Expectant Parents and Their Surrogates Claim Wannabe Rapper Targeted Them in $10M Fraud Scheme (Exclusive)

Hearing her baby’s heartbeat for the first time during a June 10 ultrasound brought Marisa Iacuzzo to tears. 

“It was surreal,” she says — and a dream come true. 

For as long as she could remember, the 46-year-old medical sales rep from Orlando had wanted to become a mother. 

“I always envisioned having a family but was waiting for the right partner,” she says of her decision in 2017 to have her eggs frozen for use in IVF. 

But five years later, she was diagnosed with hormone-sensitive breast cancer and treated with surgery and radiation therapy. When her oncologist recommended that she not pursue IVF, which requires large doses of hormones, Iacuzzo explored other options.

Last year she made arrangements with a gestational carrier — a married 33-year-old mother of two in Florida — to carry an embryo formed with Iacuzzo’s egg and donor sperm. Finally, in the exam room this past June, she let out a sigh of relief when the doctor said her 6-week-old fetus was healthy. 

“I thought, ‘Everything’s going to work out,’” she says.

But Iacuzzo’s journey to motherhood took an unexpected turn just two days later when she received troubling news from Surrogacy Escrow Account Management (SEAM), the Houston-based firm that Iacuzzo and thousands of other intended parents have used for a decade to safely hold funds in reserve and disburse payments to their surrogates.

The escrow company said it was having trouble transmitting funds and days later announced that all transactions had been “put on hold.” Iacuzzo checked her account and was shocked to discover, she says, that the balance of the $50,000 she had deposited earlier this year to pay her surrogate had vanished. 

“It was a lot to stomach,” she says. “I’m not somebody who can just write $50,000 checks.”

Now Iacuzzo and her surrogate (who requests to remain anonymous) are among hundreds of victims of what could be an alleged multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud emotionally vulnerable would-be parents as well as the surrogates who have agreed to carry their babies.

A lawsuit filed in June on behalf of 34 families and individuals, including Iacuzzo, claims that SEAM owner Dominique Side allegedly “lured” victims into entering into a fiduciary relationship with the company in order to steal some $11 million in escrow funds.

The complaint alleges that Side spent her clients’ money to fund other businesses, invest in property, take lavish trips and further her career as an aspiring rap and R&B artist. In June the Houston Police Department launched an investigation into Side’s business practices that was later turned over to the FBI, which has set up an online portal for potential victims to register complaints about Side’s company.

The 44-year-old Side, who describes herself as a “serial entrepreneur,” previously told VoyageHouston that she has started “several multimillion-dollar businesses.” She also works as a music producer, rapper and singer.

Side has not been charged with any crime. When contacted by email, her automated response said that “under advice of counsel, I am not permitted to respond to any inquiries regarding the investigation.” 

Side has shut down SEAM’s operations, leaving her alleged victims in a desperate scramble to put together financing for new or amended contracts with their surrogates. 

“These families have already been through so much to even get to the point of hiring a surrogate to carry their babies,” says Houston attorney Marianne Robak, who, with law partner Lori Hood, filed the lawsuit. “To lose out on so much at this stage of their journey is devastating.” 

And for the surrogates who are also involved, the uncertainty of not knowing how and when they will be paid could not come at a worse time.

“This is so stressful,” says Iacuzzo’s surrogate, “especially on a new pregnancy.”

After being told by her doctor that IVF was no longer an option, Iacuzzo first considered adoption and then decided that surrogacy, in which she could participate in the pregnancy, was the way she would have her baby. In December 2022 she met with a consultant who eventually introduced her in Zoom calls to two surrogates. Iacuzzo says she was immediately interested in learning more about one of the gestational carriers. 

“She had a kindness and a trusting demeanor,” she says. “We had a strong connection.” 

As her lawyer was drawing up a contract and making the complicated arrangements for her surrogate to begin taking medications in preparation for the embryo transfer, Iacuzzo researched escrow companies online.

She was impressed by SEAM’s website, which had a video featuring Side touting the firm’s advantages. Every employee, including the owner, had once been a surrogate or experienced “third-party reproduction,” Side claimed. “It played on the right emotions,” recalls Iacuzzo, who borrowed $50,000 from her retirement fund and deposited it in a SEAM escrow account.

But six weeks into the pregnancy, SEAM collapsed, taking with it Iacuzzo’s carefully negotiated surrogacy agreement.

“My first thought was my surrogate and making sure she was okay,” says Iacuzzo.

In a series of emotional phone conversations, Iacuzzo and her surrogate made plans to amend the contract to allow Iacuzzo to make payments in installments to a new escrow account.

For more on the would-be parents who say they were swindled, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE on newsstands Friday.

And Iacuzzo is not alone in her plight.

Aaron and Mindy Herstein were already facing difficult times before their troubles with SEAM.

The Richardson, Texas, couple suffered a heartbreaking loss when their baby daughter Elayna — whom a surrogate was carrying for them — was stillborn at 32 weeks in 2022. 

The couple’s parents gave them $50,000 to pay a surrogate to carry another child for them. They say that money has since disappeared at SEAM.

“We definitely get anxious,” says Mindy, 36, who suffers from endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome and severe migraines — the medications for which prevent her from carrying a child.

Knowing how much she and Aaron, 34, a software engineering manager, want to start a family, their parents are once again helping them cover the cost of surrogacy. 

“We’re grateful,” Mindy says, “God willing, to have our baby boy in our arms and hear that cry.”

Kate and Chris Kettmann, meanwhile, have become used to facing obstacles in their parenthood journey. 

Kate, 30, a wedding photographer, had a hysterectomy because of severe endometriosis in 2020, dashing her hopes of carrying a baby. But nothing prepared the Fair Oaks, Calif., couple for the “bombshell email” they got from SEAM’s Dominique Side on June 14. 

“It said her bank accounts were frozen, and there’s no wrongdoing on her staff’s part,” recalls Chris. 

“This should be a happy time for them,” says surrogate Payton Garvey, 26, who is 28 weeks pregnant with the couple’s baby boy. 

Instead, after losing $45,000 they raised by selling their cars, taking a loan on their house and draining their savings, 

“I’ve been working nonstop” to pay the surrogate, Kate says. 

“How are we even going to make this work?” asks Chris, 34, chief of staff at a software start-up. “This person did a terrible thing.”

The Kettmanns have since started a GoFundMe with the hopes of raising enough money to help pay for their parenthood journey. A separate fundraiser has also been started to provide relief to families who say they lost money to SEAM.

Iacuzzo has continued to attend every doctor’s visit with her surrogate as she spreads the news among family and friends that she is expecting a child due in January. It’s too soon to decorate the bedroom in her home that will become the nursery, she says, but her excitement is building by the day.

“Soon I will be with my baby,” she says, “and have the family I’ve always dreamed about.”