A 37-year-old woman in Spain has been accused of selling her baby for 2,000 euros to a family in Cordoba.
The baby is now in the care of the Junta de Andalucía’s social services department and the mother has been arrested by the National Police, together with four other people involved in the case.
The investigation began in March this year, when the mother herself filed a complaint. She claimed that a family from Cordoba had kidnapped her newborn daughter and demanded a payment of 3,000 euros in order to let her see her again.
The complainant said that, in November 2024, she had met a 24-year-old man at a party in Madrid. She told him that she was afraid that the social services would take her daughter away from her if she was born in the Spanish capital. The reason for her fears was that they had already taken the custody of her six other children from her.
According to the version she fabricated for the police, the young man had offered to take her to Cordoba and take care of her until she gave birth. The complainant stated that she wanted to go back to Madrid with the baby after the birth, but the family in Cordoba assured her that they would take her there a few days later.
The woman then claimed that, when she did not get her daughter back after a week had passed, she started to receive threats from the family in question demanding that she pay 3,000 euros for her month’s stay in Cordoba if she wanted to see her daughter again.
The initial investigations found that the woman had altered her version of what had happened. In reality, the biological mother had allegedly reached an agreement to sell her daughter for 2,000 euros to a couple that was undergoing fertility treatments in Cordoba.
The investigators found that, after being discharged, the complainant went to the civil registry in Cordoba with the alleged buyers. There, the biological mother and the future “father” were listed as parents of the newborn.
The man then withdrew 2,000 euros from an ATM cash machine and gave it to the mother. After that, she was taken to Madrid by another member of the family.
The police also discovered that the mother’s six other children were taken away from her following a court order from 2022, which found that the children were in a situation of neglect. All six of them were placed under the guardianship of the Madrid region.
According to the investigation, the woman regretted selling her daughter, which is why the family demanded the return of the amount they had paid her, plus another 1,000 euros for the expenses from the month’s stay in Cordoba.
The National Police arrested the mother and the four members of the family that bought the baby. The buyers were intercepted while they were on their way to a paediatric appointment.