By now, most folk have heard about the Idaho church group arrested in Haiti for trying to take 33 (supposedly) orphaned children across the border into the Dominican Republic. When I read this ...

But Laura Sillsby from the Idaho group told Reuters from a jail cell at Haiti's Judicial Police headquarters, "We had permission from the Dominican Republic government to bring the children to an orphanage that we have there."

"We have a Baptist minister here (in Port-au-Prince) whose orphanage totally collapsed and he asked us to take the children to the orphanage in the Dominican Republic," Sillsby added.

"I was going to come back here to do the paperwork," Sillsby said. "They accuse us of children trafficking. This is something I would never do. We were not trying to do something wrong."

(Emphasis added)

... my "Lying Zealot" radar went off, so I started digging.

First stop was a PDF document on the website of Eastside Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho (one of the two churches sponsoring the ill-fated trip), entitled New Life Children’s Refuge - Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission, which contained this :

Contact Information:
New Life Children Refuge:
Laura Silsby, Executive Director and Founder
<snip>
Website under construction: newlifechildrensrefuge.org

If you go to the URL newlifechildrensrefuge.org, it's a dead link, no website there.

So, next stop was the "whois" listing for domain name, which shows the "Registrant" data as :

Registrant Name:Laura Silsby
Registrant Organization:New Life Children's Refuge
Registrant Street1:2828 S. Alfani Way
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Meridian
Registrant State/Province:ID
Registrant Postal Code:83642
Registrant Country:US

OK, the name & organization match up, so I think this is reliable data to be used for further searching.

Commercial Break
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Now back to our regularly scheduled muckraking ...

Next, I stumbled upon PersonalShopper.com, which Silsby happens to be the award-winning CEO of; so, she's an entrepreneur making good money, right?

A search on Silby's address (2828 S Alfani Way, Meridian, Idaho, from the "whois" record) turned up this 2007 YouTube video of a $399,500, four bedroom, two-and-a-half bath house, so yah, she's loaded.

Or is she?

On the website of the Ada County (Idaho) Assessor's office, the "Tax" tab of the Land Record / GIS entry for the above address show's half ($2,086.41) of the 2009 property tax bill still due, although not yet delinquent.

But here's the kicker - the Canyonside Irwin Realty company's MLS listing for the property shows that it's an REO / Bank Owned property, meaning it was foreclosed on!

Is this a possible motivation for snatching kids from Haiti, given the exorbitant fees a "good Christian" orphanage could charge?

Update [2010-2-1 12:9:12 by The Werewolf Prophet]:

According to the website of the Idaho Secretary of State, New Life Children's Refuge, Inc. was incorporated November 25, 2009, which lends credence to the idea that some sort of orphanage was truly in the works.

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