The Marshal Islands is where the US tested its biggest atomic bombs. The area is contaminated to this day with radioactivity that makes pre-bomb life impossible. It kinda sucks to live there.
It kinda sucks to be Mormon too, so for the kids it’s not much of a trade up.
The history of this seems to indicate that Americans wanting to adopt found a ready market of sellers in the Marshall Islands. Business boomed for quite a while and then individuals (nanny statists?) decided that, probably for reasons of unfair bargaining positions, the two countries should agree that Marshall Island women would not act as incubators/luggage, by flying to the USA at 8 months and three weeks of pregnancy to exchange a mere pittance (by American standards) for their newborn (unwanted) baby.
So the agreement between politicians (and other assorted do-gooders) was that Marshall Island women would NOT be allowed to do the above. But as one of the stories I read pointed out, there was no 'policing' of this mandate, and incoming heavily pregnant women just kept on signing up with the defendant and others. If some nosey US immigration officer asked, "are you here to drop off your baby in exchange for cash?" the woman would say, "No!" and the officer would allow her entry because our agreement with citizens of the Marshall Islands is that they have unfettered access to the USA!
The baby-selling bonanza has existed for a long time, and the defendant got caught up in it while still in college because he'd been a missionary there, knew the language and the people. He was a natural and he made good money as a gopher and it likely influenced his path in his schooling and career choice.
Other attorneys are named in some of the background stories, but they apparently did and do take better care of what is visible to the authorities, like not asking for benefits for the ladies that are not theirs to claim. Although I bet that the argument, "Look what the USA did to their homeland!" will be used as justification.
I don't know if 'penalties' were posted back when the 'no baby-selling allowed' rule was put into place. He seems to be guilty of breaking the 'no baby selling' rule between two countries, but did it become part of the US Penal Code?
On the USA side, there are a lot of people he made happy, and on the Marshall Islands side, there are people for whom he was an easy way out of a predicament. He made good money being useful to the parties on both sides of the equation. But he apparently got a little too greedy when it came to having the women claim the use of American taxpayer money.