A Manhattan surrogacy practice is scamming clients, taking their money and not following through on promises of setting their sperm up with a surrogate, alleges a lawsuit filed by a man who says he spent roughly $34,000 and five years trying to have a child but received only misleading, false and contradictory communication from the medical office, which he says also sent his confidential medical information to other patients and never refunded him.
Edward Gonzalez, now 48, said he turned to Manhattan-based Surrogacy4All in 2019 to fulfill his lifelong dream of having a child. That surrogacy practice, he claims, strung him along for five years, telling him things like “his embryos are currently being created,” then “sixteen surrogates were in the pipeline” and “two surrogates were being prepared as we speak,” then that “one had been reserved for [him].” He alleges he was also told various excuses for delays when he asked for updates, like a sex-selection machine was broken and that technicians couldn’t travel due to COVID-19. He says he was told “a transfer was scheduled, month after month, year after year.”
Gonzalez says he later found out all those statements were lies when subsequent emails made contradictory statements and he was inadvertently copied on the clinic’s internal email chains, where employees’ communications showed they hadn’t shared accurate information with him.
“[Surrogacy4All] sold [Gonzalez] a path to fatherhood, took his money, and then, for more than five years, fed him a continuous stream of fabricated progress reports designed to keep him paying, keep him waiting, and keep him from discovering that he had been defrauded,” his suit states.
Eventually, in 2024, Gonzalez was copied on an internal email that allegedly showed, among other things, an embryo transfer had occurred – without his consent or full knowledge of who the surrogate was or when it happened – and that the surrogate had miscarried 16 days later, a result Surrogacy4All withheld. He says he was also copied on email communications that shared his confidential medical information with 16 other patients, none of whom had consented to their medical information being shared with others.
His suit, which accuses the medical practice of fraud, breach of contract, unjust enrichment and violating various business laws, also says Surrogacy4All misrepresented who the surrogates and donors were that they had access to and attempted to use for him, and that they sent his sperm to an unvetted clinic in Ghana, which Gonzalez did not have a direct contract with.
Who’s behind what went wrong? The suit not only names Surrogacy4All, but also Indian Egg Donors, an egg donation agency, and Patients Medical P.C., a medical practice operating both of those entities out of the same office. The suit also names DGA Inc. and Gulati Holdings LLC, both corporations identified as the entities behind Surrogacy4All at different points, and Rashmi Gulati and Deepak Gulati, the medical professional and partner who Gonzalez understands to own Surrogacy4All.
All the corporations are “alter egos” of each other and the Gulatis, Gonzalez claims, and says it’s unclear what entities are truly behind Surrogacy4All. Rashmi Gulati pleaded guilty to securities fraud in 1992 in a separate case, according to the suit.
Gonzalez originally filed suit in 2024 in Manhattan federal court against Surrogacy4All and its connected entities. He essentially refiled the suit in Manhattan Supreme Court Monday after the federal court ruled in June it wasn’t the right place to bring the suit and he should file suit in state court instead. The federal case was not dismissed on the merits of the case, but simply because a federal judge decided the case should be considered in a state courtroom instead.
David Bowles, an attorney collectively representing Surrogacy4All, Indian Egg Donors, Patients Medical P.C. DGA Inc. and the Gulatis, said the defendants had no comment, other than that the federal court dismissed the original proceeding, and he expects to have the state court case “dismissed in due course.”
Gonzalez’s suit alleges Surrogacy4All has done the same thing to other clients and is engaging in other illegal and questionable business and medical practices, like advertising its services to people in false and misleading ways, operating without an FDA license despite claiming to have one, working with unvetted labs without clients’ knowledge and recruiting surrogates and egg donors via sites like Reddit and Craigslist, forums and posts which have since been taken down.
“Defendants have dealt with hundreds of other consumers in substantially the same manner: collecting substantial advance payments for surrogacy and egg-donation services, outsourcing the entirety of the work to an unvetted foreign clinic with which the consumer has no contract and no recourse, issuing fabricated progress reports for years on end, refusing refunds, and retaining monies refunded on their customers’ behalf,” the suit states.
“Defendants advertise to the consuming public that they are ‘FDA Registered Fully Licensed and Insured,’ … and enjoy ‘Success Rates 90% for Surrogacy,’” the suit continues. “At the same time, they recruit gestational surrogates from anonymous Craigslist postings and from a Reddit forum of their own creation, and they outsource the entirety of the work to an unvetted foreign clinic with which their customers have no contractual relationship.”
Surrogacy4All also sent Gonzalez a catalog of potential surrogates to choose from that included “an individual who plainly appears to be a female child,” his suit claims.
Gonzalez’s experience “was not an isolated failure of a single engagement,” he alleges, saying the medical practice has “treated hundreds of other consumers in the same manner.”
On separate Reddit boards about surrogacy, multiple people have posted comments saying they had similar experiences with Surrogacy4All, alleging the clinic also took their money and never delivered on promises, didn’t communicate with them and strung them along for years.
Gonzalez is seeking hundreds of thousands in damages and a refund of all money he paid to the medical practice.
