It’s back to the Dominican Republic for a hack plastic surgeon who lured Latina women from Manhattan salons to Santo Domingo for cheap liposuctions that left them near death and permanently disfigured.
“He promised me that he was going to transform me, make me more beautiful, more confidant,” victim Lissette Mejjia, 36, of The Bronx, remembered at the sentencing today of Hector Cabral, 52.
“I came out of his office hypnotized,” Mejjia added. But she and six other women suffered an immediate, post-op blackening of a large swath of skin on her torso and hip.
Then came life-threatening infections that left them hospitalized for weeks.
“I cannot even show myself, my body” sobbed victim Francisca Fernandez, 48, of The Bronx. “I am scared to even see myself in the mirror. When I see my scar, I see his face.”
Cabral is licensed to practice plastic surgery in the Dominican Republic, but not the United States.
He pleaded guilty in October to unauthorized practice of medicine — for signing women up for the surgeries in New York — but couldn’t be prosecuted further because the actual procedures were done in Santo Domingo.
Under a deal struck with the State Attorney General’s office, and finalized today by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Laura Ward, Cabral was sentenced today to 250 hours of community service in the Dominican Republic.
He cannot return to the United States for three years. He additionally was ordered today to pay $23,000 in total restitution to his seven victims.