The unraveling of a charity’s feel-good story about saving African orphans

“Can I talk to you both again today please?" he wrote. “I have a baby." Up popped a photo of an infant girl in a blue knit cap, beautiful brown eyes and two tiny fingers in her mouth.

It was April 2015, and Carney was working as an American missionary in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world. The malnourished girl was Mwayi Siyambili. Carney said the girl’s family wanted to give her up for adoption.

His clients—a pastor at an influential megachurch in Arkansas and his wife—promptly flew to the small nation in southeast Africa, and a few weeks later, they left with little Mwayi.

It was just one of many intercountry adoptions that Carney, a former salesman in his 40s, has brokered in the last decade. He told the evangelical Christian community in the U.S. that he was doing God’s work by saving orphans in Africa. In 2015, he started a charity that he said was collecting donations to buy formula for starving infants in Africa. He also said he was finding loving American homes for the orphans.

Carney’s feel-good story about rescuing unwanted children like Mwayi, though, has begun to fall apart. Several former employees at his charity and families in Malawi and the U.S. are offering troubling accounts of his operations, and U.S. authorities are investigating Carney and his charity, including his spending of millions of dollars he raised from donors.

Mwayi’s father, James Siyambili, said recently that he believed back then that Carney was a good Samaritan helping because his baby was sick and needed food. He didn’t understand the concept of adoption, he said, and thought that his daughter would at least be coming back to Malawi for visits. “I am disappointed to hear that the child is no longer mine," he said.

Things began to unravel for Carney when two American mothers who ran into problems trying to adopt Malawian babies through him began poking around.

Nellya Canfield, a Tennessee mother of six, flew to Malawi in 2022 to meet two babies Carney told her she could adopt. When she got there, Canfield recalled, Carney told her the baby girl he had told her about was no longer at an orphanage, and that she could no longer go to the orphanage where the boy was staying. She started getting suspicious and asking questions.

Lauren Farrell, a stay-at-home mother living in Colorado, was also trying to adopt from Malawi when she heard about what Canfield had found out. Farrell had previous work experience finding records online. She told Canfield she would start digging.

Each night after tucking her daughter into bed, Farrell sat down at her computer. She turned up a lot. Tax documents showed Carney hadn’t claimed income from his charity for several years. His Instagram feed depicted a jet-setting lifestyle.

The two women flagged their discoveries to other families, to officials at their adoption agency, and eventually an adoption accreditation body. That organization alerted the State Department.

“This was happening under everyone’s nose for years," said Canfield, the Tennessee mother. “All the red flags were right there."

Carney didn’t respond to calls and emails seeking comment. On May 30, one day after The Wall Street Journal emailed him a detailed list of questions, Carney posted a Bible verse on Instagram, along with a caption. “Don’t believe all you might hear soon," he wrote in the caption. “Couldn’t be further from the truth, and I know God is in charge of all things. I can’t wait to see how God gets the glory even in the midst of dark times."

African calling

International adoption services charge U.S. families thousands of dollars in fees to match them with orphans in other countries. In Malawi, no child can be adopted from an orphanage or elsewhere without the approval of the Ministry of Gender, Children, Disability and Social Welfare, a government body that determines orphans who are eligible for international adoption.

Enock Bonongwe, a deputy director at the ministry, said the system aims to keep Malawian children with their families and communities. If a child’s parents are deceased or otherwise incapable of providing care, grandparents, aunts or uncles are preferred as adoptive parents. If relatives are unable or unwilling, the next option is someone else in the community.

“If all these have failed, then we opt for an intercountry adoption," Bonongwe said. People working for adoption agencies and prospective adoptive families, he said, aren’t allowed to approach Malawian families to propose adoption. “That is unethical," he said. “It is also illegal."

Adoptive parents are placed on a waiting list, and the government ministry matches them with Malawian children who are eligible for adoption. The law requires not just the consent of any surviving parent for international adoption, but also anyone who has custody of or is liable to contribute to the support of the child, though a court may dispense of the consent if such a person has abandoned the child, cannot be found or is incapable of giving consent, according to the State Department website.

Carney has worked with several adoption services, most recently with Children of All Nations, one of the biggest nonprofit adoption agencies in the U.S. It says it has found new families for more than 9,000 children.

