September 18, 2023 • 41 mins
After having three children, 34-year-old Markita McIntyre is worried about her weight.
Having heard about weight loss surgery, Kiki researched the most common bariatric surgery and found it costs around $18,000 in the US. In Tijuana, Mexico, a doctor will do the same surgery for around $4,000. McIntyre has gastric sleeve surgery in Mexico and dies.
Two years later, Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of music icon, Elvis Presley, also dies from complications of bariatric surgery. The LA County Medical Examiner says Presley suffered from a small bowel obstruction that likely developed after she underwent bariatric surgery years ago.
The morning she died, Presley complained of abdominal pain and was later found unresponsive at home.
Joining Nancy Grace Today:
- Michael Griffith- International Criminal Defense Attorney from Amagansett NY; Former Senior Officer of the Criminal Law Committee for the International Bar
- Dr. Bethany Marshall – Psychoanalyst (Beverly Hills, CA); Twitter: @DrBethanyLive
- Irv Brandt – Senior Inspector, US Marshals Service International Investigations Branch; Chief Inspector, DOJ Office of International Affairs, US Embassy Kingston, Jamaica; Author: “SOLO SHOT: CURSE OF THE BLUE STONE” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON IN JANUARY; ALSO “FLYING SOLO: Top of the World;” Twitter: @JackSoloAuthor
- Dr. Michelle DuPre – Forensic Pathologist and former Medical Examiner, Author: “Homicide Investigation Field Guide” & “Investigating Child Abuse Field Guide”, Ret. Police Detective Lexington County Sheriff’s Department
- Dr. Stephenie Poris– Plastic surgeon in Orlando, FL (only female-owned and operated plastic surgery practice in Orlando); INSTAGRAM: @Stiletto_surgeon FACEBOOK: @porisplasticsurgery
- Alexis Terezchuck- CrimeOnline Investigative Reporter
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Crime stories with Nancy Greece.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Dying to be skinny. Look around, everybody you know is
working out exhaustively.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I'm fine with that.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
They're drastically limiting the intake of calories.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Well, at least they say they are.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
And they're getting plastic surgery.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I'm not judging.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I don't care.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
I could probably use all of that.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
But tourism to other countries plastic surgery tourism is taking
over our country. Going to other countries or provinces to
have cheaper plastic surgery is alarming, ending in death. These
(01:04):
are very often beautiful young women, moms that decide they
want to change it up and they can go overseas
for affordable surgery. They never see their families again. Listen again,
(01:25):
I'm not judging. My mother, who's about to turn ninety two.
One of dental implants. She told me recently she was
going to Mexico to get implants. Everybody she knows and
her little circle what's supporting her. I was the only
one that said, no, you will die in Iijuana or
(01:45):
wherever you're going.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
No.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
She ended up going into a savings account to get
the dental implants here in the US. But guess what
she's alive. I mean, see Grace, this is crime Stories.
Thank you for being with us here at faccination in
Serie six, sem one eleven. Believe it or not, these
moms aren't getting carjack nobody's breaking into their homes to
(02:09):
steal their VCR and their TV. They are willingly going
abroad for plastic surgery, tourism and coming home in a box.
This was brought to the forefront just recently with the
death of the beautiful, the talented Lisa Marie Lisa Marie Presley,
(02:32):
the daughter the only child of Elvis Presley. There was
a lot of speculation. Why did she die? Was just
an overdose?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Was she drunk?
Speaker 2 (02:41):
All sorts of cruel comments were made. But she actually
passed away, we learned recently due to a complication of
buriatric weight loss surgery. What is that?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
And if Lisa.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Marie can't be protected, what about us regular people? Take
a listen to our friends at NBC.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
Six months after the sudden passing of Lisa Marie Presley,
the only child of music icon Elvis Presley, bla County
medical examiner saying she suffered from a small bowel obstruction
that likely developed after she underwent bariatric surgery years ago.
Presley had been complaining of abdominal pain on the morning
of her death, according to the autopsy, and was later
found unresponsive at home. Small bowel obstruction is a known
(03:28):
long term complication of bariatric weight loss surgery, and.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
It was very unexpected because just literally about seventy two
hours before she passed away, she was making a public
appearance and talking about her dad, Elvis Presley. Take a
listen to our friends at NBC and our cut three.
Speaker 5 (03:46):
Just days before she died, Presley was at Graceland taking
part in a big celebration for what would have been
her famous father's eightieth birthday.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I think that Hugh be proud. I think the movie
was incredible.
Speaker 5 (03:58):
Just two days later, she attended the Golden Globes celebrating
the movie Elvis. Following her sudden passing, Lisa Marie was
buried at her childhood home, Graceland, alongside her son Benjamin
and her legendary father, who died in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Seven buriatric weight loss surgery. It seems like Lisa Marie
did not see it coming.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
Take a listener cut to bariatric surgery refers to gastric
bypass and other weight loss surgeries, the medical examiner noting
that Presley did not seek medical attention despite experiencing abdominal
pain for several months. The autopsy also revealing that Presley,
who had long been open about her struggles with addiction
and mental health, had therapeutic levels of the pain reliever
(04:42):
oxycodone in her blood, but the report says that that
did not contribute to her death.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
When you are hurting so badly, you have take oxy
cotone as a result of bariatric surgery. With me an
All Star panel to make sense of what we know
right now again, I'm Nancy Grace, and this is Crimes Stories.
I want to thank you for being with us. Another
woman dead after a botched surgery, and I'm referring specifically
(05:08):
to a young mom Keiki McIntyre and another young mom,
Justine Rodriguez. One is thirty three, one is thirty four
at the time of their death. Again with me an
All Star panel. But first I want to go to
doctor Stephanie Porous plastic Surgeon out of Orlando at Porous
(05:29):
plastic Surgery dot Com. I'd like to also point out
she would never tell you this herself. She has the
only female owned and operated plastic surgery practice in Orlando.
Doctor Poris, thank you for being with us. Could you
explain and regular people talk, not medical doctor talk. What
(05:49):
is bariatric surgery?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
What is that?
Speaker 6 (05:52):
So beriatric surgery? It's become a lot more popularized within
the last ten to twenty years as the techniques of
doing it changed and become safer. Basically, it's a procedure
to reduce the size of the stomach or bypass it
all together in order to obtain weight loss. So there's
different modalities that we use in surgery to do this,
(06:14):
and depending on the modality you have will depend on
the surgery that is done.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Right, what is modality?
Speaker 6 (06:20):
So depending on the type of surgery, So if it's
a stomach shrinking procedure or stomach bypassing procedure, each of
these procedures that you can have done can lead to
different outcomes and different amounts of weight loss and different
forms of complications. And so we're seeing all kinds of
different complications, but a lot of these procedures are done
(06:41):
very safely. Within the last ten years, we've really improved
the way we do bariatric surgery.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Okay, could do again dumbing down?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
What exactly do you do when you perform buryatric weight
loss surgery?
Speaker 6 (06:56):
So, if you're doing a stomach shrinking operation, you're actually
cutting part of the stomach to reduce the size of
the stomach altogether, so to decrease the amount of food
that can fit into the stomach, thereby decreasing the amount
of CLOrk intake that you can consume, which will end
up causing weight loss. So that's one type of procedure
(07:17):
that can be done. Another type of receipt procedure is
bypassing the stomach altogether, and so this actually creates an
even smaller potential for cloric intake and decrease hunger, thereby
also reducing the amount of calorie that you can take
in and giving you more weight loss.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
When you say you bypass the stomach altogether, what does
that mean? How do you do that?
Speaker 6 (07:41):
So you can actually essentially feed right from the esophagus
into the small intestine.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
But how do you do that? You ate, It goes
in your mouth, it goes down your throat and into
your esophagus and then and to your stomach. But instead
of going to your stomach, you reroute it like the
perimeter around a big city, correct, but you rerout it
with what what do you put in the stump? What
do you put inside the woman the person's body to
(08:12):
take the food from the esophagus straight to the intestine,
never goes in the stomach. I mean, how do you live,
how do you have nutrition?
Speaker 6 (08:19):
Well, listen, I you know, I definitely, I mean you're
highlighting one of the serious of the serious complexities of
this surgery.
Speaker 7 (08:27):
It's this is not a small surgery.
Speaker 6 (08:28):
I mean these are very big, complex operations and when
done by expert bariatric surgeons, can be performed very well.
And that's why it's so important to go to somebody
who is extremely skilled and.
Speaker 7 (08:41):
Does multiple of these a year, and.
