Adoptive couple says they were scammed by New Jersey couple

SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY, CA

He isn't even two weeks old, but little Zachary Micheline is at the center of a legal battle that put his dad in jail.

"I never once had any intention of selling a baby. Ever, and that's what they're saying," Shaun Micheline said.

Micheline faces multiple felony charges including grand theft in what some are calling an adoption scam.

They didn't want to appear on camera, but the couple who agreed to adopt Zachary say Shaun and his girlfriend Sandy convinced them to help them move from New Jersey.

Sandy says it was the other way around, and that the adoptive parents urged them to make the move to California.

"They were all, we'll help you with Christmas; we'll help you with whatever you need, so they're the ones that wanted us out there," Sandy Boucher said.

The adoptive mother says over three and a half months, she and her husband spent more than $20,000 on the couple in the hopes of adopting the baby, but Shaun says he never demanded that kind of money.

"She spent $17,000 the first two days she flew to New Jersey, okay? That was their choice," he said. "If I needed something, I'd email her and say, 'Hey, I need a gallon of milk, can you put five dollars on our card?' She'd put two or three-hundred dollars on our card,"

The real problems began two months before giving birth to Zachery, when Sandy told Shaun she changed her mind about giving up the baby. When Shaun tried to explain this to the adoptive mother, he says she threatened him.

"If you guys back out, my husband's not a stupid man. He will press charges against you. You will go to jail, and Sandy will be deported for this," Shaun said.

Sandy, who was born in France, said she tried to stick with the plan until a critical moment.

"What other choice? Getting deported, Shaun going to jail cause of all the money she put into it already, so I said okay fine I will go along with it. Then the baby came in the hospital, and I wasn't supposed to see him, and I saw him," she said.

"At the end of the day, on March 13, Sandy said, 'you know what, I need my son. I cannot live without him.' And now it's all on me," Shaun said.

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