Carney, who had worked in sales at J.B. Hunt, moved in 2013 to Malawi with his wife and children to work at an orphanage linked to Cross Church, a megachurch in Arkansas. For many years, the church was led by Ronnie Floyd, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Attendees have included current or former executives at Walmart, Tyson Foods and freight giant J.B. Hunt Transport Services. After about two years, Carney started his own nonprofit to provide infant formula, with staff in Malawi and donors in the U.S. He called it 2nd Milk.

Carney appeared on Arkansas television to publicize his work. Among his supporters were Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Ryan Thompson and Joe Donaldson, the owner of Sam’s Furniture chain, who promoted 2nd Milk at his main store in Arkansas.

Carney aspired to do more than merely provide formula to infants. He also enlisted 2nd Milk as a foreign supervised provider to facilitate adoptions from Malawi to the U.S.

The story he told families who wanted to adopt was compelling: He himself was adopted, he said, and he and his wife had adopted children. Many families visited Malawi on mission trips that he arranged, and some adopted through Carney.

He also set up a travel agency called Wanderlist Global and a safari company, Kruger Safari Club. He asked adoptive families taking mission trips to use his travel agency and participate in big-game hunting safaris.

Back at Cross Church, Carney’s good deeds in Africa started drawing attention. In June 2015, Nick Floyd, one of its pastors, shared exciting news on the blog of his father, Ronnie Floyd. Carney, he wrote, had helped him and his wife adopt Mwayi, the little girl from Malawi.

“Our story is a story of God’s intervention," he wrote. “We didn’t expect it and still can’t explain it. What we do know is this, when God intervenes in your life, get ready for the ride of a lifetime."

He and his wife had been trying to adopt for years, he wrote, when they received the text message from Carney that April about the baby. The malnourished infant weighed less than 5 pounds, and ended up in a local hospital with malaria and pneumonia, he wrote.

The Floyds flew with Carney to Malawi on May 6. Three weeks later, the couple left the country with the baby, he wrote.

In the blog post, Nick Floyd said the baby was deemed adoptable because of her background and medical condition, and that her family was in “complete agreement" with the adoption.

Maternal family

The adopted girl’s maternal family lives in the village of Bula, a collection of thatch-roofed houses about 100 miles from Malawi’s capital. During a recent visit by a Journal reporter, the girl’s 78-year-old grandmother, Margaret Sandram, said her daughter, Mwayi’s mother, had died in a hit-and-run car accident in early 2015, a few days after she gave birth.

Family members took turns bringing the baby to 2nd Milk for formula, but the baby’s health deteriorated, Sandram said. On one of those trips, she said, the baby’s father left her with the Carneys. Mwayi was transferred to a hospital. Sandram said she went to the hospital but was told to head back to her village and that the baby would be brought to her.

She said Stanley Khobwe, a 2nd Milk employee, went with the baby’s father to a court in the city of Zomba—a two-hour drive from the village—to give her up for adoption.

The judge overseeing the proceeding approved the adoption, noting that a representative of the government ministry had said no family had come forward to adopt the baby, the father had consented and the family had been briefed about the consequences of an adoption, according to a copy of the ruling reviewed by the Journal.

In a recent interview, Khwobe said he told Carney before the court proceeding that the maternal family didn’t want to go through with an adoption. “When I briefed him, he told me to take the baby’s father only to Zomba," he said.

Khobwe said that while he was with the father, he got a call from the baby’s grandmother asking why they went secretly to Zomba. “The grandparents were ignored," he said. “I don’t know why they were left out."

The family rushed to the courthouse, but Sandram said that by the time she arrived in Zomba, the case had been closed.

“A white lady was with Mwayi, and I grabbed her from the lady, but she also took her back from me and jumped into a car," Sandram said. “I immediately started to cry, and they told me that I should not cry because they would bring her to me."

“I didn’t know that they intended to take the baby to America. They said they intended to help me take care of the baby," she said, referring to 2nd Milk.

She said she never saw her granddaughter again.

Nick Floyd and his wife, Meredith, said in an email that they went through courts in both Malawi and the U.S. to have the adoption legally approved, and that they were disturbed by what the Journal had found. The allegations that family members didn’t want the adoption are “more than heartbreaking," they said, and they are willing to assist law enforcement in any investigation.

