The following is the script of the above YouTube video.
On September 3rd, The Wired published a story called “The Baby Died. Whose Fault Is It?” by the author Emi Nietfeld.
The story quickly went viral, in large part due to the cruelty of the mourning mother portrayed in the story, but also because, for a lot of people, it was their first time being exposed to certain disturbing truths about the surrogacy industry, especially in Silicon Valley, where very, very, very rich people treat a less-well-off woman’s body as a rentable womb, if they so please, sometimes at devastating personal cost to her. Note that this article, and my video by extension, is not anti-surrogacy, but it does offer critical information to everyone who reads it, including people who might be considering surrogacy.
The emotional response that you might feel to this article is, in many cases, due to the disturbing nature of the story, but it is also the result of intentional, masterful journalism coming from Emi Nietfeld, who, before this article, was already a successful memoirist and writer.
You’re going to hear about a woman in this story who is very litigious and much, much more wealthy than I am, and who seems to be in the midst of a severe mental health crisis. For that reason, you’re going to hear me say, allegedly, a lot– and I want to clarify that my knowledge of this situation is entirely limited to what I read about in this Wired article.
So, here’s what Emi Nietfeld wrote about in this article:
Summary
In 2016, a gorgeous, petite, and intense 36-year-old Chinese immigrant named Cindy Bi was at a bar in Silicon Valley when she was approached by a 28-year-old man named Jorge Valdeiglesias from Argentina. He brought her some shots and, in exchange, she examined his Google badge/nametag that he was still wearing from the work day to “see if it was real.” During this first conversation, Cindy said to Jorge, and I quote, “I’m older than you. But it’s okay. I froze my eggs.”
Over the next six years, Cindy leans in, gatebosses, and girlkeeps. She and Jorge went on to get married. She was named on the Business Insider list “30 of the Most Successful Early-Stage Startup Investors.” She is “a venture capitalist who claims to have invested in a dozen unicorns.” Then, in 2023, Cindy is 43 years old, and she and Jorge decide they are ready to start a family.
Cindy says that over the last decade she has been preparing to have a baby via a surrogate.
To clarify, surrogacy is when a biological mother’s egg is fertilized by a biological father’s sperm to create an embryo in a lab, and then that embryo is implanted in the uterus of a surrogate mother who is not the biological mother of the child and, in many cases, is not biologically related to the baby at all.
Surrogacy usually costs anywhere from $100,000 to $225,000. The surrogate mother usually gets paid around $40,000-$80,000. Surrogacy is popular among tech millionaires and billionaires, and also among celebrities. The surrogacy industry is also expected to explode globally in the next decade. But Nietfeld shares in her article that there are some realities about surrogacy that are intentionally hidden from public view. For example:
- Surrogacy agencies do not need to be licensed, except for in the state of New York.
- Carrying a baby that isn’t related to you genetically more than triples the risk of severe, deadly conditions. That’s a statistic that is typically not shared with surrogates.
- If the biological parents have a history of medical conditions in their family that could hurt or kill the surrogate, then they don’t legally have to share that. They also don’t have to share how many other surrogates they have simultaneously pregnant, how many kids they already have, or why they are opting for surrogacy.
- Many U.S. states are accepting laws that acknowledge “fetal personhood,” which means that women can, in some cases, go to jail for having a miscarriage– there is recent legal precedent for that in some states in the U.S., which is complicated enough; now imagine how complicated that can get if the woman having a miscarriage is not the biological mother.
- There’s also the power imbalance to consider. These situations are usually managed with detailed contracts, yes, but of course the people paying for the baby usually have a lot more money and can afford more lawyers, while surrogates might need to rely on GoFundMe or pro bono lawyers if the parents breach the contract.
