For years, a couple in this port city on the island of Crete believed their attempts at in vitro fertilization had simply failed.
The clinic told them that the eggs retrieved from the wife were dead. Then the police called.
One of those eggs, they learned, had been fertilized with a German man's sperm and carried to term.
Somewhere in Germany there is now a child whose biological mother is the wife, and the couple had no idea.
"We want justice," the couple told Greek state broadcaster ERT, "and for those who acted criminally against us, without our knowledge, to go to prison."
Other eggs the clinic had declared dead were later found frozen in a hospital.
Their account is one of many now before a court in Chania, where 33 people went on trial this week in one of the most disturbing medical fraud cases in recent Greek history.
The defendants include doctors, embryologists, midwives, clinic employees, lawyers and intermediaries accused of matching paying clients with babies.
Some, prosecutors say, paid as much as 140,000 euros, or about $162,000. The trial was quickly adjourned until December because of a procedural obstacle.
The case broke open in 2023, when police raided a Chania fertility clinic over allegations of illegal surrogacy and trafficking in eggs and infants.
Since then, women have described sham treatments, eggs harvested without consent and illegal adoptions arranged for large sums.
One woman said that what was implanted in her was not an embryo at all. "They did embryo transfers without taking my eggs or using any genetic material," she said. "Just water."
She has since had two children, she said, but the financial and emotional toll remains. "I still haven't gotten over it."
Greece has become a destination for fertility treatment, drawing patients from across Europe with relatively permissive laws and lower costs.
The Chania case has raised hard questions about oversight of private clinics.
For the women at its center, it has also left a lasting fear that a part of themselves may be living a life they will never know.
All of the defendants are presumed innocent.