AUSA Sarah Woodward

She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero.

Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh.

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I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying.

I think the harm here is about as egregious as we can imagine in a financial case. And so I think those guidelines are inadequate. This is not a perfect system. But what we can do here today is we can also send an unequivocal message that what Tara Lee did was not right and it will not be tolerated.

Good afternoon, Your Honor. Sarah Woodward on behalf of the United States. Thank you.

And that was on Friday. On Monday, Channel 7 News recorded the defendant using a cell phone in a car.

Probably every case that goes to trial here, most cases, we will have engaged in plea negotiations and we will send over a plea agreement. Because trial is inherently risky, you never know what 12 people are going to do. You never know if you're going to have a holdout, even when you think your evidence is incredibly strong.

When we calculate wire fraud sentences under our sentencing guidelines, the most important factor is going to be the loss amount. We had one recently in our district that's some $40 million.

Now, she got enhancements on top of that because there were victims that suffered significant financial harm. She also obstructed justice.

So when I was drafting that plea agreement, I was honestly trying to see how high I could get the guidelines while being stuck with that relatively low loss amount.

They were a sophisticated, well-educated group of people that were adept at navigating the world and successful in life. And that's what made it so heartbreaking because she knew that they would do anything for the hope of having a child.

Good afternoon, Your Honor. Sarah Woodward on behalf of the United States.

She definitely wasn't cautious. I mean, she was constantly texting. And so you can see in chronological order what the user is doing. So for a particular couple or a particular victim, I could see the beginning. I could see maybe the first failed match, the second failed match.

Her personality was sort of like, I'm a foul-mouthed, tattooed woman, but I'm doing adoptions, and you wouldn't expect that, and I know how to relate to people, and I can kind of give you the real talk that you're not getting other places. And I think that personality maybe helped people ignore some red flags that they might have otherwise seen.

So we should open an investigation and we should try to find out what's going on.

And he just said, we have this allegations that are really unusual and we're not sure if this is a federal case, if there's a crime here, but how do you think we should move forward? And I think he called me because I had worked on a lot of child exploitation cases and some unusual cases with victims. So once he told me about it, I said, well, that sounds like wire fraud, potentially.