I went into this article vaguely pro-surrogacy, and I’d say I still am– if a couple is same-sex or if they’re struggling with infertility and science can help them, then that’s an amazing thing. Wanting more regulation, and wanting surrogates to sign these contracts from an informed and enthusiastic point of view, does not make you anti-surrogacy; it makes you pro-informed-surrogacy. What Nietfeld did expertly in this article was use a shocking story as a vehicle to discuss greater, dark truths about the surrogacy industry that rarely get publicized. This is a writing technique that many famous, well-written pieces employ; they have two elements: one is the entertaining story, that is made interesting by virtue of being salacious or violent or by having extreme characters; then the other element is the more complex or even dull transfer of information that is made relevant and interesting by the more entertaining story. A famous modern author who employs this technique a lot is Sally Rooney. One element of her story is romance. The romance plotline is sexy, it’s intriguing, and if you come into one of her books hoping to read a love story, then you will find that. But Sally Rooney considers herself a Marxist author. She uses the romantic relationships in the book to discuss class differences. She matches people who come from distinct economic backgrounds, and shows how their opportunities in life differ, how their world perspectives shift, and how their mental health interacts with those opportunities afforded to them. I’ve seen this technique called “sneaking veggies into dino nuggets” (by someone in a comment section of one of my YouTube videos. 🙂 )
If you only have the entertaining element, then the work can feel shallow. But if you only have the boring element, for example, if this article were just a series of worrying statistics about surrogacy, then it could come across as preachy, or the readers might not even click on it in the first place.
Nietfeld continually points out in this article that this story is an example of what can go wrong with surrogacy, not an anomaly. She says that stories like this one happen all the time, but we don’t always hear about them because they’ve been hidden from public view by nondisclosure clauses. Emi Nietfeld brings a nuanced and empathetic view of class dynamics to everything she writes, which makes sense, considering that she disclosed in her memoir, Acceptance, that she grew up struggling with homelessness and a mother with serious mental health problems, then later went on to go to Harvard and work in big tech, so she’s seen either side of the American financial spectrum. Her life experience allows her, I think, to view surrogacy, not just as something that can greatly benefit couples hoping to build a family, but also something that can take advantage of and abuse people who aren’t filthy rich.
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This morning, I watched a video of an interview with David Foster Wallace in which he reflected on and noticed the ways the (then-young) Internet was making people feel entitled to being entertained constantly, even if that meant jumping between different subjects of thought every thirty seconds. It was an astute point for him to make decades before social media would prove him right. He also said that we need time to get bored and be in silence and think about one topic for a long time, and how reading can be such a great way to do that. You’ve probably heard about how good it is for your brain to read, to get bored, to ruminate on a certain topic, but often when we discuss these topics, the conversation can take on a very finger-wagging vibe, like you’d better sit down and do your homework every day! But what David Foster Wallace said in this interview that I really liked was point out that your brain craves and enjoys that time that it spends reading or thinking about one thing, or even just being in patient silence. It’s so rare anymore that we get to have it, but it’s our natural state. So if you, like many people, are craving time to read about topics that are both entertaining and enriching to the mind, then discuss those topics with some highly intelligent people, then I would like to invite you to join my book club. We meet once a month– this month we’re meeting twice, actually– and we read everything from juicy celebrity memoirs to classics and Pulitzer Prize winners, and the conversations are super stimulating. It’s three dollars per month through my Patreon, and you can join by following this link here.
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Continuing with the story, Nietfeld reports that Cindy and Jorge decided that they wanted to implant two embryos into one surrogate so they could have twins born intentionally in the year of the Dragon, since that is the Chinese Zodiac most associated with success, ambition, and wealth. The doctor suggested not implanting twins in one person, because it would imply a great risk to the surrogate and the babies, so they settled on implanting the embryos in two surrogates at once and having “twiblings.” After doing IVF, they had only one male embryo, whom they had already decided to name Leon, and he would be born first, so he could be the “protective” older brother to his little sister who would be born via a different surrogate a few weeks after him. Nietfeld will write later in the article that she believes Cindy has abandonment trauma stemming from her father leaving the family when she was in her 20s, because his mistress got pregnant with a long-awaited baby boy, as opposed to the all-girls that he had previously.
To find their surrogate, Cindy and Jorge signed up with an agency called Surrogate Alternatives Inc. in Southern California. To carry their son Leon, they were matched with a woman in Virginia whose identity is protected for reasons you’ll see later, but the article calls her Rebecca Smith.
