In a horrifying case of alleged human trafficking, a mother attempted to sell her newborn baby to pay for lessons on baking pastries before police stepped in.
The Brazilian woman and three other people were arrested after police narrowly saved the 27-day-old baby from the bizarre sale.
Police said they were tipped off to the attempted sale by neighbors of the woman, who also planned to use the undisclosed amount of money to help pay rent.
The woman, who was reportedly suffering postpartum depression, allegedly set up the deal through her boyfriend, who is not the father of the child.
The boyfriend and his roommate set up the sale of the child on behalf of a local businesswoman, who was looking for a child. It was unclear what the buyer planned to do with the child.
The business woman, who owns an ice cream shop, has denied the accusations and said she was temporarily babysitting when police took custody of the child.
A Brazilian news outlet, however, obtained a text message exchange from the woman outlining what type of baby she was looking for.
‘Find a ‘big-breasted’ woman to give me the child,’ the businesswoman wrote. ‘If it’s a boy, even better. If it’s black, even better.’
Authorities learnt that the businesswoman had previously signed up in the past to adopt a child with the National Adoption Registry, but was not on a waiting list.
‘The mother confessed, she told the whole story that they actually offered her a sum of money to hand over the baby, because with the money she was going to pay the rent in the other place where she was going to live and she was going to take a cooking course,’ Goiás Civil Police chief Humberto Teófilo said.
Teófilo said the mother was expecting to receive payment in the coming days.
The baby was turned over to child protection services and later placed under the care shelter.
