On 15 September 1950, Tennessee Welfare Commissioner Shoat closed the offices of Georgia Tann, director of the Tennessee Children's Home Society, Memphis Branch. In thirty years Tann had placed over 5,000 children in every state in the Union as well as Mexico, Panama, Canada and England. Numerous parents had complained that she had offered to get healthcare for their children and when they signed a form authorizing it (so they thought) took their children away. Unwed mothers reported that she had told them their babies had died at birth or had forced them to sign a surrender form when they were still under heavy sedation. At least two adoptive families realized that she gave the identical description of the birth parents to them both. A large number of those placed were identified as Jewish, when the Jewish population in the state was very small. Charging wealthy couples in New York and Los Angeles as much as $10,000 for an infant and falsifying her travel expenses, Tann had accumulated close to one million dollars. Four years later, Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee chaired congressional hearings on black-market adoption. Georgia Tann provided the perfect example of adoption gone wrong.

Tann had violated almost every tenet of ethical social work standards and was the impetus for a Congressional investigation of black-market adoption and yet, ironically, the national child-placing standards initiated by the new social work profession combined with traditional child care practices in Tennessee, made possible Tann's adoption practices.