Rebecca lived on the other side of the country in Virginia. She was a very tall and lanky, 34-year-old, college-educated, former professional athlete. At this time, she was a single mom to a six-year-old biracial son, whom the article calls Ellis (I only mention that Ellis is mixed because it becomes relevant later). Rebecca remains good friends with Ellis’ father, but doesn’t really date– Ellis is her priority. Her pregnancy with Ellis was healthy and uncomplicated. Cindy said about Rebecca, “She was perfect. Tall, healthy, young, good job. I showed her off to my friends. The only thing I was concerned with was she’s a single mom, but I saw past it.” How the fact that Rebecca was a single mom is relevant to whether or not she is worthy of carrying Cindy’s baby eludes me.
So Cindy, Jorge, and Rebecca sign a contract that stipulates that Rebecca will carry and birth Leon in exchange for $45,000, plus reimbursements for cleaning services and maternity clothes, and payments for any lost wages or childcare should she have to miss work or get hospitalized. Rebecca’s insurance, which she got through her job as a bank manager, would treat the baby as if it were her own baby (and this is how I learned that not all insurances cover pregnancies if it’s not your own embryo, which is insane. But ok.) Rebecca said that she planned on using the $45k to pay off student loans and build an emergency fund for herself and Ellis. She also loved being a mom and loved the idea of helping a couple conceive who couldn’t do it on their own.
At first, Cindy and Rebecca got along very well. Cindy flew Rebecca and her son from Virginia to California for the embryo transfer, put them up in a nice hotel for 21 days, and planned a detailed itinerary to take them sightseeing. When the embryo stuck, everyone celebrated, and Rebecca went back to the East Coast. Rebecca and Cindy started texting often, with Rebecca sharing when the baby kicked and what it was like being pregnant with Leon. Cindy told Rebecca about her search for a second surrogate to carry Leon’s little twibling.
Then, Rebecca allegedly found out that Cindy was sharing a lot of information about her and her health in Facebook groups with strangers. This was a violation of their contract, so Rebecca told the surrogacy agency, but didn’t say anything to Cindy, presumably because she didn’t want to damage their rapport when there was a bigger task at hand, that is, growing a baby. Rebecca switched jobs around this time. Nietfeld says that she told Cindy and Jorge, and Jorge congratulated her via text.
According to this article, Cindy’s wrath started to appear when someone selling insurance in one of the Facebook groups started trying to convince her that the insurance at Rebecca’s new job wouldn’t cover surrogacy. Of course, the CEO of an insurance company using a Facebook group to get leads isn’t a completely unbiased source, but Cindy insisted that the surrogacy agency look into it multiple times, and when the surrogacy agency insisted both times that they won’t pay for new insurance because Rebecca does, in fact, already have insurance that covers surrogacy through her new job, Cindy allegedly became completely irate. She started sending Rebecca 50+ texts a day about the insurance. She told Rebecca to lay low until Leon was born, then afterwards they would go after the surrogacy agency, saying, “I want to show them what justice should look like.”
Cindy also started posting on Facebook making claims that Rebecca had not told her that she was switching jobs, which, according to the Wired article, was untrue– Nietfeld writes that Rebecca produced a text from Jorge congratulating her for switching jobs. But if it were true, then that would be a breach of contract. And if Rebecca breached their contract, then that would mean that Rebecca was on the hook for all fees associated with her birth and pregnancy. And if you’re not from the U.S., you might not realize that pregnancy and complications can rack up five- or six-figure bills. So that was a very serious accusation that Cindy was making.
When Rebecca was around six months pregnant, she felt some fluid between her legs and went to the ER. The ER sent her home, telling her that it was nothing to worry about, but Cindy was very worried. Her lawyer started sending Rebecca tons of forms to sign, and Cindy sent a text to Rebecca telling her that they had found another surrogate, and the process with their other surrogate was going much more smoothly– no visits to the ER, no insurance problems.
Then, when Rebecca was a little over seven months pregnant, she again felt liquid, and again went to the ER. This time, the doctors confirmed that her water had broken, and since Leon was so early, they admitted her to the hospital, put her on an IV with antibiotics, monitored her, and put her on steroids to help develop the baby’s lungs. They told her she couldn’t leave until Leon was born. On one hand, Cindy showered Rebecca with gifts and food, but she also peppered her with questions: Why are you in the hospital? Why don’t you just get bed rest? Are you submitting your missed wage requests? She also posted on Facebook explicitly saying that Rebecca had not notified her about the job change, which would mean that Cindy wouldn’t have to pay the hospital bills for this particular admission, and instead Rebecca would, and now with these complications those hospital bills would be into the millions.