“We believed the adoption of our child was necessary and valid," they wrote. “There was never any indication that the adoption might be inappropriate. If there had been, we would not have continued the process." They said the allegations “are devastating for us and for any parent who has adopted from Malawi."

Bonongwe, the Malawian adoption official, said he was unaware of the Floyd case, having assumed his role in 2017.

He said Carney was able to approach families in Malawi because he was using 2nd Milk both to provide formula to infants with no mothers and to facilitate adoptions. “He created this situation that gave him access to vulnerable families," Bonongwe said.

Brian Dunaway, a spokesman for Cross Church, said 2nd Milk wasn’t a ministry of the church and wasn’t supported by the church. “We are deeply saddened to hear the allegations of misuse of funds, along with allegations of unethical practices during adoptions," he said. “These allegations are very concerning, and Cross Church stands ready to cooperate with authorities if called upon to do so."

Mission trips

Stanley Hampton, a member at Cross Church, was working at J.B. Hunt in 2016 when he heard that Carney had sold his belongings and moved to Africa for mission work. That summer, Hampton took his first mission trip there with Carney.

The group did a safari, visited the beach, fed babies in villages and read the Bible. “I had chills riding around in a bus singing gospel songs," he recalled recently. “It was everything you’d see on TV."

At the time, Hampton said, Carney had a small staff in Malawi. Hampton thought he could help.

Hampton quit his job at J.B. Hunt in 2017 and became the director of operations at 2nd Milk in Malawi. He began dipping into his own savings to fund the work there, eventually cashing out his 401K. “I felt a calling to give," he said. “I thought God put us together for a reason."

He said he started feeling uneasy about what he heard from workers at 2nd Milk. Whenever U.S. families were about to visit, Carney ordered staff to visit villages to look for babies they could bring to 2nd Milk feeding stations. Some of the babies, he said, had no need for formula because they were neither orphans nor malnourished.

To Hampton, the visits sometimes didn’t look like mission trips. Couples were coming instead of young people, and they weren’t there to feed babies. “It started to feel like the mission trips were becoming baby-shopping trips," he said.

Carney, who by that time also was providing adoption services, took pictures of some babies and sent them to families in the U.S., Hampton said. “It just felt dirty," Hampton said. “We hadn’t even talked to the family."

Other former 2nd Milk employees told the Journal that Carney represented to U.S. families that certain babies were available for adoption, even though he hadn’t yet gotten approval from their biological families or the Malawian ministry. The former employees said some Malawian families didn’t understand the implications of adoption and have since asked former 2nd Milk staff members when their children are returning home.

Hampton started asking for 2nd Milk’s financial documents. He was concerned, he said, about various aspects of the group’s operations, including plans to expand without the means to pay for it.

In early 2018, Hampton shared his concerns with board members back in the U.S. and requested that Carney’s wife step aside as chief financial officer and be replaced by an experienced financial person, according to an email reviewed by the Journal.

The board members ignored his concerns, Hampton said, and he tendered his resignation shortly thereafter. 2nd Milk’s board members didn’t respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

Adoption services

While running 2nd Milk, Carney had taken over an adoption agency called Africa Adoption Services, the agency he had worked with to facilitate the Floyd adoption. By 2018, it was facing a loss of accreditation, and Carney appeared in over his head, said Daniel Nehrbass, president of Nightlight Christian Adoptions, another adoption agency in the U.S. He said about 20 clients from Africa Adoption Services were transferred to Nightlight to continue their adoption processes, and he hired Carney as director of fundraising. Within three months, he said, he fired Carney.

“We fired him because he seemed to have a pattern of dishonesty," said Nehrbass. “He was neither qualified nor able to be involved in adoptions, so he never had any adoption related responsibilities with Nightlight."

Nehrbass said Carney made false promises about how much money given to 2nd Milk was going to Malawi, how many children were going to be able to be adopted from Malawi with Africa Adoption Services and how long the adoptions would take, among other things.

Carney told Nehrbass he would get 100,000 children adopted from Malawi. “I just thought, I’m not dealing with a sane person," Nehrbass said. “I think he genuinely believed he was going to get 100,000 kids adopted out of the country."

In 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 14 adoptions from Malawi to the U.S., according to the State Department.

Nehrbass said he later learned that Children of All Nations, based in Texas, was working with Carney. In October 2020, he warned its chief executive, Snow Wu. “Snow, one of the biggest mistakes I ever made was partnering with Jason Carney from 2nd Milk in Malawi," he wrote in an email. “I cannot believe that man is not in prison. Feel free to call me if you would like to discuss further."

