A 73-year-old man is facing criminal charges after authorities say he tried to buy a baby from her mother at an auction house in Louisiana.
Howell Gene Penton, from Picayune, Mississippi, is charged with the sale of minor children in Washington Parish, according to the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office.
Officials say the incident took place at the Angie Auction House in the village of Angie, roughly 85 miles north of New Orleans.
Highlights
- A 73-year-old man from Mississippi faces criminal charges for trying to buy a baby at a Louisiana auction house in November 2025.
- Authorities arrested Howell Gene Penton after an undercover operation three days following his attempt to purchase a 10-month-old child.
- Louisiana law imposes strict penalties on child sale attempts, reflecting the seriousness of this rare but troubling offense.
- This incident highlights a wider global trend of child trafficking, as shown by recent cases in South Africa, Indonesia, and Nigeria.
A Louisiana man is facing criminal charges after attempting to buy a baby at an auction house
Authorities reported that Penton approached a woman attending the auction with her 10-month-old daughter and allegedly asked if he could purchase the child. The sheriff’s office said the encounter occurred on November 26.
Three days later, law enforcement organized an undercover operation at the auction house. Officers from the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Angie Police Department arrested Penton without incident during the sting.
Penton is being held in the Washington Parish Jail in Franklinton, Louisiana, on a $200,000 bond. Court records do not yet show whether he has entered a plea or obtained legal representation.
The sheriff’s office did not release additional details about how Penton made the offer or whether he knew the child’s mother beforehand.
Louisiana law imposes strict penalties for attempting to buy or sell children, including long prison sentences and substantial fines.
Cases involving the attempted sale of minors are rare, but not unheard of. Only earlier this year, in May, Racquel ‘Kelly’ Smith, a South African mother, was jailed for life for selling her 6-year-old daughter to a healer who wanted her for her “eyes and skin” in 2024.
In July, Indonesian police arrested 13 suspects linked to an alleged baby-trafficking syndicate that has sold at least 24 infants, some as young as two months old.
The investigation began when a parent reported that their baby was kidnapped. But it was later revealed that the parents had agreed to sell the baby, but complained when they were not paid.
In Nigeria, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons rescued eight children suspected to have been stolen by an interstate child-trafficking syndicate.
The rescued children were reportedly found in a privately owned orphanage run by a top executive of the Association of Orphanages and Homes Operators in Nigeria.
These incidents form part of a troubling global pattern.
Image credits: Jonas Gratzer/Getty Images
A recent United Nations report warned of increasing cases of child trafficking worldwide, a trend echoed in a major 2025 Interpol operation that identified 1,194 potential trafficking victims from 43 countries.
The incident from Louisiana fits into the broader picture of child trafficking and kidnapping. But it is not an isolated incident.
Social media users have shared experiences about strangers making unsolicited offers to “buy” their children, questioning how normalized such behavior can be. In a Reddit forum from 2019, people have shared such instances.
“I had some absolutely psycho old man look at my younger one when she was a toddler and go, ‘I’d pay good money to take her home with me.’ I laughed, thinking he was just really bad at making a joke and he added, ‘Fifty bucks,’” one user on Reddit recalled.
In July, police busted an Indonesian syndicate for selling at least 24 infants
Image credits: Cheng Xin/Getty Images
“My dad worked for a year in Saudi Arabia and a man offered him $1 million for my sisters and I,” another narrated.
While many of these encounters never escalate into criminal acts, similar exchanges can be the starting point for trafficking. A 2017 investigation, titled ‘Babies for sale,’ highlights the stories of many parents who have sold their children, and grown adults who do not know where they come from.