Cindy was also upset that Rebecca wasn’t showing enough; she didn’t have a big belly. But Rebecca assured her that during her first pregnancy with Ellis, she also didn’t really show. Rebecca also found out that despite the leaks, Leon was a normal size- in the 30th percentile- but Cindy was upset about this, too. Nietfeld writes, “The 30th percentile meant most babies measured bigger than Leon. [Rebecca] was tall—shouldn’t that make a bigger baby, [Cindy] wondered? She had expected her son to be above average in all things.” Cindy would later write, “Small belly by itself, I brushed off. But 30th, water leak, small belly, is Leon being suffocated and become defective [sic] already?
Rebecca told Cindy that the hardest part of being hospitalized was being away from Ellis, who cried every time she had to leave him. Cindy suggested that Ellis sleep at the hospital, and so he curled up in the recliner in the hospital room. Then, one morning, Rebecca woke up next to Ellis when nurses came in for routine monitoring, and they found that Leon had no heartbeat.
They put Rebecca under general anesthetic and rushed her into an emergency C-section. Rebecca’s sister found Cindy on Facebook and messaged her to say, “Call the hospital ASAP. This is an emergency.” But when they opened Rebecca to take Leon out, they found that it was too late. The placenta had separated from the uterine wall, which deprived Leon of oxygen.
Cindy called the hospital, and they told her the sad news, saying, “These things just happen sometimes. I don’t think we’ll ever know exactly why, unfortunately.”
A bit later, Rebecca called Cindy, sobbing crying. She said she didn’t understand how this happened; she had just felt him kicking last night. Rebecca was in a bad place, physically and emotionally. She had just spent several hours in surgery, and she had lost a lot of blood and, according to doctors, nearly died herself. In fact, placental abruptions are a major cause of maternal mortality. Rebecca was also grieving. The baby she had carried for seven months was now dead, and she mourned him. Cindy hung up the phone and proceeded to stay up all night contacting attorneys.
Jorge and Cindy bought a flight to go see Leon’s body. Cindy called the surrogacy agency beforehand to tell them to have Rebecca’s medical records ready for her review when she arrived.
When Cindy and Jorge arrived, Rebecca asked to see them, and Cindy refused to speak to her. She was thrilled to meet Leon and see “he was a white boy, just like his dad.” They took photos with Leon, then sent him off for an autopsy.
Rebecca tried to contact Cindy and Jorge after the miscarriage, saying, “I will forever carry the memory of your baby boy.” But Cindy was falling deeper and deeper into obsessive grief and anger. Nietfeld writes, “Things were bad at home. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t work. Instead, she dedicated all of her time to taking screenshots and organizing folders of evidence to wage a medical malpractice lawsuit.”
The Wired article makes it sound like the medical malpractice suit might actually have some legs to stand on. There was some bleeding before the placental abruption that Cindy claims doctors and Rebecca didn’t take seriously enough. Rebecca reported the bleeding to the surrogacy agency, but that information allegedly didn’t make it back to Cindy. The article points out that many American hospitals have been accused of not taking stillbirths seriously enough, and treating them as more as freak accidents than something that could be prevented. Someone on my Patreon actually read the lawsuit, and said that it sounds like anger from a medical malpractice incident that has been misdirected to Rebecca.
But around this time, in her grief, Cindy started talking to psychics. One psychic told Cindy, “[Rebecca] has something to hide.” Another psychic said that Rebecca’s ex-boyfriend “turned her against” baby Leon, and another accused Rebecca of having “rough sex” while pregnant.
So, Cindy started to cancel all outstanding payments to Rebecca. She contacted the surrogacy agency and claimed Rebecca had breached their contract, because, among other things, Cindy had requested, “a ‘well-baby’ that didn’t die.”
Then, the article reports that Cindy has a religious experience. She goes to a church popular among high-profile investors called “Epic Church” and the people there started talking about “when God gives you a mission.” She realized that God had given her this trauma, because her mission was to make sure it didn’t happen to other people. She decided to become a voice for her unborn son, and she says, “I’ll make sure other unborn children are protected.”
