A Queens spa owner who nearly killed a woman with a homemade booty lift took a two-year plea bargain today moments before her trial was to start.
Barbara Nieto, 29, pleaded guilty to unauthorized practice of a profession and second-degree assault for the illegal operation she performed on Augusta Velez-Jimenez, 25, on March 20, 2010.
Velez-Jimenez, 25, paid $500 to have her fat from her stomach injected into her buttocks. Within days she was hospitalized for severe pain and needed surgery to avoid a life-threatening septic infection.
Investigators combed Nieto’s Perfect Image Stethics cq in Corona and had found records to hundreds of other clients who also had the butt injections.
“I ask for forgiveness for what I did,” Nieto told Queens Supreme Court Justice Robert Kohm through a Spanish interpreter.
Nieto was facing up to seven years behind bars, but as condition to her plea will be sentenced to two years in prison and serve three years probation.
The phony doc was also ordered to pay $180,000 in restitution payments to the other victims and must pay $50,000 of it before she is sentenced on Aug. 8, sources said.