More than two dozen couples filed a lawsuit against an Orange County fertility clinic and its head doctor, demanding that he safely return their embryos after he allegedly took them without their knowledge or consent to an unknown location in Bakersfield.
The lawsuit, filed in Orange County Superior Court on Tuesday, includes claims of negligence, injunctive relief, lack of informed consent, concealment, intentional misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, medical battery, conversion and loss of consortium.
The suit alleges that Dr. Brian David Acacio was practicing medicine on a suspended license and that he was evicted from his Laguna Niguel facility, where he had been holding patients’ embryos in cryogenic tanks, in December because he owed nearly $250,000 in unpaid rent and penalties.
No one from the practice ever told the couples that their embryos were being moved until some asked through email, the patients say.
It was about the time of he eviction that Acacio and an embryologist, John Scadros, removed the embryos from the facility, loaded them onto a truck and took them to Bakersfield, the suit claims.
Attorneys representing the couples accused Acacio of holding the embryos hostage and refusing to either return them or transfer them to another facility until the couples signed paperwork releasing Acacio of all liability.
Four couples who spoke at a news conference announcing the lawsuit Tuesday said they had no idea until February that the embryos were transferred to Bakersfield, where Acacio has another location, or that the Laguna Niguel office had closed.
Some found out through Yelp reviews, while others learned of it through a Facebook group, they said.
“I just want him to be accountable and I want to know where the embryos are,” said Christina Chandler, who along with her partner, Ryan Webster, had attempted two embryo transfers that failed in 2025. “We’ve been through so much. We’ve gone through multiple retrievals, multiple transfers, and this man does not care about us.
“We’ll never get back what he’s taken from us emotionally, physically, financially,” Chandler continued. “It’s definitely taken a toll on us.”
Chandler said they went to Acacio after her brother and sister-in-law had a baby through in vitro fertilization.
“We trusted that he could get the job done,” she said.
The couple said they did not want others to have the same experience.
“We’re going to find out what happened, we’re going to shed light on this,” said Rob Marcereau, an attorney representing the couples. “We’re going to hold him accountable and, hopefully soon, we’re going to put him out of business.”
Their top priority, however, is the safe return of the embryos to the plaintiffs.
“That’s a huge question mark and what is tearing up all of his patients inside right now because we do not know whether these embryos are safe,” Marcereau said. “We have no confidence that these embryos were kept in the appropriate conditions and kept safe.”
Attorneys allege in the lawsuit that an ex-romantic partner of Acacio’s flagged the Medical Board of California to Acacio’s “ongoing cocaine use,” which he allegedly admitted to during a visit by board investigators in February 2025, though he did not provide a urine sample. His license was suspended on Dec. 30 after an October drug test came back positive for marijuana metabolites, the suit claims.
Over time in 2025, Chandler and Webster said Acacio had started to appear frail and thin. During one appointment, while performing an ultrasound, Chandler said Acacio had an IV line in his arm, which he claimed was because he was “under the weather,” but not contagious.
Marina Reyes, a former patient of Acacio, said several embryo transfer appointments had been rescheduled without reason until the fertility center sent an email that said “for their safety, they decided to cancel any future appointments.
“That is when we decided to look him up online and realized he had a cease to practice since Dec. 30,” Reyes said. “The issue there was that he performed an ultrasound on me, a pretty invasive ultrasound on me, on Jan. 2.”
She and her husband, Jorge, have two embryos with Acacio, she said.
“We were in shock. I would have never thought we would be in this predicament,” she said. “I had thought we’d be done with our IVF journey in February.”
The couples also said Tuesday that they have since gone to different clinics.
Acacio, who the plaintiffs’ attorneys believe is still practicing despite having his license suspended, practiced reproductive endocrinology in Southern California for decades and attended the State of the Union address in March 2024 as a guest of U.S. Representative Mike Levin.
Attorneys said the patients are demanding to be able to observe the embryos and to see that they are kept in a safe manner at Acacio’s office, and are demanding the safe transport of the embryos to other providers for treatment.
They also believe that more couples have been affected and may not even know that their embryos were moved.