So Cindy wrote up her version of events. She claims that during pregnancy, Rebecca had “lots of unsafe sex.” Her leaking in mid-December was a result of a bout of “forceful sex.” Her hospitalization was a result of more sex. Then, once she was hospitalized, Rebecca allowed her “adult-sized son” to sleep in the bed with her, who kicked her in the stomach. Cindy also claimed that Rebecca may have intentionally given birth early, so that she could get the money without having to actually give birth, I guess? Rebecca is, again, the woman who almost died as a result of this pregnancy.
Cindy also hired a private investigator, who reported to Cindy that there was a black man “with two misdemeanors” still registered at Rebecca’s address. Cindy recognized his name as Ellis’s father. Rebecca had said that Ellis’s dad didn’t live with them anymore, because he didn’t– the PI had just done a reverse address search that was probably outdated. But Cindy posted on Facebook that she never should have chosen Rebecca as a surrogate because she had “an undisclosed live-in boyfriend with #felony JAIL TIME record.” I’m not sure what the misdemeanors were, but just to put things in context, misdemeanors include crimes like trespassing and public intoxication, and felonies include things like human trafficking and murder.
The Private Investigator also found a flyer from the night before Rebecca was hospitalized for a party where Ellis’s dad was listed as one of the DJs. According to Wired, in Cindy’s head, this confirmed that Rebecca had been with and had rough sex with Ellis’s father either at this party or afterwards, which is what led to her hospitalization. Cindy also found out through the private investigator that Rebecca had gotten a speeding ticket while she was in-patient at the hospital, and Cindy takes this as another confirmation that she had snuck out from the hospital.
Using Rebecca’s real, full name, Cindy started posting on Facebook sharing her accusations against Rebecca, and saying, “If it were not for all the hard evidence, it’s too shocking to believe [Rebecca Smith] did what she did to kill my son.” And by hard evidence, I’m assuming she means… having dated a black man before. Instead of telling Cindy that she was off her rocker, the echo chamber she had built around herself on social media replied calling Rebecca a criminal and a psycho. Cindy’s lawyer at this time, who costs $1,275 an hour, suggested looking through Rebecca’s photos to find evidence of the “strenuous activity” causing Leon’s death.
You may be wondering about Jorge. Nietfeld writes, “[Cindy]’s husband focused on stabilizing the family, a move he credits with saving their marriage. He blamed the hospital, not [Rebecca], but told me that the litigation is ‘[Cindy’s] grieving process.’ He tried to stay out of the legal stuff so that [Cindy] couldn’t blame him too.”
While Cindy is going through all of this, Rebecca has been unable to go back to work, because she couldn’t stop bleeding. The surrogacy agency determined that Rebecca had not breached her contract, but they didn’t make Cindy keep paying, so Rebecca was no longer getting paid for being a surrogate, and Cindy also wasn’t paying for any of the hospital bills. Rebecca applied for disability benefits, and after a month, the doctors told her that she could return to work.
But Cindy called the HR department at Rebecca’s job, and reported her to a federal agency, accusing her of fraud. Rebecca’s supervisor remembers finding Rebecca crying on-and-off all day.
Then, according to Nietfeld, Cindy sent a photo of Leon’s corpse to Rebecca’s 7-year-old son’s iPad.
Nietfeld writes:
“In the months after Leon died, [Cindy] Bi:
Called the FBI 12 times. Reported Smith, [the surrogacy agency], the hospital, and Clarity escrow to more than a dozen state and federal regulators and numerous professional organizations. Launched a new round of her $30 million venture fund, backed by Marc Andreessen and David Sacks, President Trump’s ‘AI and crypto czar,’ on Leon’s due date. Posted Leon’s ChatGPT-written endorsement from heaven, offering his ‘eternal blessings’ for her work. Created TikToks, Instagram Reels, Facebook posts, X threads, LinkedIn Updates, and a website for her advocacy. Posted [Rebecca]’s full name, photo, employer, mortgage license number, son’s first name, and a link to her address. Asked her husband, again and again, how it was possible that Smith had carried her son but felt ‘nothing’ about his death.”
