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A French court has today convicted a woman of defrauding two gay couples, who hired her as a surrogate mother, handing her a one-year suspended jail sentence.

The 37-year-old woman, named only as Aurore, told the couples the children had died at birth, then ‘doubled her money’ by selling the infants to other people, a court heard.

Surrogacy is illegal in France, and the two gay couples, along with two other couples, one gay and another heterosexual who bought babies from Aurore, were each given suspended fines of 2,000 euros.

Using pseudonyms such as “Little Stork” and “Sincere Angel”, Aurore entered a contract in 2010 with a male homosexual couple in western France, agreeing to carry a child for them for 15,000 euros.

The due date was March 21, 2011, but when the time came she sent a text message to the couple claiming that the child was stillborn.

But the healthy baby boy was instead sold for 10,000 euros to another gay couple living in Luxembourg.

Then in 2012, she promised a baby to another male couple for 15,000 euros, then told them it died.

By the time Aurore was arrested in 2013 she was in contact with another three couples and was charged with fraud and attempted fraud.

Experts said the defendant, who testified that she had been raped by her father as a teenager, suffered from “major emotional neglect” and low self-esteem.

She already had four children in 2008 when she became pregnant with an unwanted fifth child, a baby girl that she offered for free to a Parisian couple.

“I just wanted to make people happy,” Aurore told the court in the Loire Valley city of Blois as the trial opened in January.

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