Babymoon Inn abruptly shuts down, leaving expecting families out thousands of dollars
PHOENIX - A number of pregnant women in the Phoenix and Tucson areas say they're scrambling to make birthing arrangements after the birthing center they paid thousands of dollars to abruptly closed.
If you look up Babymoon Inn Birth Center on Google, it says its permanently closed. The building is locked up.
The women who paid $5,000 for their services can’t get a hold of the owners. What happened is a mystery, but one woman believes it was intentional.
Babymoon Inn Birth Center in Phoenix and Tucson has been around for more than a decade.
Its website boasts of its accredited midwife services. Its social media profiles have more than 10,000 followers.
"Babymoon had such amazing reviews. They had been open a long time, and I was like, ‘Oh, this looks perfect,’" Flora DiPietro, a pregnant mother, said.
DiPietro says after a tour of the Tucson location, she and her husband put down the $5,000 to reserve services for her September due date on Tuesday, May 28.
"On Wednesday, they cashed our check. Friday at 7:30 p.m., I got a phone call, and it was one of the employees, and she's like, ‘I’m so sorry, but we’re closing both locations in two weeks,’" DiPietro said.
The DiPietros
It’s now been over two months, and the DiPietros have not received a refund. They can no longer reach the owners, Steven and Julia Hall.
"I was like, you cashed how many checks on Wednesday, knowing you were closing on Thursday," DiPietro said.
Her husband, Danny DiPietro, says, "How many tens of thousands of dollars of other people's money are they holding on to, when they knew that they were going bankrupt?"
The DiPietros say they know of eight other women who were left in the lurch by the center. This list is growing as more women come forward, panicking about the loss of thousands of dollars and scrambling to find birthing services in time for their due date.
FOX 10 reached out to Steven and Julia hall via phone, email, and even knocked on the door of an address listed under their name.
But, the couple vanished.
Steven's LinkedIn says he’s the founder and managing director of Maternity Care Solutions, LLC, a consulting company. It also says he's previously served as treasurer on the American Association of Birth Center Board of Directors.
"He’s very much experienced in the corporate realm," Danny DiPietro said. "He knew that this was coming."
For expectant couples like the DiPietros, they were told because the company is a C corporation, there’s limited liability for the owners. They don’t know where the Halls filed for bankruptcy, and the owners don’t show up to small claims court dates.
There’s little action families can take.
"So, it's just layers of protection. So as far as us going after everything to get a refund, like, good luck is pretty much what they told us," Flora DiPietro said.
The DiPietros believe the couple has disappeared and never announced the Babymoon Inn’s bankruptcy, so they can quietly open another somewhere else.
FOX 10 reached out to Halls, but they have not responded. At this point, it's not clear if these families can file a police report, but they may be able to sue the LLC.