Poverty, Corruption Fuel Romanian Baby Trade

June 8 -- Imagine selling your child to the highest bidder — and getting away with it. For many Romanian families, it's not a nightmarish fantasy, but a common strategy for survival.

In a country whose capital was once known as the "Little Paris" of Eastern Europe, the illegal sale of babies has become a multimillion-dollar enterprise, sanctioned in some cases by corrupt public officials.

After years under the heel of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Romanians have struggled to get by in one of the poorest nations in Europe. The average salary is less than $1,000 a year, and an increasingly popular way to make a living is the sale of babies to brokers who make them available for international adoption.

Bargain Basement Babies

Adoption agencies have been accused of paying birth parents to sign away their parental rights, sometimes approaching the birth mothers while they are still in the maternity ward.

"I myself have been offered, by a mother, a child for $1,000," says missionary Michelle Kelly, who runs a private orphanage in the northwestern city of Oradea.

Posing as prospective adoptive parents, 20/20 reporters found Romanian parents offering to sell their babies for even less than $1,000.

Kelly, who came to Romania three years ago from North Carolina, claims it is not just parents and orphanage directors who profit from such illegal sales.

She alleges that corruption and kickbacks occur at all levels of the adoption business in Romania. And she says she received death threats after she alerted the U.S. Embassy to her suspicions about such corruption.

Simple, Cheap and Quick

In the city of Pitesti, 20/20 correspondent Tom Jarriel and producer Janice Tomlin visited a couple who reportedly supplied babies to a local orphanage director for $1,000 per child.

Their apartment building was dingy and dark. A sleepy, unshaven man greeted the Americans, whom he assumed from the outset were interested in babies.

Though his wife was absent, he offered to sell a 2-month-old baby named Mihai for the equivalent of $700.