Speaker 6 (08:44):
Not go to somebody who claims they're a bariatric surgeon
and really is not. You really need to seek out
expert medical uh, expert surgeon.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Doctor force. How do you get the food from the
esophagus to the intestines to bay basically goes straight to
the poop process.
Speaker 6 (09:02):
Through a series of intra abdominal staples. So we actually
use staples inside the abdomen. You can actually block off
and reconnect different parts of the aerodigestive tract. And so
when we do that, we can actually reroute, like you said,
exactly where the food's going.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Okay, I'm thinking this through and I'm wondering why in
the world for such an extensive surgery. This sounds very extensive.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Prime Stories with Nancy Grace.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So there's two, from my understanding, two types of very
actic weight loss surgery. One is where part of the
stomach is cut away and the stomach is actually smaller,
so therefore you eat a little bit and you're totally full,
you don't want to eat anymore. And the other that
doctor Ports described is a rerouting from the esophagus bypassing
(10:13):
the stomach of food and it goes straight down to
the intestines basically, so you poop it out before it
ever gets to your stomach. Wow. Okay, that's a really
good explanation, but it's a very complicated surgery, both of them.
Why somebody would want to go to another country for that,
(10:35):
I'm not sure, but I want to go first to
our cut fifteen. This young mom Kiki MacIntyre take a
listen to our friends at crime Online.
Speaker 8 (10:46):
Thirty four year old Marquita McIntyre. Her friends call her Kiki.
She's always had an issue with her weight, and after
three children, it's even tougher. Having heard about weight loss surgery,
Geeky found out the sleeve surgery is the most common
bariatric surgery, getting around eighteen thousand dollars in the US. However,
taking a trip to Tijuana, Mexico and a doctor will
do the same bariatric surgery for about four thousand dollars.
(11:09):
She had a friend that was going to do the
trip with her, but the friend backed out. Kiki went
without her her friends in Biloxi. Still don't really know
what happened, but mother of three Marquita Kek McIntyre had
a complication while undergoing gastric sleeve surgery in Mexico and
she died.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
You know, I'm looking at her right now. She is beautiful.
She has got the biggest smile. This Mississippi native and
mother of three, Marquita Keke McIntyre goes to tia Wana
to have gastick sleeve never made it home. And in
the picture I'm looking at this has got to be
(11:48):
your daughter, because they look so much alike. Is just
hugging her. Their faces close together. She was a pretty
popular cup artist and did a lot of research before
she decided to go out of the country from sleeve surgery. Now,
(12:09):
let me go back to our expert, doctor Stephanie Porus.
Gas stick sleeve can actually be can't that be?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Indoscopic?
Speaker 7 (12:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (12:19):
Actually, most of these gas bypass procedures are done laparoscopically
using a small instrument and a camera. We're able to
keep the incisions very small, but that does not change
the complexity of the operation. It changes the entrance and
exit versus meaning you don't have a giant incision on
(12:39):
your abdomen, but the complexity of the surgery is still
very much the same.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yes, we're talking about not one, but two women. One
is Keiki McIntyre Marquita and the other is Justine Rodriguez.
Take a listen to our Cut four our friends at
ABC four.
Speaker 9 (12:58):
Justine Rodriguez to Mexico to get a gastric sleeve where
doctors cut eighty percent of her stomach. What she thought
was a life saving measure for a diabetes, high blood pressure,
and obesity, weighing at three hundred and eighty seven pounds,
turned into a lifelong nightmare. Her family had to find
out from her doctor she might not make it.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
I remember her telling my dad, mister Rodriguez, did you
hear that? And my mom and dad just caught really silent,
and he said, you know, his voice crack and he said, yes, ma'am,
I hear you.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
One woman dad on a Tijuana operating table, another steal
dealing with epilepsy as a result. Take a listener cut
six of friends at ABC four.
Speaker 9 (13:42):
Insurance companies view bariatric surgery as cosmetic instead of what
doctors believe as a medical. One doctor Ibel says patients
get desperate, but a botch surgery can end up costing
hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills to fix
the problem. Justine says she's wrecked up nearly a million
dollars in medical bills.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Guys, that's not all. This is what actually happened to
Justine Rodriguez. Take a listen to Surrey Chin and our
cut five.
Speaker 10 (14:12):
Long after the patient has gone home from Tijuana, they
might wind up sticking an emergency room with flu leg symptoms,
get diagnosed with a flu or aumonia, and really they
have a huge abscess in their abdomen from food spilling
through their stomach.
Speaker 9 (14:24):
That's exactly what happened to Justine. Doctor Anna Ibel is
a bariatric surgeon at the University of Utah. She says
weight loss surgery can cost ten to twenty thousand dollars
in the US, it's a third of that in Mexico.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Five thousand dollars and that included my airfare.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Straight out to Alexis Tereschak crimeonline dot Com investigative reporter.
In the last seventy two hours, I've learned of another
young mom in her thirties, Leanne Leary, who suffered two
heart attacks and died after Gashchik sleeve surgery and is
Don bull and Turkey. That has just happened. What if anything,
(15:06):
do you know about Leanne so.
Speaker 7 (15:09):
Leanne is a mom. She was thirty eight years old
and she went to She lived in England and traveled
all the way to Issemble, Turkey to have gastric bypass
surgery because she had heard about this from other people
and her friends even said she was so excited about
the surgery. She sent her friends a picture from the hospital.
She's in a hospital gown and then nobody heard from her,
(15:33):
so they started calling the hospital, they said, where is she?
Where is she? They said, oh, she had a heart attack,
but she's stable. Don't worry about it. But she they're
saying them. The doctor's there said, well, she didn't provide
a next next of kins, so we didn't have anybody
to reach out. So her parents flew to Turkey. When
they got there, they were told, oh, she did have
a heart attack, but she actually died on the one
after a heart attack.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
I'm just thinking through everything that has happened to these
and many more women. I'm going to go straight out
to not only a high profile lawyer, but long term
friend and colleague, high profile lawyer Michael Griffith, international criminal
defense attorney from New York. You can find him at
(16:17):
Michael griffithlawyer dot com. Former Senior Officer of the Criminal
Law Committee for the International Bar, Michael, thank you for
being with us. You know, Michael, for so well. You
devoted much of your practice to international law. At the beginning,
(16:39):
I guess there was a lot of drug tourism and
you were flying all around the world getting people out
of jail, defending cases, and I guess on every continent
that was often linked to drugs. But now plastic surgery,
international tourism.
Speaker 11 (17:00):
You know, Nancy, what's happening with these people going overseas
is reminiscent of the story. Remember Jack Benny, the famous
comedian who was known as a chief skate and a miser.
He was accosted by a robber one day and the
robber said your money or your life, and it was
a long pause. The robber says, maybe you didn't hear
me your money or your life, and Jack Benny said,
(17:23):
don't rush me. I'm thinking, well, with respect to these
people who go overseas to an extent that they may
be exchanging their money for their life to get a
lower discount to do something like a bariatric surgery, I
think is silly and it's stupid. You know, if you
(17:44):
go to Mexico.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Oh wait a minute, hold on, brainiac. Not everybody has
graduated college and gone on to law school and traveled
all around the world and speaks all your languages, you do,
a lot of people don't understand how dangerous this can be.
I mean in the US and when I was with
(18:06):
the Federal Trade Commission in their Anti trust Department and
Consumer protection, I remember we had an anti trust action
against a really big hospital. It was about obgyns trying
to cut off the market for certified nurse midwives and
not allowing them to practice in their hospital. Certified nurse
(18:28):
midwives are nurses with not only a four year degree,
but then a kind of a master's degree, only functioning
here with vaginal normal deliveries with an OBGYN in the
room with them, all right, an obgyn that have privileges
(18:48):
at the hospital that would be there for the delivery
in case there was some unanticipated complication. Anyway, they tried
to keep the nurse midwives out. Long story short, Michael Griffith,
I learned a lot about standard of care in hospitals.
We have a by law standard of care in the
(19:10):
US in medical facilities. Whether they screw it up or not,
that's a whole nother thing. But in these other countries,
Michael Griffith, there is no standard of care. Some of
these patients lay on a table for eight hours while
they die.
Speaker 11 (19:26):
Nancy, not only do I agree with that, but in
these countries they don't choose what considered in the States
to be medically accepted procedures. You know, many of the
doctors go to these Mexican in what they call it
medical schools, which are right up to the standards. As
(19:46):
you know, we have American students who can't get into
US medical schools and they go to the Caribbean and Mexico.