Nietfeld was able to find out things about Cindy’s past that the surrogacy agency allegedly did not find and did not alert Rebecca to. For example, Nietfeld writes that Cindy previously took lithium for bipolar disorder. The therapists did find that Cindy was taking SSRIs as well for what she described as work-related PTSD, but that she was weaning off.
Nietfeld went and spoke to the therapist who evaluated Cindy and Jorge and wrote a recommendation for them to the surrogacy agency. When Nietfeld asked the therapist why she isn’t more discerning with who she recommends and who she doesn’t, the therapist replied, “I’m not gatekeeping.” Nietfeld asked, “What about in the case of serious mental illness?” And the therapist replied that it’s up to the intended parents to disclose that to the surrogate. Nietfeld wrote, “It wasn’t just Leon’s death that pushed [Cindy] into her spiral of legal action and social media posts. It was the apparent lack of control of having her child inside another woman’s body—the most basic fact of surrogacy.”
Cindy was able to whip up a frenzy on social media, with strangers saying Rebecca should rot in jail or lose custody of her son. Rebecca started getting threats and began to live in fear. Her parents bought security cameras. Her sister feared violence. For a time, Rebecca moved back in with Ellis’s dad. She felt guilty for the chaos she was causing for her small office, with all the calls from Cindy, so she switched jobs. But then Cindy also contacted Rebecca’s new job, and told them that Rebecca was fired for fraud at her last job, and lied on her application. Rebecca started to consider taking her own life, feeling crushed under the weight of the harassment, the medical trauma, and the terrifying medical bills.
Cindy then sued Rebecca, and appealed the case when the judge said they had to work it out in private arbitration, as their contract had stipulated. Nietfeld wrote, “Whatever loophole existed, [Cindy] would find it. If [Rebecca] relaxed, she would take advantage. ‘The only goal she had was to destroy my life,’ [Rebecca] wrote in a court document: to get her fired from her job so she couldn’t support her son. To have her behind bars. To bankrupt her. To make it so [Rebecca] could never be at peace while Leon was dead.”
In the fall of 2024, Rebecca started to fight back. She filed a restraining order against Cindy, and shared her story. She maintained that during her whole pregnancy she was single and living alone with her son. She never “snuck out” of the hospital; the speeding ticket was from a day when nurses allowed her to leave the hospital to pick up an obscrue vitamin that Cindy had asked her to take. And she says she was emotionally affected by Leon’s death, to the point where she donated her breastmilk after the stillbirth, she volunteered at the NICU Ronald McDonald House, and sponsored a gold leaf on the hospital’s tree for angel babies.
Nietfeld writes about Cindy’s response to getting served the restraining order papers:
“‘She kidnapped and killed my son. I am the victim here,’ [Cindy] told me repeatedly. Being a ‘single mom,’ she said, ‘doesn’t give you the right to kill another son. You don’t have that victim card to play.’ She was almost screaming when she said it.”
You may remember that there was another surrogate pregnant with Jorge and Cindy’s daughter when Rebecca was pregnant with Leon. Six months after Leon died, their daughter, Mira, was born via a different surrogate, a woman named Chelsea. Cindy posted on Facebook and Instagram comparing her experiences with Rebeca and with Chelsea, saying, “I had the world’s worst [surrogate], and the best.” When Nietfeld asked Cindy about Chelsea, she told her that everything had been amazing– the experience was completely easy and smooth.
So Nietfeld reached out to Chelsea, and Chelsea told her that “easy and smooth” weren’t exactly how she would describe the experience. In fact, she also had major issues with the placenta, and lost so much blood that she was pushed to the brink of death and was only saved by an emergency hysterectomy.
So Nietfeld asked Cindy and Jorge about their family history, and it turns out that, according to this article, Cindy’s side of the family has had many issues stemming from placental health, including gestational diabetes that, for both her mother and sister, became a permanent issue for the rest of their lives, even after their pregnancies ended. The placenta doesn’t come from the surrogate; it comes from the DNA of the parents. Cindy and Jorge had allegedly not disclosed this information, and they don’t legally have to, so if they have a third child via surrogate, they won’t legally have to share that their first two surrogates nearly died from carrying their children.
