The State : 2 Jailed in Adoption Ploy

Two young people from Guerneville have been arrested and charged with grand theft for selling what they said was their unborn child to two childless couples. Two undercover Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies posing as parents also wanting to adopt babies arrested Edwin N. Tonkin, 23, and Leann M. Wild, 21, after they agreed to sell them their unborn child. Tonkin and Wild were booked on the grand theft charges and placed in the Sonoma County Jail in Santa Rosa with bail set at $10,000 each. A couple from Guerneville had paid Tonkin and Wild $3,580 in advance to cover living expenses during Wild’s alleged pregnancy, a sheriff’s spokesman said, adding that the would-be parents previously had sold their unborn baby to another Sonoma County couple, who agreed to a similar arrangement. The scam unraveled, the spokesman said, when Wild, who has not been determined to be pregnant, refused to take a pregnancy test requested by one couple.