Howard Famiglia is an adoption lawyer, specializing in foreign adoptions, specifically from Colombia. In 1986 he was running a sophisticated illegal adoption ring, starting out by sending goons to Colombia, kidnapping babies from impoverished mothers (rejecting "ugly" babies) and flying them back to the United States to unsupervised airports. Some of the babies die in the trip (which Famiglia considers a "spoilage factor"), but the survivors are placed with anxious adoptive parents in the United States, for $50,000 per child (though the recorded price is $20,000). Famiglia's web includes the Colombian Vice Consul Eduardo Vasquez, who clears the illegal adoptions through the Consulate, Angela Mitchell, who tracks the adoptions through Social Services and issues the birth certificates, Hecto