It's a real craft shoot to take a to do
one out there, and particularly you know, Medicaid doesn't cover this,
Medicare doesn't cover it, your insurance companies may not cover it.
(20:07):
As a matter of fact, Nancy, you'll remember this. Some
of our friends died from this. Our mutual friend Dominic Dunn.
Dominic went to Germany to get together a procedure to
the same medical facility that the Thorough Force went and
they both died. Steve McQueen died because of the care
(20:28):
he got in Mexico. Recently I went to a funeral
of a woman that I knew fifty nine years old
who went to get one of these homopathic medical procedures
in Mexico and died. So it's a real craft shoot,
and people must be very very careful then not to
go to these countries if they can possibly avoid it.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
You know, I learned all about quality of care doctor
Stephanie Pors and doctor Bethane and R. Brandt please jump
in course, the basic minimum standard of care would certainly
not be to allow your patient to be unattended for
eight hours. And that reminds of how Michael Jackson died.
(21:14):
You know, he had Conrad Murray administering basically a tranquilizer
propofaal that is used in surgery, and just left him
in there while he went and called his girlfriend and
Jackson died. Yeah, I think it was a child, well Ester,
who's also one of the greatest talents that ever lived,
left alone for hours while Conrad's in and out, in
(21:38):
and out, and he dies. That's an example that's not
supposed to happen in the US. There's not even such
a standard like that to try and attain in these
other countries.
Speaker 6 (21:50):
Doctor, Yeah, you're absolutely right. And that's what's so absolutely
scary about medical tourism, as you just don't know what
your standards are in the other countries. At least in America,
we can say to be board certified, to be bared eligible,
you have to go through I'm teen years of training.
I mean I've done fifteen years of training, you know,
(22:10):
and so it takes a long time, and we do
we have ethical standards within our societies. We have absolute
standards of care within the hospital systems that we must
adhere to, and we're under review every single year. Every
single year we review, we recertify, and so to go
to other countries where even a fraction of that probably
(22:34):
doesn't exist is very scary as a patient. And I'll
tell you, as a mom, oh my God, just for
me to undergo a simple, you know, wisdom tooth extraction
under sedation in America, I'm scared. So I can't even
imagine as a mom going to another country to have
these large procedures and then at the end of the
day to not come back. I mean, it's devastating. It's devastating.
Speaker 7 (22:57):
Ancy to Nancy, if I jump in.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
About this coming to you with me doctor Bethany Marshall,
renowned psychoanalysts joining us out of Beverly Hills. You can
find it at doctor Bethany Marshall dot com. No offense
to all the beautiful people in Beverly Hills, but one
of the reasons they're all beautiful is because they have
tons and tons of plastic surgery. When I was out
there for Dancing with the Stars, I think it was
(23:19):
the shortest and roundest person there, and roundness, of course,
is a euphemism. I walked down, like, who are all
these people? Then I started noticing a lot of them
looked to like they must have had the same surgeon.
But I bet you have a lot of issues. I
know you're not going to comment with your clients. Okay,
plastic surgery, fine, have it. I just be mad if
(23:40):
you didn't. But this is extreme, doctor Bethany, to go
to another country, why are they so desperate to go?
And it seems to be sugarcoated. You know, this plastic
surgery tourism business.
Speaker 12 (23:55):
Well, I think that there's almost like a gambling mentality.
You know, I'm going to get something for nothing or
for very little, and because of that, I'm not going
to pay attention to the facts, whether or not this
person's boards certified, whether or not they are medical standards.
There's almost this magical belief that everything will turn out okay.
(24:17):
And they invest authority in doctors as if because you're
wearing it's like the white coat phenomena. Just because you
have a white coat, you must know what you're doing.
And I tell my patients, you know, there's no such
thing as a free lunch. There really isn't. You're going
to pay one way or another. So if it's a
fifteen thousand dollars surgery here and you're going to pay
(24:39):
five thousand dollars there, you're going to pay. I don't
know how you're going to pay, but you're going to pay.
You may pay with your life, you may pay with
the fact that you have a botch surgery. You may
pay in another way, and that is that there's no
medical malpractice in most of these countries, like Mexico. Here
in the States, there's recourse. You have a surgery, you
(25:00):
find out that your doctor did not adhere to stand
as the practice for the field. They have boards that
certify them, and you can get an attorney and you
can sue them for medical malpractice. You can get at
least some damages.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
But I mean, think about it, doctor Bethany, sure your
family can sue after your dad, right, I'd rather save
the people from doing this. You know what I did
with my mother. Don't tell her I hid her passport.
I actually physically hid her passport. I told no one,
not my husband, not my children, nobody. I hid it
(25:39):
and it came back to bite me. In the neck
because this was during COVID and it was at the
tail end of COVID, I think. And I needed the
passport to take her with us on a Disney cruise,
which I love, by the way, and we didn't have
the passport because I'd hidden it, all right, So we
(26:01):
had to go through this extensive Oh oh, when you
tell what a lie I told, And it's so true
about lies, they get bigger and bigger and you have
to do.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
More and more to cover it up.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
I had to go through so much to get her
on that Disney cruise. I had to get an original
certified birth certificate from bib County where she was born.
She was born not in a hospital, I might add,
which complicated everything. And I just had to go through
so much because of my lie. All right, Oh, would
have tangled web we we boy. I thought about that
when I was standing in line down in bib County
(26:33):
trying to get a birth certificate because I didn't want
her to go to Mexico to get the dental implants.
By the way, we did get on the Disney cruise.
I had to go through so many hoops and so
much proof that this little lady in the wheelchair was
you know, actually Elizabeth Grace, but she didn't go to
Mexico and she got the implants and yuess what, she
(26:57):
has the most beautiful set of teeth, but it did
cost her an arm and a leg. Hey guys, I'm
just being joined by IRV Brandt, Senior Inspector, US Marshall Service,
International Investigations Branch, Chief Inspector, DOJ Office of International Affairs,
author a solo shot Curse.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Of the Bluestone. Oh that's a good one on.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Amazon and flying solo top of the world having gotten
to it. But I'm getting their IRV Brant. IRV. People
may wonder why I want a worldwide bounty hunter essentially
with me right now, because you've been in every one
of these cities. Can you explain what Michael Griffith and
(27:42):
I are talking.
Speaker 13 (27:43):
About if I can, man En, I'm glad you're doing this,
bringing light to this because people don't understand how dangerous
going south of the border can be. They think like
they would here in the US traveling between cities. And
I'm going to go and I'm going to do this,
and I'm going to have this procedure done and I'm
(28:04):
going to take money with me when you go south
of the border, whether it's Mexico or Central America. And
this is very common, the medical procedures for dental or
plastic surgery, things like that. My brother with the State
Department was in Costa Rica, and I would go to
(28:26):
Costa Rica all the time to go to his house
and we would talk about it. Our flights back and
forth to the US, about half the flights were the
passengers were people coming to Costa Rica for medical procedures.
And these people are bringing a lot of money with them,
you know, to pay for these procedures, and they're being
targeted for violent crimes. And it's a lack of awareness.
(28:54):
I'll give you then example, a country like Honduras. I
recently read a report is the most dangerous place on
Earth for a woman. A woman that's killed in a
Hondurs every thirty six hours, is targeted and murdered every
thirty six hours. But people are unaware of this. You know,
(29:16):
they treat international travel like they would treat interstate travel
in this country. And I'm with you, I'm going to
hide their passports if I have the chance.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
And listen, don't get me wrong, it's just what doctor
Bethany Marshall was earlier saying that people think they're getting,
Oh what a good deal. I can't pass it up.
I said, mother, please stay in the US. I will
pay for it. I will put it on my American
Express card, bay it off every month. Oh no, that
wouldn't do. She had to try and save the money.
(29:53):
I mean, doctor Bethany Marshall, when we were growing up,
no no cookies in the house, no snaw no uh
uh nothing. I mean we could have any money. But
my point is she's a saver. That's the way she is.
And she thought she was going to save money by
going to Mexico. I seriously did backflips trying to keep
(30:15):
her from going. Offered to pay whatever it was here
so she wouldn't go, And ultimately I had to tell
a lie, which I always get caught doctor Bethany always.
And you know then, as I said, the whole Disney thing,
and oh but it's that whole saving money thing getting
a deal.
Speaker 12 (30:35):
There's another aspect of this. It's also controlling the procedure.
