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Woman guilty of selling children in exchange for cockatoo

25 February 2010 [18:43] - TODAY.AZ
A woman in America has admitted selling two children in her care in exchange for $175 and a pet cockatoo.
'It was a really clumsy attempt at an adoption proceeding,' said Steve Sikich, an attorney for the woman, Donna Louise Greenwell. 'She was trying to help the children and get them situated.'

Greenwell, 53, was sentenced on Monday to 15 months of hard labour on two counts of 'sale of a minor'.

According to authorities, Greenwell called the buyers - Paul J. Romero, 46, and Brandy Lynn Romero, 27 - early last year after seeing a flyer they posted offering a cockatoo for sale, and offered to deliver the children for about $2,000 (£1,300). When the Romeros said they could not afford that, a deal was stuck for the bird, valued at $1,500 (about £975), plus cash.

The two children, a 5-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl, had been in Greenwell's custody for over a year when she sold them. The children had been 'abandoned to her care,' according to a lawyer for Greenwell, and neither the children's' mother or father could be found.

The $175 (about £113) was to cover the cost of an attorney to transfer custody of the children to the Romeros, Sikich said. The cockatoo was intended as a gift to Greenwell's granddaughter, he added.

The Romeros had previously pleaded guilty to two felony counts of sale of a minor child, but their five-year prison sentences were suspended in exchange for their testimony against Greenwell.


/Metro.co.uk/
URL: http://www.today.az/news/interesting/62530.html

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