Natalie and Austin Jantz have a classic love story. They went to the same California high school, and, after a reintroduction by mutual friends years later, got married in September 2022. But when they were ready to start their family, Natalie discovered she was unlikely to conceive.
“We actually found out the week of our wedding, a doctor told us to plan for plan B,” Natalie said. “And I was like, well, what's plan B?”
Plan B was in vitro fertilization. Though after years of failed treatments, nothing seemed to work. The situation weighed on the young couple.
“It was a lot watching all of our friends take the next step into parenthood, and whether it's social media or anyone around you just posting pregnancy announcements,” she said.
Natalie joined support groups and went to therapy, and said that “the last five years has been grief and surviving.”
Finally, they turned to adoption through a Utah agency, Brighter Adoptions, run by Sandi Quick. It was their last door into parenthood.
The experience, however, left them $47,000 poorer and without a child. It also exposed a web of operational negligence by Quick, leaving the Jantzes vulnerable to an adoption scam that cut across the country. According to documents and data shared with KUER, at least 14 other families had similar experiences with Brighter Adoptions.
Long seen as the “Wild West” of adoption, Utah has a reputation for adoption tourism. It’s been shaped by lax oversight, sums of money directed toward birth mothers, many of whom come from vulnerable communities or live in poverty, and a pro-family culture formed by the ubiquity of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the state.
It’s a reputation that lawmakers are working to change.
In July 2024, the Jantzes contacted Evermore Adoption Consultants, a Florida-based firm that serves clients nationwide. After a lengthy approval process, including a home study to ensure they were fit to be parents, Evermore set them up with Quick’s agency in June 2025. Soon after, she found the Jantzes a match and sent a contract requesting a fee of around $47,000.
Adoption is not cheap. Prospective families are expected to pay a matching fee that can range in the tens of thousands, depending on the agency. The money covers medical expenses, legal fees and living costs, like rent or groceries, for a birth mother.
Brighter Adoptions specified that their matching fee was non‑refundable.
The first two matches Quick lined up for the Jantz family fell through. This is called a disruption, and usually means the birth mother decided not to place her child for adoption. When this occurs, Brighter Adoptions would roll the money over to the next possible match.
The third match, in September, was, in Natalie Jantz’s words, a “perfect case.” Quick explained to them that the birth mother lived in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and was pregnant with twins due in February of 2026. “I remember like it was yesterday,” Jantz said of the day she received a text saying she had been matched.
“It was a very surreal moment.”
Over the course of her pregnancy, the birth mother sent both Jantz and Quick ultrasounds, and in text messages to Jantz called them “your babies.”
On Feb. 20, as the couple drove to the hospital in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, the morning the woman was supposed to give birth, Jantz received a text from Quick.
“I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this before…” it read. The birth mother had just informed Quick that the doctors had put off her Cesarean section for the third time.
The Jantzes pulled into a snowy parking lot. Their rented pickup was filled with car seats, a stroller and baby clothes. They stared at the phone in stunned silence.
“So this is most likely a scam,” Natalie Jantz wrote back.
“No idea…” Quick responded.
Within 24 hours, the Jantzes flew home to California.
Three days later, Quick sent a mass email to families still waiting to adopt a child that said “circumstances have made it impossible” to continue, and Brighter Adoptions was shutting down. The blame, she said, was a shifting legal landscape and changes in Utah about bringing in mothers, like the new reform law passed this year. She apologized for the financial strain it would cause families with unfulfilled contracts.
“The second I read that email, I was like, ‘son of a bitch,’” Jantz said.
“There’s no way, because – you can’t tell me you’ve been doing this for 20 years and you’re that perplexed at this situation.”
The Jantz’s financial capacity to become parents is drained, and Natalie said it is unlikely to be in their future. The unused car seats and stroller now sit in their garden shed, gathering dust.
According to data shared by Evermore Adoption Consultancy, more than a dozen other families that it connected with Brighter Adoptions were unable to complete an adoption before the closure, with more than $575,000 in non-refundable fees paid to Quick that did not result in a child. Since her email, none of the families KUER spoke with have heard from Quick, despite repeated attempts to make contact. As for the money they paid, it’s effectively gone.
“Families are frustrated,” Evermore founder Kristin Van Hof said, adding that some families blame them.
Her business’s relationship with Quick started well, she said, with several families matched and completed before “it just crumbled real quick.”