And what I mean by that. I have a good
friend who's a clothing designer. He wanted me to go
to Tiajuana with him where he was going to get
some inexpensive gentle work. He wanted veneers, so you put
those over your teeth so that they look you know, whiter,
more uniform. But he's a very controlling guy. He thinks
(30:59):
he always knows the best about aesthetics.
Speaker 7 (31:01):
So he goes.
Speaker 12 (31:02):
I accompanied him. He goes to this clinic. Tourists were
coming straight from the boss, straight from the airplane. There
were all these people in the waiting room with suitcases
and they would say, oh, I'm from Illinois and from
Missouria from here. So these tourists were going straight to
this clinic. So my friend gets the handle work done
(31:24):
and he comes out and his teeth looks like chick lips.
And I asked him, like, what the heck happened? And
he controlled the procedure. He said, well, I wanted this,
you know, the front to look like this and the
sides to look like this, and so he dictated how
the teeth were going to look, and they looked, you know,
deformed afterwards. So I think it's saving money. It's controlling
(31:45):
the procedure, thinking you know more than the doctor. You know,
there's all kinds of strange motivations. I think that go
into going.
Speaker 7 (31:52):
South of the Border.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Prime stories with Nancy Grace.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I think I heard Michael Griffith jumping in jump in front.
Speaker 11 (32:12):
On that point, Americans have to realize that if there's
any medical malpractice or negligence in a foreign country, the
lawyers there do not work on contingencies like they do
in the United States. You have to pay the lawyers
there hour for hour, and if you get a judgment,
(32:33):
If you get a judgment in that foreign country, you
have to go under either the Hague Convention or the
bilateral a judgment process where where you have to try
to attach property or assets in that foreign country, which
is very, very difficult.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Dare Lord in Heaven Michael Griffith is now quoting the
Hague Convention as a basis to get paid back from
botch surgery. You know you're in trouble when the opposing
side starts quoting the Hague Convention.
Speaker 11 (33:10):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
I don't even want to get into what the Hague
Convention is. I've had to deal with it a couple
of times. I never want to touch it with a
ten foot pole.
Speaker 6 (33:17):
I wanted to echo a statement here so you know
you talked about shopping around.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
In the doctor porus. Go ahead, doctor.
Speaker 6 (33:23):
You know, we were talking about the patient that thinks
they know best in shopping around, and you know, we
see that a lot, a lot, you know, especially in
cosmetic surgery. Patients shop around all the time looking for
the best price. I mean, so we see that in
the United States. But the other issue that I think
a lot of the medical people that are doing this
medical tourism is they've probably been told no by a
(33:46):
lot of plastic surgeons, whether it be for not being
a good candidate for surgery, meaning they have significant comorbidity,
maybe they're smokers, or they have diabetes and they're not
fit for a cosmetic operation.
Speaker 7 (33:59):
You know.
Speaker 6 (33:59):
It's one thing when you got to get your appendix out,
it's an emergency. It's another when you want a facelift.
You know, we want all of the teas to be crossy.
I used to be done in and I think a
lot of these people may have heard no and said, well, listen,
I bet I can go to Mexico and get this
done again. Substandard care, the standards of care are just different.
(34:23):
And so I think that a lot of these patients
that may even be dying overseas may have not been
good surgical candidates to begin with.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
That's a really good point, doctor Porus and says, if
you read my mind, because my mom was told no
by many oral surgeons and Dennis because of her age.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
She's a pretty good help.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
But she let's say she's ninety one, about to turn
ninety two right now, so she would have been ninety
or eighty nine at the time this whole implant thing
came up, and doctors are like no, no, no, no no,
And she goes, hey, I'm going to Mexico. Oh no,
I'll never say you're again. Guys, this is by far,
these two ladies, Kiki McIntyre to Stane Rodriguez, by far
(35:07):
not the first ladies to die in plastic surgery. International
Tourism take a listen to our cut sixteen NBC.
Speaker 14 (35:17):
Despite the LII's beauty, the forty six year old realtor
wanted to change, so she traveled April twenty to Columbia
to undergo gastric bypass surgery at the hands of doctor
god losals Puccini, who had performed the same surgery on
her in twenty fifteen. Delia's mother and aunt went with her.
She left the consultation reassured by the doctor that she
would be fine in three days.
Speaker 11 (35:35):
Her aunt says.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Medical record show Deli.
Speaker 14 (35:37):
Was admitted to Drina Katarina Klinic and Bran Guillan April
twenty first. She went into the o R at three
pm in good condition, got a gastric sleeve, and was
released the same day.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
She was released the same day it started experiencing pain.
The daughters there said, hey, go get an X ray. Well,
let me tell you how that turned out. Take a
listen to our cut eighteen NBC.
Speaker 14 (35:59):
They say three hours later, doctor Sali's puccine got to
the apartment and saw her in such bad condition. He
said he was heading to the clinic to prepare the.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
R He didn't call an ambulist. He left meet me
at the hospital.
Speaker 14 (36:13):
A family friend says he began driving her to the
clinic the doctor ordered, but Delia was fading quickly, so
he took her to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
And there is Laura Avila take alost An hour cut
eight ABC eight.
Speaker 15 (36:26):
Laura Avila is a dancer, a singer, a real estate
agent in Dallas.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
She's the life. She's the light, you know.
Speaker 15 (36:32):
But this is not how Laura is today. On October thirtieth,
Laura went to what is Mexico with her fiance for
plastic surgery on her nose. They traveled to Mexico because
the procedure was cheaper.
Speaker 14 (36:41):
The price, of course, you know, comparing those prices to
the ones in the US.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
I mean it was less than one third of it.
Speaker 15 (36:47):
They went to a plastic surgery center around noon that day.
Her fiance, Enrique Cruz, says, an employee administered anesthesia, but
something went terribly wrong.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Guys, US women, mostly women, are dying because of international
plastic surgery tourism. IRV Brandt, what is your message?
Speaker 13 (37:08):
Stay in the United States when you travel out of
the country. If you are going to travel out of
the country and go against my advice, do your research
check on this clinic, you know, check these doctors, check
their experience. This is literally plain Russian roulette with a handgun.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
And even researching, IRV. I don't think you can research
every conceivable circumstance, every conceivable outcome. But you're saying research.
I say, don't go. Michael Griffith, what's your message?
Speaker 11 (37:49):
My message is is if you go overseas and have
a problem, call Michael Griffith. He'll do the best you
can to help you.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
And the American Express thirty two dollars a month. And OK,
why did I let him back in? I said, God
is my then I brought him back in. Michael Griffith
is actually a renowned international criminal defense attorney that I'm torturing.
Dr Bethany, what is your message?
Speaker 12 (38:12):
My message is you're going to pay one way or
the other.
Speaker 7 (38:15):
You're going to pay.
Speaker 12 (38:16):
It's not really cheaper. It's not just that if people
go down not just for a cheap for surgery, but
for a vacation, they're going to combine it with something else.
So like, oh, I can stay at a resort instead
of like a thousand dollars a night like it is
in the Four Seasons here, I'll get a great resort
there for three hundred dollars a night or two hundred
dollars a night. But in the end, if the procedure
(38:38):
doesn't look how you want it to, if you have
healthy complications, if you come back to the States and
then the surgeon is not there to follow you, or
you have to seek additional treatments here to correct what
was done there. You didn't really save money and you
didn't have that great vacation afterwards after all, so it's
(38:59):
not really worth it.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Doctor Stephanie Poras joining US plastic surgeon in Orlando at
Porusplasticsurgery dot com.
Speaker 6 (39:07):
What is your message, Yeah, I would tread very lightly
when considering any overseas surgery, and not just plastic surgery,
but any surgical intervention that you are looking for, do
some research. Look on the National Institute of Health in
that country, find out how the certification process works for
that specific surgeon and ask for their certifications, have them
(39:30):
email them to you. Do your research, do your homework,
and if you're going to go, just be prepared because
if a complication does occur, it is going to be
costly in the United States to fix it and a
lot of surgeons will not fix it if you've gone
out of the country, So just be aware and know
what's going to potentially happen.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Alexisteraeschik join me Colmonline dot com. Investigated reporter my friend
Joan Rivers, who was just the greatest comedian ever and
off camera whenever I would see her, she would always
ask me about the twins. She always knew their names,
(40:14):
their ages as each year passed, knew what they were
up to.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
And now she's gone.
Speaker 7 (40:21):
I remember watching her tell you one time, Nancy, you
asked her how she kept her family together, and she said,
eat dinner together every night. I remember watching that you
had aired that one time.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
When I think that she went in for a very
simple arn joscopy and died. I mean, if an icon
like Joe Rivers can pass away in a simple procedure,
what's going to happen in another country where these regular
moms like you and me go to get a cosmetic procedure.
