■The Man who paid $20k on child support over a daughter he never had
In New Mexico, Steve Barreras was forced to pay a total of $20,000 for a daughter that never existed. After getting divorced to Viola Trevino, Viola claimed to be pregnant with Steve's child. This was in spite of the fact that Barreras had a vasectomy in 1998 and claimed that Trevino had tubal ligation in 1978.
Trevino fabricated a daughter named "Stephanie Renee", who she claimed was born in 1999, and obtained a baptismal certificate, birth certificate, Medicare card and Social Security card for the fictitious girl. Mr. Barreras' adult daughter, Eve Barreras, assisted her mother in the scam by filing a fraudulent birth certificate for the phantom daughter with Vital Statistics while she worked at St. Joseph's Northeast Hospital.
In 2002, Trevino was able to persuade a court to order Steve to pay child support for the fabricated daughter, by falsifying DNA evidence. When the judge demanded to see Trevino's daughter in December 2004, she went to a local mall where she persuaded a grandmother and her 2 year old granddaughter that they were "going to go see Santa Claus", but instead went to the courthouse with the 2 year old girl and attempted to pass her off before the judge as her own.
Mr. Barreras, the paternity fraud victim, successfully sued blood laboratory Mobile Blood Services for their role in the DNA hoax. The DNA came from adult daughter Eve Barreras with help of lab employee Pamela Flores. Viola Trevino was sentenced to 16 months in a federal prison in Arizona for claiming the "girl" on tax returns. Trevino owes the IRS over $2200 for the fraud and Barreras $26,000 in child support and lawyer's fees.