Children of All Nations continued to work with Carney in Malawi. Wu didn’t respond to telephone calls and emails seeking comment.

Canfield, the Tennessee mother, turned to Children of All Nations in 2021 when she and her husband wanted to adopt a child from Malawi. She was connected with Carney.

“He fostered children, adopted children, he was adopted," she said. “He checked every perfect box."

Canfield said she and her husband started making donations to 2nd Milk. Carney told her he had located a boy and a girl in Malawi who they could adopt. Canfield sent Carney a photo book of her family to give to the boy.

In early 2022, Carney took questions from Canfield and other Children of All Nations clients in a Facebook Live session. “We’re only doing international adoption for children that are 100% abandoned," he said, according to a recording of the session reviewed by the Journal. “They have no other way to survive. They’re going to be stuck in an institution for the rest of their life."

He suggested he didn’t support international adoptions of children whose families were merely poor. “To me, that’s not adoption," he said. “That’s human trafficking."

He told clients that donating to 2nd Milk would increase the chances of their adoptions getting approved. “The judge will ask you what connection that you have, and the attorneys have told us in the past that even financially having some sort of a connection with Malawi, whether that’s 2nd Milk or another organization" will help, he said.

Growing skepticism

Carney told the Canfields they could meet their future children on a mission trip for 2nd Milk. At his request, they booked the trip through his travel agency.

When they got there, Nellya Canfield recalled, Carney told them the girl, whose mother had died, was no longer at the orphanage, and that they couldn’t visit the boy at his orphanage anymore. He blamed a photo book she had sent along with Carney for the boy, saying that it was viewed as disrespectful. Carney took the Canfields to meet the girl and her mother’s family.

Canfield decided to stay in Malawi after Carney and her husband returned to the U.S. She wanted to meet an orphanage official to apologize for sending the photo book and explain her intentions. When she arrived at the official’s office, the orphanage official said she didn’t know the boy was even up for adoption.

Canfield also chatted up former 2nd Milk employees, who told her they hadn’t received promised wages and that Carney was coaxing families to give up their children for adoption. Several former 2nd Milk employees in Malawi shared similar concerns with the Journal.

Canfield said she went to the girl’s village without Carney to ensure her mother’s family had consented.

In March 2022, Children of All Nations sent an email informing clients there were delays in the program because some families went to Malawi to expedite the process. It said such moves were “disrespectful of their culture." Canfield said she later heard from families that the agency was blaming her for delays.

“We are the only adoption agency to be able to do adoptions the way we do in Malawi with the connections through Jason and 2nd Milk," Hannah Jones, who worked for Children of All Nations, wrote the families. “These relationships are vital to successful adoptions and when families try to jump the gun, or circumvent things, it can have very damaging effects."

After she was back in the U.S., Canfield said, she arranged a call with Wu, the CEO of Children of All Nations, to share her worries about Carney’s activities in Malawi. Canfield said Wu told her that Carney and the others just needed better training.

Other families also had concerns about Carney but didn’t speak up because they didn’t want to jeopardize their adoptions, Canfield said. “All they wanted is a cute little international baby," she said.

Not long after her outreach to Wu, Children of All Nations sent Canfield a letter saying it had addressed her concerns and warned her to stop perpetuating “rumors" about 2nd Milk and Carney. “CAN is stating that you cannot have any contact with anyone outside of CAN, Jason or a designated representative that one of us has appointed," the letter said.

Canfield said she eventually used Carney and Children of All Nations to adopt the baby girl named Rose after the father was tracked down to ensure he, too, had consented. The adoption for the boy fell through.

Meanwhile, Bonongwe, the Malawian official, had been receiving notices about court dates to approve adoptions in which he hadn’t been involved, which he said shouldn’t happen. When he started digging into the cases linked with Carney, he said he found problems. Carney had been boasting about connections with Malawian government officials, he said, and was promising to fast-track adoptions.

Bonongwe said the government ministry started rejecting adoptions in which it hadn’t matched the child, despite pressure from Carney and Children of All Nations, and it contacted the U.S. Embassy in Malawi.