(40:57):
I just I hate to hear about it because it's
so easily avoidable.
Speaker 7 (41:02):
There's nothing that can happen, you know, with Joan Rivers,
her daughter Melissa filed a lawsuit and they got a settlement.
Speaker 11 (41:10):
Against the.
Speaker 7 (41:13):
Doctor's office. But if you're the places out of the country,
there's really no recourse. There's nothing you can do to
sue them to make sure that they stop, that they
don't do this to anyone else. It's nearly impossible for
that to happen out of the country.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
And you're right, Melissa did get a settlement, but nothing
could replies your mom.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Nothing.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
I fear that we will be covering this again. If
you have information on an ongoing international plastic surgery tourism crime,
please call eight hundred two two five five three two
four Goodbysman
Crime stories with Nancy Greece.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Dying to be skinny. Look around, everybody you know is
working out exhaustively.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I'm fine with that.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
They're drastically limiting the intake of calories.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Well, at least they say they are.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
And they're getting plastic surgery.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I'm not judging.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I don't care.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
I could probably use all of that.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
But tourism to other countries plastic surgery tourism is taking
over our country. Going to other countries or provinces to
have cheaper plastic surgery is alarming, ending in death. These
(01:04):
are very often beautiful young women, moms that decide they
want to change it up and they can go overseas
for affordable surgery. They never see their families again. Listen again,
(01:25):
I'm not judging. My mother, who's about to turn ninety two.
One of dental implants. She told me recently she was
going to Mexico to get implants. Everybody she knows and
her little circle what's supporting her. I was the only
one that said, no, you will die in Iijuana or
(01:45):
wherever you're going.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
No.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
She ended up going into a savings account to get
the dental implants here in the US. But guess what
she's alive. I mean, see Grace, this is crime Stories.
Thank you for being with us here at faccination in
Serie six, sem one eleven. Believe it or not, these
moms aren't getting carjack nobody's breaking into their homes to
(02:09):
steal their VCR and their TV. They are willingly going
abroad for plastic surgery, tourism and coming home in a box.
This was brought to the forefront just recently with the
death of the beautiful, the talented Lisa Marie Lisa Marie Presley,
(02:32):
the daughter the only child of Elvis Presley. There was
a lot of speculation. Why did she die? Was just
an overdose?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Was she drunk?
Speaker 2 (02:41):
All sorts of cruel comments were made. But she actually
passed away, we learned recently due to a complication of
buriatric weight loss surgery. What is that?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
And if Lisa.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Marie can't be protected, what about us regular people? Take
a listen to our friends at NBC.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
Six months after the sudden passing of Lisa Marie Presley,
the only child of music icon Elvis Presley, bla County
medical examiner saying she suffered from a small bowel obstruction
that likely developed after she underwent bariatric surgery years ago.
Presley had been complaining of abdominal pain on the morning
of her death, according to the autopsy, and was later
found unresponsive at home. Small bowel obstruction is a known
(03:28):
long term complication of bariatric weight loss surgery, and.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
It was very unexpected because just literally about seventy two
hours before she passed away, she was making a public
appearance and talking about her dad, Elvis Presley. Take a
listen to our friends at NBC and our cut three.
Speaker 5 (03:46):
Just days before she died, Presley was at Graceland taking
part in a big celebration for what would have been
her famous father's eightieth birthday.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I think that Hugh be proud. I think the movie
was incredible.
Speaker 5 (03:58):
Just two days later, she attended the Golden Globes celebrating
the movie Elvis. Following her sudden passing, Lisa Marie was
buried at her childhood home, Graceland, alongside her son Benjamin
and her legendary father, who died in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Seven buriatric weight loss surgery. It seems like Lisa Marie
did not see it coming.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
Take a listener cut to bariatric surgery refers to gastric
bypass and other weight loss surgeries, the medical examiner noting
that Presley did not seek medical attention despite experiencing abdominal
pain for several months. The autopsy also revealing that Presley,
who had long been open about her struggles with addiction
and mental health, had therapeutic levels of the pain reliever
(04:42):
oxycodone in her blood, but the report says that that
did not contribute to her death.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
When you are hurting so badly, you have take oxy
cotone as a result of bariatric surgery. With me an
All Star panel to make sense of what we know
right now again, I'm Nancy Grace, and this is Crimes Stories.
I want to thank you for being with us. Another
woman dead after a botched surgery, and I'm referring specifically
(05:08):
to a young mom Keiki McIntyre and another young mom,
Justine Rodriguez. One is thirty three, one is thirty four
at the time of their death. Again with me an
All Star panel. But first I want to go to
doctor Stephanie Porous plastic Surgeon out of Orlando at Porous
(05:29):
plastic Surgery dot Com. I'd like to also point out
she would never tell you this herself. She has the
only female owned and operated plastic surgery practice in Orlando.
Doctor Poris, thank you for being with us. Could you
explain and regular people talk, not medical doctor talk. What
(05:49):
is bariatric surgery?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
What is that?
Speaker 6 (05:52):
So beriatric surgery? It's become a lot more popularized within
the last ten to twenty years as the techniques of
doing it changed and become safer. Basically, it's a procedure
to reduce the size of the stomach or bypass it
all together in order to obtain weight loss. So there's
different modalities that we use in surgery to do this,
(06:14):
and depending on the modality you have will depend on
the surgery that is done.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Right, what is modality?
Speaker 6 (06:20):
So depending on the type of surgery, So if it's
a stomach shrinking procedure or stomach bypassing procedure, each of
these procedures that you can have done can lead to
different outcomes and different amounts of weight loss and different
forms of complications. And so we're seeing all kinds of
different complications, but a lot of these procedures are done
(06:41):
very safely. Within the last ten years, we've really improved
the way we do bariatric surgery.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Okay, could do again dumbing down?
Speaker 2 (06:49):
What exactly do you do when you perform buryatric weight
loss surgery?
Speaker 6 (06:56):
So, if you're doing a stomach shrinking operation, you're actually
cutting part of the stomach to reduce the size of
the stomach altogether, so to decrease the amount of food
that can fit into the stomach, thereby decreasing the amount
of CLOrk intake that you can consume, which will end
up causing weight loss. So that's one type of procedure
(07:17):
that can be done. Another type of receipt procedure is
bypassing the stomach altogether, and so this actually creates an
even smaller potential for cloric intake and decrease hunger, thereby
also reducing the amount of calorie that you can take
in and giving you more weight loss.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
When you say you bypass the stomach altogether, what does
that mean? How do you do that?
Speaker 6 (07:41):
So you can actually essentially feed right from the esophagus
into the small intestine.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
But how do you do that? You ate, It goes
in your mouth, it goes down your throat and into
your esophagus and then and to your stomach. But instead
of going to your stomach, you reroute it like the
perimeter around a big city, correct, but you rerout it
with what what do you put in the stump? What
do you put inside the woman the person's body to
(08:12):
take the food from the esophagus straight to the intestine,
never goes in the stomach. I mean, how do you live,
how do you have nutrition?
Speaker 6 (08:19):
Well, listen, I you know, I definitely, I mean you're
highlighting one of the serious of the serious complexities of
this surgery.
Speaker 7 (08:27):
It's this is not a small surgery.
Speaker 6 (08:28):
I mean these are very big, complex operations and when
done by expert bariatric surgeons, can be performed very well.
And that's why it's so important to go to somebody
who is extremely skilled and.
Speaker 7 (08:41):
Does multiple of these a year, and.
Speaker 6 (08:44):
Not go to somebody who claims they're a bariatric surgeon
and really is not. You really need to seek out
expert medical uh, expert surgeon.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Doctor force. How do you get the food from the
esophagus to the intestines to bay basically goes straight to
the poop process.
Speaker 6 (09:02):
Through a series of intra abdominal staples. So we actually
use staples inside the abdomen. You can actually block off
and reconnect different parts of the aerodigestive tract. And so
when we do that, we can actually reroute, like you said,
exactly where the food's going.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Okay, I'm thinking this through and I'm wondering why in
the world for such an extensive surgery. This sounds very extensive.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Prime Stories with Nancy Grace.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So there's two, from my understanding, two types of very
actic weight loss surgery. One is where part of the
stomach is cut away and the stomach is actually smaller,
so therefore you eat a little bit and you're totally full,
you don't want to eat anymore. And the other that
doctor Ports described is a rerouting from the esophagus bypassing
(10:13):
the stomach of food and it goes straight down to
the intestines basically, so you poop it out before it
ever gets to your stomach. Wow. Okay, that's a really
good explanation, but it's a very complicated surgery, both of them.
