David Avilla, operating under the name "Advocate for Orphans International" in Gilroy, CA, is licensed as neither an adoption agency nor adoption facilitator in California.

This means he is operating illegally.

Avilla also operates under the name "Hands of Hope" and "The Stork" (the latter operated by George Kokhno).

Avilla operates "summer camp" programs, bringing children to the United States. It appears that he tries to "sell" the children to several families, in hopes of collecting several sets of fees.

As an adoption facilitator, there is not much Avilla can actually do anyway. Traditionally, facilitators have been unpaid; the notion of licensing paid facilitators is relatively new, and only a few states permit them to operate.

As an unlicensed, but paid, facilitator, Avilla is nothing but trouble. Several families have already had an adoption collapse because of his unethical practices.

Avoid him! He harms families and orphans!

I downloaded the whole file of exempt organizations from the IRS website and Advocate for Orphans International is not in it.

Seems he's not legal there either!

Avilla and Advocates for Orphans are using Congressional District Projects and the Heritage Foundation. I wonder if they are seeing any of their money? At least part of this went into Chapter 11 earlier this year.

Avilla seems shady but these guys are worse.

Another reason to avoid Avilla especially when there are so many reputable and fully licensed adoption agencies out there!

According to the State of California, their published list of registered adoption facilitators shows David's organization in black and white.

David Avilla has been operating since 1997. California required registration starting in 2006.

Avilla registered ONLY because of complaints and investigations by the Gilroy Police and Santa Clara County District Attorney.

He operated Advocate for Orphans International ILLEGALLY for almost three years!

He also violated California law by having pictures of children on his website.

AFOI is not an exempt organization. That means no IRS filings,no accountability for the money he gets.

Yet, he has admitted to buying a lot of expensive guitars. That seems very "responsible" for someone with five adopted kids.

He has also admitted that money is overseen ONLY by him, his wife, and his sister.

He's been sued by Citibank for a massive credit card debt.

The man has no respect for the law and is just after money.

He runs his "charitable contributions" through the Heritage Foundation, which is in bankruptcy.

There are reputable and law abiding adoption agencies out there. People should use them and let Avilla earn his guitar money some other way!

You DO NOT NEED his services. Aftter speaking with the various people and entities in Ukraine, we heard a much different story than what David told--from the very people he claims to work with. He persuaaded us with references to families who had adopted kids through his leads, and by the fact that he's adopted children. His assetertions of relationships with the orphanages that offer benefit is a LIE. His direct fee is not that high ($3,000), but his group Stork gets HUGE fees that surely are shared by him.

We were led to believe that through his organization, children in the hosting program were under special protection in the agencies in Ukraine, through contacts at Stork, Father George Kokhno, and the director of the orphanage.

We were notified only hours after making a last and substantial payment, that the child we were adopting had essentially been "sold" to the next highest bidder in Ukraine.

Families that have been there through Avilla's program told horror stories of desperate parents from around the world, bribing children with candy and toys to want them; children who thought they were already being adopted by people who'd hosted them in the States.

Some people do, in fact, adopt the kids they hosted through Avilla's program, but it's a roll of the dice.

All we'd wanted was to help and maybe adopt a child.

We registered for the Christmas program with David Avilla and Advocate for Orphans.

The program was cancelled. He's being tough about the refund.

But, then we received a letter about a State Department investigation.

We are not sure of what to do, we don't have money for a lawyer to be at the meeting we must have.