The Letter

Farrell, the Colorado mother, said the email from Children of All Nations blaming the delays on Canfield made her suspicious. Wu had told her Children of All Nations had been matching clients with children in Malawi in a few weeks because their foreign supervised provider had special connections within the Malawi government.

Farrell contacted Canfield, who shared what she had found out in Malawi. When Farrell heard, she recalled, “My gut was screaming that something is not right."

She told Canfield she would hunt online for info on both Carney and the adoption agency. She said Carney’s Instagram account showed he took vacations to places like the Maldives and Iceland and appeared to have an expensive boat. She found that Carney had listed no compensation from 2nd Milk between 2016 and 2019.

Farrell wondered whether Carney’s wife was funding the lifestyle. That’s when Farrell noticed that Carney’s spouse was chief financial officer of 2nd Milk—and claimed no compensation from the nonprofit in those years.

Farrell said documents and what she heard from other families showed that Carney matched babies to families before their orphan status was verified by the Malawi government. When families accepted those referrals, the adoption agency collected thousands of dollars in fees. Farrell said the fees weren’t refundable if the adoptions didn’t progress to a court hearing.

That August, Farrell told Jones, the Children of All Nations worker, that she had found out Nightlight had fired Carney, among other concerns.

“I’ve chased down and I’ve double checked" the concerns, Jones told her, according to a recording of their phone call reviewed by the Journal. “I cannot find any sort of credibility to any claims that have been made, specifically about our foreign supervised provider."

The same month, Farrell sent a letter to Children of All Nations CEO Wu detailing her concerns about 2nd Milk. Farrell forwarded the letter to the organization that accredits adoption agencies, the Intercountry Adoption Accreditation and Maintenance Entity, or IAAME.

Children of All Nations wrote back to Farrell that it had reviewed all cases involving 2nd Milk and found no evidence of unethical behavior. IAAME eventually alerted the State Department, Farrell said.

Around that time, Carney was advertising a 2nd Milk fundraising gala in Arkansas, with former quarterback Tim Tebow as the keynote speaker. Tebow pulled out after being warned about 2nd Milk and Carney. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee took his place. Huckabee said recently that he had spoken at the event as a favor to his friend, Joe Donaldson, and didn’t know about any issues with the charity.

Search Warrant

Last October, Carney hosted another fundraising gala for 2nd Milk in Arkansas. Soon after, federal agents seized his electronic devices.

U.S. officials suspect Carney was exaggerating how many babies 2nd Milk was feeding and was using money he raised for the charity to pay for his travel, vehicles, watercraft, his home and other personal expenses, according to an affidavit filed by a State Department investigator in connection with a request for a search warrant. Between December 2022 and June 2023, the affidavit says, Carney used 2nd Milk bank accounts to pay $171,884 of American Express bills for personal expenses, including $10,420 at a safari lodge in South Africa.

The State Department declined to comment, citing an ongoing investigation. A spokeswoman said the department is committed to intercountry adoptions that are “safe, legal, ethical, transparent."

Donaldson said his company stopped sponsoring 2nd Milk after U.S. officials informed him of an open investigation, which he said involved issues of which he was unaware. Farrell, Canfield, Nehrbass and Hampton also said they have spoken to investigators. 2nd Milk’s website has been taken down.

In April, Children of All Nations lost its accreditation. In a message to clients, it attributed the loss to allegations that it didn’t adequately supervise Carney’s activities in Malawi. The agency denied any wrongdoing.

Farrell said she adopted a baby boy named William from Malawi through another agency after dropping Children of All Nations. She said she had already paid Children of All Nations about $16,000 that the agency still hasn’t returned. “Adoption is a really amazing journey, but when it’s done incorrectly, it’s one of the most harmful things," she said.

Canfield has formed a nonprofit group that runs an orphanage in Malawi. She said she seeks adoptions as a last resort for children who can’t be reunited with their families.

Years after the Floyd adoption, members of Mwayi’s maternal family went to the home of 2nd Milk’s Khobwe, who later left the organization, to ask about the child’s whereabouts.

“I have lost weight thinking about my child, wondering whether I was going to see her again," Mwayi’s grandmother, Sandram, said recently. “I have faith that one day I will see my child, face to face."

Bonongwe said that might never happen. “Adoption is irreversible," he said. “That’s why we need to do due diligence beforehand."

Write to Khadeeja Safdar at khadeeja.safdar@wsj.com