Why somebody would want to go to another country for that,
(10:35):
I'm not sure, but I want to go first to
our cut fifteen. This young mom Kiki MacIntyre take a
listen to our friends at crime Online.
Speaker 8 (10:46):
Thirty four year old Marquita McIntyre. Her friends call her Kiki.
She's always had an issue with her weight, and after
three children, it's even tougher. Having heard about weight loss surgery,
Geeky found out the sleeve surgery is the most common
bariatric surgery, getting around eighteen thousand dollars in the US. However,
taking a trip to Tijuana, Mexico and a doctor will
do the same bariatric surgery for about four thousand dollars.
(11:09):
She had a friend that was going to do the
trip with her, but the friend backed out. Kiki went
without her her friends in Biloxi. Still don't really know
what happened, but mother of three Marquita Kek McIntyre had
a complication while undergoing gastric sleeve surgery in Mexico and
she died.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
You know, I'm looking at her right now. She is beautiful.
She has got the biggest smile. This Mississippi native and
mother of three, Marquita Keke McIntyre goes to tia Wana
to have gastick sleeve never made it home. And in
the picture I'm looking at this has got to be
(11:48):
your daughter, because they look so much alike. Is just
hugging her. Their faces close together. She was a pretty
popular cup artist and did a lot of research before
she decided to go out of the country from sleeve surgery. Now,
(12:09):
let me go back to our expert, doctor Stephanie Porus.
Gas stick sleeve can actually be can't that be?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Indoscopic?
Speaker 7 (12:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (12:19):
Actually, most of these gas bypass procedures are done laparoscopically
using a small instrument and a camera. We're able to
keep the incisions very small, but that does not change
the complexity of the operation. It changes the entrance and
exit versus meaning you don't have a giant incision on
(12:39):
your abdomen, but the complexity of the surgery is still
very much the same.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yes, we're talking about not one, but two women. One
is Keiki McIntyre Marquita and the other is Justine Rodriguez.
Take a listen to our Cut four our friends at
ABC four.
Speaker 9 (12:58):
Justine Rodriguez to Mexico to get a gastric sleeve where
doctors cut eighty percent of her stomach. What she thought
was a life saving measure for a diabetes, high blood pressure,
and obesity, weighing at three hundred and eighty seven pounds,
turned into a lifelong nightmare. Her family had to find
out from her doctor she might not make it.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
I remember her telling my dad, mister Rodriguez, did you
hear that? And my mom and dad just caught really silent,
and he said, you know, his voice crack and he said, yes, ma'am,
I hear you.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
One woman dad on a Tijuana operating table, another steal
dealing with epilepsy as a result. Take a listener cut
six of friends at ABC four.
Speaker 9 (13:42):
Insurance companies view bariatric surgery as cosmetic instead of what
doctors believe as a medical. One doctor Ibel says patients
get desperate, but a botch surgery can end up costing
hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills to fix
the problem. Justine says she's wrecked up nearly a million
dollars in medical bills.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Guys, that's not all. This is what actually happened to
Justine Rodriguez. Take a listen to Surrey Chin and our
cut five.
Speaker 10 (14:12):
Long after the patient has gone home from Tijuana, they
might wind up sticking an emergency room with flu leg symptoms,
get diagnosed with a flu or aumonia, and really they
have a huge abscess in their abdomen from food spilling
through their stomach.
Speaker 9 (14:24):
That's exactly what happened to Justine. Doctor Anna Ibel is
a bariatric surgeon at the University of Utah. She says
weight loss surgery can cost ten to twenty thousand dollars
in the US, it's a third of that in Mexico.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Five thousand dollars and that included my airfare.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Straight out to Alexis Tereschak crimeonline dot Com investigative reporter.
In the last seventy two hours, I've learned of another
young mom in her thirties, Leanne Leary, who suffered two
heart attacks and died after Gashchik sleeve surgery and is
Don bull and Turkey. That has just happened. What if anything,
(15:06):
do you know about Leanne so.
Speaker 7 (15:09):
Leanne is a mom. She was thirty eight years old
and she went to She lived in England and traveled
all the way to Issemble, Turkey to have gastric bypass
surgery because she had heard about this from other people
and her friends even said she was so excited about
the surgery. She sent her friends a picture from the hospital.
She's in a hospital gown and then nobody heard from her,
(15:33):
so they started calling the hospital, they said, where is she?
Where is she? They said, oh, she had a heart attack,
but she's stable. Don't worry about it. But she they're
saying them. The doctor's there said, well, she didn't provide
a next next of kins, so we didn't have anybody
to reach out. So her parents flew to Turkey. When
they got there, they were told, oh, she did have
a heart attack, but she actually died on the one
after a heart attack.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
I'm just thinking through everything that has happened to these
and many more women. I'm going to go straight out
to not only a high profile lawyer, but long term
friend and colleague, high profile lawyer Michael Griffith, international criminal
defense attorney from New York. You can find him at
(16:17):
Michael griffithlawyer dot com. Former Senior Officer of the Criminal
Law Committee for the International Bar, Michael, thank you for
being with us. You know, Michael, for so well. You
devoted much of your practice to international law. At the beginning,
(16:39):
I guess there was a lot of drug tourism and
you were flying all around the world getting people out
of jail, defending cases, and I guess on every continent
that was often linked to drugs. But now plastic surgery,
international tourism.
Speaker 11 (17:00):
You know, Nancy, what's happening with these people going overseas
is reminiscent of the story. Remember Jack Benny, the famous
comedian who was known as a chief skate and a miser.
He was accosted by a robber one day and the
robber said your money or your life, and it was
a long pause. The robber says, maybe you didn't hear
me your money or your life, and Jack Benny said,
(17:23):
don't rush me. I'm thinking, well, with respect to these
people who go overseas to an extent that they may
be exchanging their money for their life to get a
lower discount to do something like a bariatric surgery, I
think is silly and it's stupid. You know, if you
(17:44):
go to Mexico.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Oh wait a minute, hold on, brainiac. Not everybody has
graduated college and gone on to law school and traveled
all around the world and speaks all your languages, you do,
a lot of people don't understand how dangerous this can be.
I mean in the US and when I was with
(18:06):
the Federal Trade Commission in their Anti trust Department and
Consumer protection, I remember we had an anti trust action
against a really big hospital. It was about obgyns trying
to cut off the market for certified nurse midwives and
not allowing them to practice in their hospital. Certified nurse
(18:28):
midwives are nurses with not only a four year degree,
but then a kind of a master's degree, only functioning
here with vaginal normal deliveries with an OBGYN in the
room with them, all right, an obgyn that have privileges
(18:48):
at the hospital that would be there for the delivery
in case there was some unanticipated complication. Anyway, they tried
to keep the nurse midwives out. Long story short, Michael Griffith,
I learned a lot about standard of care in hospitals.
We have a by law standard of care in the
(19:10):
US in medical facilities. Whether they screw it up or not,
that's a whole nother thing. But in these other countries,
Michael Griffith, there is no standard of care. Some of
these patients lay on a table for eight hours while
they die.
Speaker 11 (19:26):
Nancy, not only do I agree with that, but in
these countries they don't choose what considered in the States
to be medically accepted procedures. You know, many of the
doctors go to these Mexican in what they call it
medical schools, which are right up to the standards. As
(19:46):
you know, we have American students who can't get into
US medical schools and they go to the Caribbean and Mexico.
It's a real craft shoot to take a to do
one out there, and particularly you know, Medicaid doesn't cover this,
Medicare doesn't cover it, your insurance companies may not cover it.
(20:07):
As a matter of fact, Nancy, you'll remember this. Some
of our friends died from this. Our mutual friend Dominic Dunn.
Dominic went to Germany to get together a procedure to
the same medical facility that the Thorough Force went and
they both died. Steve McQueen died because of the care
(20:28):
he got in Mexico. Recently I went to a funeral
of a woman that I knew fifty nine years old
who went to get one of these homopathic medical procedures
in Mexico and died. So it's a real craft shoot,
and people must be very very careful then not to
go to these countries if they can possibly avoid it.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
You know, I learned all about quality of care doctor
Stephanie Pors and doctor Bethane and R. Brandt please jump
in course, the basic minimum standard of care would certainly
not be to allow your patient to be unattended for
eight hours. And that reminds of how Michael Jackson died.