According to Evermore, the families working with Brighter Adoptions reported early disruptions, which first signaled to Van Hof that something was wrong.
They expect about a 10% disruption rate, Van Hof said. By October, they noticed a sharp increase tied to Brighter Adoptions.
“We had 14 with Sandi alone in 18 months. Well, keep in mind that was as of December. We have had more since December come up,” Van Hof said.
That was around double the combined total from the other 30 agencies Evermore works with nationwide.
Adoptive families generally receive a financial breakdown of how their money is spent. None of the families who talked to KUER received this information from Quick.
They said it left a question mark over how much of their money was spent — or lost. Some adoptive families believe Quick may have deliberately matched them with mothers likely to disrupt to secure match fees, then rolled costs into new matches that might have required fewer services and were therefore less expensive. With no clear financial breakdown, they said there was no way to know if, on what or where their money was spent.
The Jantz family experienced three disruptions in six months. KUER investigated their third and final disruption and found several areas where Quick failed in her role as an agency. One potential red flag came in the days leading up to the due date when the Jantzes flew to Pennsylvania to meet the birth mother and take her to lunch.
“She gets there, and we both did double takes, because she did not look nine months pregnant with twins,” Natalie Jantz said.
“She barely looked six months pregnant with one.”
The birth mother had been communicating with Quick both directly and through a hospital social worker who identified themselves as Dionna Washington. In fact, it was Washington, communicating only via text, who told Quick that “Mom has changed her mind,” according to a screenshot of the message from the day of the disruption.
Pennsylvania requires social workers to have a state license, yet no record of Dionna Washington appears in the official verification database. With the help of a retired FBI special agent and private investigator, Greg Rogers, KUER traced the number and found it wasn’t registered in the U.S. He said it was likely generated with an internet phone app that allows users to create local numbers to send texts.
KUER was able to contact the birth mother involved via text, but is not naming her. When asked why she disrupted the day she was supposed to give birth, she originally said, “things got really weird” between her and Quick, but this has not been substantiated. In time, she admitted that while she was pregnant with twins, she was never due in February. Instead, she was due months later.
Documents sent by the birth mother to a different out‑of‑state adoption agency, and obtained by KUER, show doctored dates on hospital visit summaries. The late‑stage ultrasounds sent to Quick and the Jantzes don’t seem to show twins, and key details like the time, date and name of the patient were cropped out.
Other agencies and adoption advocates said all of these raise red flags that agencies like Brighter Adoptions should catch early.
In those texts with KUER, the birth mother said she received “about $20,000” for expenses from Quick during her match with the Jantz family.
Other families reported similar experiences with Brighter Adoptions. Two were matched with Nevada birth mothers months after the state passed a law in June 2025 penalizing unlicensed agencies. Brighter Adoptions was not licensed there. Quick said she was unaware of the law change, and both matches later fell through.
Quick has been the subject of other controversies, including a 2020 lawsuit in which a child was adopted without the father’s knowledge, despite a legal marriage to the birth mother. In a deposition, it was revealed that Quick failed to do her due diligence and confirm the marital status. The father was priced out of the legal battle, and the case was dismissed.
Still, there are dozens of glowing online reviews for Quick and her agency. One birth mother described her as “a godsend.” Another adoptive parent said she was the “ultimate person at helping all sides.”
After several requests, Quick declined an interview for legal reasons but did address some of the issues raised via text.
In the 12 months leading up to her business closing, Quick wrote that “nothing changed other than business slowed way down.” She also said other Utah adoption advocates campaigned heavily against her and skewed the public’s view of her operations.
Quick also wrote she “would never intentionally" match someone like the Pennsylvania birth mother to the Jantzes and that she believes those who scam adoptive parents “should be punished.”
Adoption is a tricky thing to investigate. Cases, like what the Jantz family experienced, cross multiple state lines. At least 10 families have filed complaints with the FBI and the Utah Attorney General’s Office about their dealings with Brighter Adoptions.
In one of her final texts, Quick wrote that if a birth mother places a child, there’s “a happy family and a heartbroken mom.” If she doesn’t, the feelings are reversed, but “the agency is always in the middle.”
“The agency is damned if they do and damned if they don’t,” she said.
But families who poured their life savings into becoming parents have been left with heartache, debt and empty nurseries. That money was non-refundable, and Brighter Adoptions still got paid.
