“Our son.” Had she forgotten Anguel’s name? Was the earlier date okay? Of
course it was okay! (That was one of the only nice things BBAS did for us,
although we doubt that being nice to us was the real reason for it). We
immediately emailed her back that we would be working on rearranging our
itinerary and making our own hotel reservations.
We had not been informed of where we were to be staying in Sofia, so we assumed
we had to make our own arrangements to stay at a hotel of our choice.
Nothing
in BBAS’s literature had stated where we would be staying, and since we had never
asked for or received a breakdown of where our foreign fees were going, we had
no clue about what portion of our fee was applied to what.
Two days later we received the following from Denise. Why were we all of a
sudden being told this information? It might have been nice to know four
months previously about hotels where BBAS clients stay.
Was there some reason that we had not been supplied this important
information? Information they were being well compensated for?
You
do not have to make hotel reservations. The Hotel reservations have
already been made like I stated in my last note. We just need the travel schedule. The rep needs to know when your coming in to pick you up.
Also I need to know how many adults will be traveling and who they are so we
can prepare the rep.
Uh — reread her earlier email. Does she mention anything about hotel
reservations? Did she know anything, or was her new title
“Executive Head Liar?” My rage was only to escalate with the next
email exchanges — Denise is fortunate that Daniel was the one responding to
these.
Again, I realized a few things about human nature that I hadn’t before — namely, why I never before realized how imagining beating another human being
up would feel good.
Daniel responded: “That’s nice of you. We do want to know how much the
rates are…we can’t find it on their website. Also, we may want to keep the
other hotel reservations we’re looking at in case we want better
accommodations after we pick Anguel up. I trust Valeri and Vladimir would be OK
with that. So far, the only adults traveling are E and me.”
The next morning came this curt, snide email:
The
hotel rate is included in your adoption. This is not extra. The hotel is very nice. Also
fees are due. Prior to your leaving. The balance on your acct is
$5,000. $3,000 goes with you. $2,000 needs to come to BB.
I sat grasping my hands in rage. What was this crap?
Two weeks before we were
to leave we had to fork out another $2,000 to this child pimp? After what we
had been through! Greed at its lowest common denominator.
“Daniel, I will not pay that fee! We don’t have that kind of money!
We’re broke!” I said. By this time, I was a seething, raging lunatic.
He told me later he felt a dull pain in the pit of his stomach as this
happened.
“It was like,” he said, “being a soldier in war nearly won but realizing
that one more vicious battle needs to be fought. I had no anger, just
resignation. I wanted to get this over with as quickly as we could, to our
satisfaction. I wanted to bring Anguel home.”
He suggested that we look back at previous emails from October of 1999 where
Denise and I had discussed fees. This was before the MTX.A virus ate our
emails.
Sure enough, there was a mention of the fees owed.
But before Russia. And we
had never signed a contract with BBAS for Anguel’s Bulgarian adoption.
The
contract we signed with BBAS on March 18, 1999, page 2, Section 12: reads:
“DISCLAIMER: BBAS, Inc. will in its best efforts provide whatever medical
report that is given by the RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT and the orphanage
staff to the adoptive parents and cannot guarantee that the medical that is
given is total and complete.” Nowhere in that document does it say Bulgaria
or Bulgarian government.
And Valeri Kamenov had given me a receipt for $7,500 in Bulgaria which I had in
my possession.
What avaricious trip were these people on? How much were
Denise Hubbard, Richard Marco and Valeri Kamenov pocketing from this Bulgarian
child-selling operation?
Daniel emailed her back and asked her which hotel and a few questions about
their fees.
This was her response. How come we had never been informed about the
Hotel Rai 90 versus the Hotel Rotasar before? The Hotel Rai 90 was mentioned in some BBAS Bulgaria travel
literature, but no hotel was specifically stated as being the one we were to
stay at. Was this hotel getting some sort of kickback from Valeri per BBAS
client?
The
hotel fee you DO NOT have to pay. You will NOT be staying at the Hotel
Rai 90. You will be at the Hotel Rotasar. The hotel rate is
included in your adoption fee. You do not have to pay for lodging only
room service and any incidentals you have.
Contract
was signed by Mr. and Mrs. Case for $15,000
BB
Contract Fee
$2,000 – PAID 9/21/99
ID
FEE
$1,500 DUE TO BE PAID BY 9/19
Foreign
Source Fee $7,000 pd to Valeri 10/99
Child
documentation fee (Passport, birth records, birth certificate) $1,500 DUE TO
BE PAID BY 9/19
Orphanage
fee $3,500 DUE
TO BE PAID IN BULGARIA
Thank
you for pointing out the incorrect fees. Your balance is indeed $6,000
not $5,000.
The
note Atty Marco sent you was the fee owed to Mr. Kamenov for the Orphanage.
Also note I have forwarded this message to Atty Marco himself. Also
note the adoption cannot be processed without fees paid by 9/19. All
fees are to be paid. The intereray needs to be submitted as soon as
possible.
Head explosion time on top of heart palpitations. KA-BOOM! Of all nasty things
that fat-assed bitch in Medina had sent us, this one topped it.
I hate this shitty little email by this mendacious person. This was low.
This was taking us down and cramming things into every orifice of our bodies.