(21:14):
You know, he had Conrad Murray administering basically a tranquilizer
propofaal that is used in surgery, and just left him
in there while he went and called his girlfriend and
Jackson died. Yeah, I think it was a child, well Ester,
who's also one of the greatest talents that ever lived,
left alone for hours while Conrad's in and out, in
(21:38):
and out, and he dies. That's an example that's not
supposed to happen in the US. There's not even such
a standard like that to try and attain in these
other countries.
Speaker 6 (21:50):
Doctor, Yeah, you're absolutely right. And that's what's so absolutely
scary about medical tourism, as you just don't know what
your standards are in the other countries. At least in America,
we can say to be board certified, to be bared eligible,
you have to go through I'm teen years of training.
I mean I've done fifteen years of training, you know,
(22:10):
and so it takes a long time, and we do
we have ethical standards within our societies. We have absolute
standards of care within the hospital systems that we must
adhere to, and we're under review every single year. Every
single year we review, we recertify, and so to go
to other countries where even a fraction of that probably
(22:34):
doesn't exist is very scary as a patient. And I'll
tell you, as a mom, oh my God, just for
me to undergo a simple, you know, wisdom tooth extraction
under sedation in America, I'm scared. So I can't even
imagine as a mom going to another country to have
these large procedures and then at the end of the
day to not come back. I mean, it's devastating. It's devastating.
Speaker 7 (22:57):
Ancy to Nancy, if I jump in.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
About this coming to you with me doctor Bethany Marshall,
renowned psychoanalysts joining us out of Beverly Hills. You can
find it at doctor Bethany Marshall dot com. No offense
to all the beautiful people in Beverly Hills, but one
of the reasons they're all beautiful is because they have
tons and tons of plastic surgery. When I was out
there for Dancing with the Stars, I think it was
(23:19):
the shortest and roundest person there, and roundness, of course,
is a euphemism. I walked down, like, who are all
these people? Then I started noticing a lot of them
looked to like they must have had the same surgeon.
But I bet you have a lot of issues. I
know you're not going to comment with your clients. Okay,
plastic surgery, fine, have it. I just be mad if
(23:40):
you didn't. But this is extreme, doctor Bethany, to go
to another country, why are they so desperate to go?
And it seems to be sugarcoated. You know, this plastic
surgery tourism business.
Speaker 12 (23:55):
Well, I think that there's almost like a gambling mentality.
You know, I'm going to get something for nothing or
for very little, and because of that, I'm not going
to pay attention to the facts, whether or not this
person's boards certified, whether or not they are medical standards.
There's almost this magical belief that everything will turn out okay.
(24:17):
And they invest authority in doctors as if because you're
wearing it's like the white coat phenomena. Just because you
have a white coat, you must know what you're doing.
And I tell my patients, you know, there's no such
thing as a free lunch. There really isn't. You're going
to pay one way or another. So if it's a
fifteen thousand dollars surgery here and you're going to pay
(24:39):
five thousand dollars there, you're going to pay. I don't
know how you're going to pay, but you're going to pay.
You may pay with your life, you may pay with
the fact that you have a botch surgery. You may
pay in another way, and that is that there's no
medical malpractice in most of these countries, like Mexico. Here
in the States, there's recourse. You have a surgery, you
(25:00):
find out that your doctor did not adhere to stand
as the practice for the field. They have boards that
certify them, and you can get an attorney and you
can sue them for medical malpractice. You can get at
least some damages.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
But I mean, think about it, doctor Bethany, sure your
family can sue after your dad, right, I'd rather save
the people from doing this. You know what I did
with my mother. Don't tell her I hid her passport.
I actually physically hid her passport. I told no one,
not my husband, not my children, nobody. I hid it
(25:39):
and it came back to bite me. In the neck
because this was during COVID and it was at the
tail end of COVID, I think. And I needed the
passport to take her with us on a Disney cruise,
which I love, by the way, and we didn't have
the passport because I'd hidden it, all right, So we
(26:01):
had to go through this extensive Oh oh, when you
tell what a lie I told, And it's so true
about lies, they get bigger and bigger and you have
to do.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
More and more to cover it up.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
I had to go through so much to get her
on that Disney cruise. I had to get an original
certified birth certificate from bib County where she was born.
She was born not in a hospital, I might add,
which complicated everything. And I just had to go through
so much because of my lie. All right, Oh, would
have tangled web we we boy. I thought about that
when I was standing in line down in bib County
(26:33):
trying to get a birth certificate because I didn't want
her to go to Mexico to get the dental implants.
By the way, we did get on the Disney cruise.
I had to go through so many hoops and so
much proof that this little lady in the wheelchair was
you know, actually Elizabeth Grace, but she didn't go to
Mexico and she got the implants and yuess what, she
(26:57):
has the most beautiful set of teeth, but it did
cost her an arm and a leg. Hey guys, I'm
just being joined by IRV Brandt, Senior Inspector, US Marshall Service,
International Investigations Branch, Chief Inspector, DOJ Office of International Affairs,
author a solo shot Curse.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Of the Bluestone. Oh that's a good one on.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Amazon and flying solo top of the world having gotten
to it. But I'm getting their IRV Brant. IRV. People
may wonder why I want a worldwide bounty hunter essentially
with me right now, because you've been in every one
of these cities. Can you explain what Michael Griffith and
(27:42):
I are talking.
Speaker 13 (27:43):
About if I can, man En, I'm glad you're doing this,
bringing light to this because people don't understand how dangerous
going south of the border can be. They think like
they would here in the US traveling between cities. And
I'm going to go and I'm going to do this,
and I'm going to have this procedure done and I'm
(28:04):
going to take money with me when you go south
of the border, whether it's Mexico or Central America. And
this is very common, the medical procedures for dental or
plastic surgery, things like that. My brother with the State
Department was in Costa Rica, and I would go to
(28:26):
Costa Rica all the time to go to his house
and we would talk about it. Our flights back and
forth to the US, about half the flights were the
passengers were people coming to Costa Rica for medical procedures.
And these people are bringing a lot of money with them,
you know, to pay for these procedures, and they're being
targeted for violent crimes. And it's a lack of awareness.
(28:54):
I'll give you then example, a country like Honduras. I
recently read a report is the most dangerous place on
Earth for a woman. A woman that's killed in a
Hondurs every thirty six hours, is targeted and murdered every
thirty six hours. But people are unaware of this. You know,
(29:16):
they treat international travel like they would treat interstate travel
in this country. And I'm with you, I'm going to
hide their passports if I have the chance.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
And listen, don't get me wrong, it's just what doctor
Bethany Marshall was earlier saying that people think they're getting,
Oh what a good deal. I can't pass it up.
I said, mother, please stay in the US. I will
pay for it. I will put it on my American
Express card, bay it off every month. Oh no, that
wouldn't do. She had to try and save the money.
(29:53):
I mean, doctor Bethany Marshall, when we were growing up,
no no cookies in the house, no snaw no uh
uh nothing. I mean we could have any money. But
my point is she's a saver. That's the way she is.
And she thought she was going to save money by
going to Mexico. I seriously did backflips trying to keep
(30:15):
her from going. Offered to pay whatever it was here
so she wouldn't go, And ultimately I had to tell
a lie, which I always get caught doctor Bethany always.
And you know then, as I said, the whole Disney thing,
and oh but it's that whole saving money thing getting
a deal.
Speaker 12 (30:35):
There's another aspect of this. It's also controlling the procedure.
And what I mean by that. I have a good
friend who's a clothing designer. He wanted me to go
to Tiajuana with him where he was going to get
some inexpensive gentle work. He wanted veneers, so you put
those over your teeth so that they look you know, whiter,
more uniform. But he's a very controlling guy. He thinks
(30:59):
he always knows the best about aesthetics.
Speaker 7 (31:01):
So he goes.
Speaker 12 (31:02):
I accompanied him. He goes to this clinic. Tourists were
coming straight from the boss, straight from the airplane. There
were all these people in the waiting room with suitcases
and they would say, oh, I'm from Illinois and from
Missouria from here. So these tourists were going straight to
this clinic. So my friend gets the handle work done
(31:24):
and he comes out and his teeth looks like chick lips.
And I asked him, like, what the heck happened? And
he controlled the procedure. He said, well, I wanted this,
you know, the front to look like this and the
sides to look like this, and so he dictated how
the teeth were going to look, and they looked, you know,
deformed afterwards. So I think it's saving money. It's controlling
(31:45):
the procedure, thinking you know more than the doctor. You know,
there's all kinds of strange motivations. I think that go
into going.