So, where are they now? Jorge and Cindy are apparently looking for a surrogate for their third child. (Any takers?!) Rebecca Smith still has hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical bills in her name. Her insurance actually initially agreed to pay the bills, until Cindy called them and told them that Rebecca was committing fraud, so they revoked the payment. Along with the lawsuit, Cindy has now contacted the police and is pursuing criminal charges against Rebecca. The article notes that Virginia actually did recently put a mother behind bars for having a stillbirth. Rebecca still has a restraining order out against Cindy and part of that restraining order is that Cindy can’t talk about Rebecca publicly, which clearly is not working, because this entire article was Cindy talking about Rebecca– the reason we know this story is because Cindy told it all to Emi Nietfeld, presumably thinking that Wired and the public would be on her side.
Cindy has also gone into significant debt in order to pay legal fees. She hasn’t been working much since Leon’s death, and although, before the surrogacy disaster, she had a networth well in the tens of millions, most of that money was tied up in investments and businesses that she had paid for. She also has high living expenses. She pays about $10,000 a month in rent, she is currently paying for her sixth live-in nanny for her daughter. She has worked with nine different attorneys, and has racked up $750,000 in legal fees that she has paid about half of. Multiple law firms are threatening her with going to collections if she continues to refuse to pay. But Cindy explained to the lawyers asking for payment, “I cannot pay you because if I do, then I cannot get another lawyer.” Cindy bragged to Nietfeld that the lawyers never ask her about money upfront. She said, “They see my profile and assume I can pay.”
Cindy feels that if she gives up, then she cannot go back to being a venture capitalist in the same way. She said to Nietfeld, “If I cannot protect my son, if I cannot give him honor, sue the hell out of these people, and have some sense of justice … how can the investment founders say, ‘Cindy, you’re the best’?”
But, fortunately for Cindy, she recently found a lawyer who agreed to not charge hourly, and will instead go after Rebecca in exchange for 40% of whatever she wins in the civil case. Nietfeld asked how the search for the other surrogate is going, and Cindy shared that she can’t decide if they should pay for another surrogate, or instead spend that budget on legal fees. Because there’s only one thing in the world more rewarding than having a child… and that is legal proceedings.
This article went viral. I saw that Cindy has deleted a lot of her social media presence, and she changed her profile picture on Instagram to a highlighted portion of her court case. She also now has a link to a website called WiredDefamedBi.com which leads me to believe that she could be suing Wired for defamation. On the website, she has a screenshot from an email where Jorge told a fact checker from Wired that he did believe that Leon’s death was Rebecca’s fault. The article had initially made it sound like Jorge blamed the hospital more than Rebecca. On the website, she also provided links to a Facebook page called Baby Leon where she posts pictures of her daughter and shares AI generated videos that bring a dead baby Leon back to life. She also has a link to the lawsuit, which lists Rebecca Smith’s real, full government name.
From what it sounds like in this article, Cindy Bi is perhaps not mentally well and maybe she hasn’t been for a long time. A little-known fact is that someone can still technically have post-partum depression and even post-partum psychosis even if they didn’t physically carry the baby. (She is also, uh, deeply racist, which I don’t think comes from PPD.) My heart hurts for all grieving mothers, even if that grief comes out sideways, but the part of this story that strikes me as the most tragic isn’t just that Cindy missed out on a life with Leon, but that she is also missing the early days of her beautiful daughter’s life because she is so focused on becoming a villain in another mother’s story.
Someone in Cindy Bi’s mental state will jump through psychological hoops to justify their own disturbing reality, even if it ruins their life. So if you are rightfully upset about this story, instead of sending hatred toward Cindy, which I believe will fall on deaf ears, channel that emotional response into sharing information about surrogacy, even if that means sharing this article, especially to people who are considering surrogacy. There is also a GoFundMe for Rebecca Smith that I have independently confirmed will, in fact, go to the real Rebecca Smith. Any little bit that you can spare could make a big difference for her and Ellis.
My name is Siobhan Brier Aguilar and I’m a writer, follow my YouTube channel for more reviews and summaries of viral articles and books. The next blog post I will share is about a billionaire woman who claims to have uncovered previously suppressed memories of being sexually assaulted through MDMA therapy, and the New York Times strongly insinuated that she could have essentially made the whole thing up. It’s going to be a very interesting discussion about feminism and class and if we really should “believe all women,” so follow along for that conversation. Ok. Take care!
