Trusted Surrogacy Agency Vanishes Overnight With Millions in Client Funds

A Sudden Disappearance

The agency's owner, Megan Hall-Greenberg, 49, effectively disappeared — she deleted her social media accounts, and clients and employees say she hasn't replied to their messages since Dec. 3. Last week, FBI agents descended on Hall-Greenberg's home and the Camas, Washington, headquarters of Surro Connections, which was founded in 2010 and billed itself as a top-tier surrogacy agency with clients around the world. A neighbor said he saw FBI agents escort someone from the home into a car but wasn't sure of the person's identity.

The FBI is investigating a surrogacy agency in Washington state that shut down suddenly, leaving intended parents out of thousands of dollars and surrogates without compensation. She estimates that some 150 families may have had money in the company's in-house escrow system, totaling between $2 million and $5 million. An email came two days later: Surro Connections was "ceasing all operations" because of "financial and operational difficulties," Hall-Greenberg wrote to intended parents Dec. 5.

One intended parent, Mariana Klaveno, is missing $66,000. The Los Angeles actress had endured a 12-year fertility struggle and was just weeks away from her planned embryo transfer when everything collapsed. "I was able to call her cellphone when I had questions, and she was available — until suddenly she wasn't."

The Trust Factor

For families pursuing surrogacy, the process can be emotional and incredibly expensive. Intended parents often spend upward of $100,000, with large sums kept in escrow to compensate surrogates and cover their medical bills. For all parties involved, the journey depends on trust. Hall-Greenberg had spent years cultivating that trust through personal relationships with clients around the world.

Surro Connections, established in 2010, is owned and operated by Megan Hall, who is the mother of 3 beautiful children, 1 born through IVF, and has been a Gestational Surrogate for three other families as well. Her education and career experience of an MBA in both Business Administration and Accounting were not nearly as fulfilling as the work she does today with each family working with Surro Connections.

At Surro Connections, however, Hall-Greenberg used those scandals to persuade would-be parents to keep their escrow funds in-house, clients said. She assured them that the funds were kept separate and housed at a bank insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., according to an email viewed by NBC News. This approach proved fatally flawed when the company collapsed.

A Growing Pattern

Surro Connections is not the first surrogacy-related firm to be rocked by a scandal: In the last three years, there have been at least four instances in which keepers of surrogacy-related escrow accounts stole funds from hopeful parents. Most of those cases involved external escrow managers that held money for surrogacy agencies. Even so, the Society for Ethics in Egg Donation and Surrogacy, a nonprofit that releases standards for surrogacy and egg donation, still advises that a third party hold the escrow to protect intended parents and surrogates.

Agents have also interviewed Surro Connections' former employees, who abruptly lost access to their company email and records systems a day before it shut down. "Some intended parents had just funded a night before this happened," Shaffer said, adding: "A lot of them have taken out savings to be able to afford this journey."

The Aftermath

The collapse has left pregnant surrogates without compensation and intended parents scrambling to secure their ongoing surrogacy arrangements. Some families are now crowdfunding to pay their surrogates directly, while others face the heartbreaking possibility of losing their chance at parenthood entirely.

"Nobody arrives at surrogacy having had an easy go of it. Everybody comes here having had difficulties and losses," she said. This reality makes the betrayal particularly devastating for families who had already endured years of fertility struggles before trusting their life savings to an agency that promised to make their dreams come true.

The investigation continues as federal authorities work to unravel what happened to millions in client funds. For the surrogacy industry, this scandal highlights the urgent need for stronger regulatory oversight and mandatory third-party escrow protections that could prevent vulnerable families from losing everything in their quest to build their families.