Speaker 7 (31:52):
South of the Border.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Prime stories with Nancy Grace.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I think I heard Michael Griffith jumping in jump in front.
Speaker 11 (32:12):
On that point, Americans have to realize that if there's
any medical malpractice or negligence in a foreign country, the
lawyers there do not work on contingencies like they do
in the United States. You have to pay the lawyers
there hour for hour, and if you get a judgment,
(32:33):
If you get a judgment in that foreign country, you
have to go under either the Hague Convention or the
bilateral a judgment process where where you have to try
to attach property or assets in that foreign country, which
is very, very difficult.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Dare Lord in Heaven Michael Griffith is now quoting the
Hague Convention as a basis to get paid back from
botch surgery. You know you're in trouble when the opposing
side starts quoting the Hague Convention.
Speaker 11 (33:10):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
I don't even want to get into what the Hague
Convention is. I've had to deal with it a couple
of times. I never want to touch it with a
ten foot pole.
Speaker 6 (33:17):
I wanted to echo a statement here so you know
you talked about shopping around.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
In the doctor porus. Go ahead, doctor.
Speaker 6 (33:23):
You know, we were talking about the patient that thinks
they know best in shopping around, and you know, we
see that a lot, a lot, you know, especially in
cosmetic surgery. Patients shop around all the time looking for
the best price. I mean, so we see that in
the United States. But the other issue that I think
a lot of the medical people that are doing this
medical tourism is they've probably been told no by a
(33:46):
lot of plastic surgeons, whether it be for not being
a good candidate for surgery, meaning they have significant comorbidity,
maybe they're smokers, or they have diabetes and they're not
fit for a cosmetic operation.
Speaker 7 (33:59):
You know.
Speaker 6 (33:59):
It's one thing when you got to get your appendix out,
it's an emergency. It's another when you want a facelift.
You know, we want all of the teas to be crossy.
I used to be done in and I think a
lot of these people may have heard no and said, well, listen,
I bet I can go to Mexico and get this
done again. Substandard care, the standards of care are just different.
(34:23):
And so I think that a lot of these patients
that may even be dying overseas may have not been
good surgical candidates to begin with.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
That's a really good point, doctor Porus and says, if
you read my mind, because my mom was told no
by many oral surgeons and Dennis because of her age.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
She's a pretty good help.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
But she let's say she's ninety one, about to turn
ninety two right now, so she would have been ninety
or eighty nine at the time this whole implant thing
came up, and doctors are like no, no, no, no no,
And she goes, hey, I'm going to Mexico. Oh no,
I'll never say you're again. Guys, this is by far,
these two ladies, Kiki McIntyre to Stane Rodriguez, by far
(35:07):
not the first ladies to die in plastic surgery. International
Tourism take a listen to our cut sixteen NBC.
Speaker 14 (35:17):
Despite the LII's beauty, the forty six year old realtor
wanted to change, so she traveled April twenty to Columbia
to undergo gastric bypass surgery at the hands of doctor
god losals Puccini, who had performed the same surgery on
her in twenty fifteen. Delia's mother and aunt went with her.
She left the consultation reassured by the doctor that she
would be fine in three days.
Speaker 11 (35:35):
Her aunt says.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Medical record show Deli.
Speaker 14 (35:37):
Was admitted to Drina Katarina Klinic and Bran Guillan April
twenty first. She went into the o R at three
pm in good condition, got a gastric sleeve, and was
released the same day.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
She was released the same day it started experiencing pain.
The daughters there said, hey, go get an X ray. Well,
let me tell you how that turned out. Take a
listen to our cut eighteen NBC.
Speaker 14 (35:59):
They say three hours later, doctor Sali's puccine got to
the apartment and saw her in such bad condition. He
said he was heading to the clinic to prepare the.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
R He didn't call an ambulist. He left meet me
at the hospital.
Speaker 14 (36:13):
A family friend says he began driving her to the
clinic the doctor ordered, but Delia was fading quickly, so
he took her to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
And there is Laura Avila take alost An hour cut
eight ABC eight.
Speaker 15 (36:26):
Laura Avila is a dancer, a singer, a real estate
agent in Dallas.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
She's the life. She's the light, you know.
Speaker 15 (36:32):
But this is not how Laura is today. On October thirtieth,
Laura went to what is Mexico with her fiance for
plastic surgery on her nose. They traveled to Mexico because
the procedure was cheaper.
Speaker 14 (36:41):
The price, of course, you know, comparing those prices to
the ones in the US.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
I mean it was less than one third of it.
Speaker 15 (36:47):
They went to a plastic surgery center around noon that day.
Her fiance, Enrique Cruz, says, an employee administered anesthesia, but
something went terribly wrong.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Guys, US women, mostly women, are dying because of international
plastic surgery tourism. IRV Brandt, what is your message?
Speaker 13 (37:08):
Stay in the United States when you travel out of
the country. If you are going to travel out of
the country and go against my advice, do your research
check on this clinic, you know, check these doctors, check
their experience. This is literally plain Russian roulette with a handgun.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
And even researching, IRV. I don't think you can research
every conceivable circumstance, every conceivable outcome. But you're saying research.
I say, don't go. Michael Griffith, what's your message?
Speaker 11 (37:49):
My message is is if you go overseas and have
a problem, call Michael Griffith. He'll do the best you
can to help you.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
And the American Express thirty two dollars a month. And OK,
why did I let him back in? I said, God
is my then I brought him back in. Michael Griffith
is actually a renowned international criminal defense attorney that I'm torturing.
Dr Bethany, what is your message?
Speaker 12 (38:12):
My message is you're going to pay one way or
the other.
Speaker 7 (38:15):
You're going to pay.
Speaker 12 (38:16):
It's not really cheaper. It's not just that if people
go down not just for a cheap for surgery, but
for a vacation, they're going to combine it with something else.
So like, oh, I can stay at a resort instead
of like a thousand dollars a night like it is
in the Four Seasons here, I'll get a great resort
there for three hundred dollars a night or two hundred
dollars a night. But in the end, if the procedure
(38:38):
doesn't look how you want it to, if you have
healthy complications, if you come back to the States and
then the surgeon is not there to follow you, or
you have to seek additional treatments here to correct what
was done there. You didn't really save money and you
didn't have that great vacation afterwards after all, so it's
(38:59):
not really worth it.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Doctor Stephanie Poras joining US plastic surgeon in Orlando at
Porusplasticsurgery dot com.
Speaker 6 (39:07):
What is your message, Yeah, I would tread very lightly
when considering any overseas surgery, and not just plastic surgery,
but any surgical intervention that you are looking for, do
some research. Look on the National Institute of Health in
that country, find out how the certification process works for
that specific surgeon and ask for their certifications, have them
(39:30):
email them to you. Do your research, do your homework,
and if you're going to go, just be prepared because
if a complication does occur, it is going to be
costly in the United States to fix it and a
lot of surgeons will not fix it if you've gone
out of the country, So just be aware and know
what's going to potentially happen.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Alexisteraeschik join me Colmonline dot com. Investigated reporter my friend
Joan Rivers, who was just the greatest comedian ever and
off camera whenever I would see her, she would always
ask me about the twins. She always knew their names,
(40:14):
their ages as each year passed, knew what they were
up to.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
And now she's gone.
Speaker 7 (40:21):
I remember watching her tell you one time, Nancy, you
asked her how she kept her family together, and she said,
eat dinner together every night. I remember watching that you
had aired that one time.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
When I think that she went in for a very
simple arn joscopy and died. I mean, if an icon
like Joe Rivers can pass away in a simple procedure,
what's going to happen in another country where these regular
moms like you and me go to get a cosmetic procedure.
(40:57):
I just I hate to hear about it because it's
so easily avoidable.
Speaker 7 (41:02):
There's nothing that can happen, you know, with Joan Rivers,
her daughter Melissa filed a lawsuit and they got a settlement.
Speaker 11 (41:10):
Against the.
Speaker 7 (41:13):
Doctor's office. But if you're the places out of the country,
there's really no recourse. There's nothing you can do to
sue them to make sure that they stop, that they
don't do this to anyone else. It's nearly impossible for
that to happen out of the country.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
And you're right, Melissa did get a settlement, but nothing
could replies your mom.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
Nothing.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
I fear that we will be covering this again. If
you have information on an ongoing international plastic surgery tourism crime,
please call eight hundred two two five five three two
four Goodbysman
Host
Nancy Grace
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