OCALA - Shannon McCracken knows an expectant mother when she sees one, so the owner of Little Angels Adoption Agency grew a little suspicious when she looked at 5-foot-2, 114-pound Shawanda Butler, who was supposed to be six months' pregnant.

"Show me your belly," McCracken told the tiny 24-year-old, who had accepted more than $5,000 in aid from the private agency and $1,500 from nonprofit Choose Life Resources of Marion County.

When Butler wouldn't unveil her stomach, McCracken asked to feel the round mound hidden under a zippered jacket and shirt.

"I touched it," McCracken said, recalling the encounter at Butler's home last month. "It was a pillow."

Butler, 24, was arrested Tuesday and charged with organized fraud, accused of swindling the agencies, which offer financial assistance to women considering adoption and other alternatives to abortion.

McCracken and officials for Choose Life Resources said the fraud was a first against their agencies.

Both agencies require a woman to prove she is with child before they offer financial help for medical expenses and other needs such as rent, groceries and utility payments.

McCracken said Butler "always had an excuse" when asked to provide a doctor's note, but she agreed to take an at-home pregnancy test provided by Little Angels, which was positive.

McCracken said she now thinks Butler used a urine sample from a sister who was pregnant.

Choose Life Resources, which generally asks clients to submit to a sonogram, did not require the test of Butler because she was referred by the adoption agency, said Debbie Ferguson, executive director of the Women's Pregnancy Center in Ocala.

"The client pulled a fast one on Little Angels," Ferguson said.

Sheriff's spokeswoman Jenifer Fisher said detectives determined Butler faked the pregnancy.

Neither agency paid cash directly to Butler, but paid her rent and utilities and offered her gift cards to Wal-Mart to pay for maternity clothes and groceries. McCracken and Ferguson said they later discovered that Butler's "landlord" was her boyfriend.

McCracken said Butler cheated the agencies out of money and time that could have been devoted to other women struggling with unplanned pregnancies.

"Thank goodness she hadn't been matched yet with an adoptive family," McCracken said.

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