I don’t like bending over. I don’t like being fed shit and told
it’s chocolate.
My gut reaction was not to pay them one red cent and to tell
her to take her agency, cram it up her ass and give birth to it. And send
the proctologist’s bill to Richard J. Marco Jr., Esq.
“The adoption cannot be processed without fees paid by 9/19.” That was four
days away. Four days.
And what of this little comment “your balance is
indeed $6,000 not $5,000”? What sort of threat was this?
How come Denise didn’t even know how much extra Valeri was getting in
Bulgaria from clients — was he siphoning off $500? Was she?
If our emails were indeed being forwarded on to Richard J. Marco, whose email
address was being used? How come he wasn’t taking care of business on
his own? Couldn’t he see his client just was not up to it? Or would
Denise actually have had to pay him for handling the situation?
“These people do not deserve this money!” I yelled at Daniel. “We can’t
afford this! Another $3,000! What assholes! I can’t believe this!
We’ll go to Bulgaria on our own! Tell them that! Tell them that!”
Daniel, angry as well, told me “We’ll pay the fees. I don’t want to come
out of this looking worse than they do. Let me email them back, but we’ll
give them a date that we will be in Bulgaria. We’ll see what they
do.”
This is what he wrote back to her.
This
is news to us. Can you give us information on where this hotel is located
and the services it has available? This hotel has not been mentioned in
any of your previous communications. We need the appropriate contact
information so that our families may be able to contact us while we are in
Bulgaria.
After
a lengthy search through our records we have been unable to find a copy of the
contract we signed for Bulgaria with the specific due dates indicated below.
In fact, we were never given written or email documentation of the remaining
fee schedule for Bulgaria. Could you or the agency or your attorney
perhaps be of assistance in this matter?
We
do no have a receipt from Valeri indicating $7,500 paid on the above
date…October 4, 1999 to be exact. This is confusing. There is an “Orphanage Fee” in the fee schedule above.
How is this different?
It
has taken a considerable amount of time to rebuild our financial resources
after our trip to Russia last year. Our planning was based on the
information Mr. Marco gave us several weeks ago in response to our request for
all remaining fees. There is no way, shape or form in which we can make
this payment to you in the US until 9/22 at the earliest. Can you work
with us on this?
What
continued services are necessary besides those related to his American visa and
medical check up? To the best of our knowledge, the adoption is legally
complete.
The
travel agent is trying to wait until tomorrow as it is likely that cheaper
fares will be available. When we have an itinerary we will send it to you that minute.
I
can inform you, however, that we will be in Bulgaria on 9/30.
The response to the above? “Please note that Atty Marco will contact you via
phone or certified mail ref the messages below.”
I nearly called off from work to speak directly with Denise the mobster and
Rick her consigliere. Daniel held me back.
To this day, I wished he hadn’t. We should have let Mr. Marco do his
job — for once — and had it out with these imbeciles once and for all.
Interesting when we upped the ante, Denise went scurrying right into the arms
of her attorney. How cravenly she avoided what was washing up on her shore. We
should have pushed the issue and made them sweat. Made them pay the bill for a
telephone call and certified letter.
But make no mistake: we were not bluffing when we said we would be in Bulgaria
on Sept. 30.
If we had had to go to Burgas on our own and go to the local
police station to get Anguel out, we would have done so. We did, after
all, have the documentation that he was officially our son from the Bulgarian
courts.
We let them hang, and then Daniel said that we would send the money since we
had found the emails. On Sept. 19 I mailed a check for $3,000 out to Building
Blocks Adoption Services in Medina.
For ever letter “S” I found in Building Blocks Adoption Services, I placed
a dollar sign to make it “Building Block$ Adoption $ervice$,” and addressed
the envelope that way.
Out of everything, I resented this the most. I
hope that she choked on that check.
Denise wasn’t done with her blatant lies to us in email just yet. Next
was my very favorite, rub-it-in-their-wounds exchange.
Daniel was being kind (God knows why) in discussing the Hotel Rotasar. He
sent the following email to Denise right after the money issues:
BTW,
a little work with the search engines and then following links was able to
produce this site, which has all the information we requested. http://www.rotasar.ttm.bg
You
are right…it looks like a nice place and it is indeed very affordable.
Thought you might like to know so, if any future clients stay there, you can
give them the URL for info.
This response of Executive Arch Liar Denise Hubbard was like something out of The
Twilight Zone. Could the woman not stop lying? In the end, does she
really believe her lies are truths? Never have we encountered such a deceitful
person.
In fact, we have
given the link to all of our families including yourself. Thank You.
My
response to this: FUCK YOU.
We don’t recall ever receiving the URL to the Hotel Rotasar, nor her itineraries
to Bulgaria, nor the newsletter, nor the solicitation for children listed over
on Rainbow Kids, nor information about her gallbladder surgery and any other
information she had “given … to all of our families including yourself”.
Inept liars who couldn’t even run office cleaning businesses shouldn’t run adoption
agencies. She is living proof of that.
And she’s only in it for the babies and the children. Let’s repeat that one a hundred times. She ain’t in it for
the parents. Only our money.
Our trip to pick Anguel was without incident. Perhaps one day Daniel will
get around to writing that up.
We came home with him on Oct. 5, 2000. If you are
curious about that trip we would be happy to tell you all about it.