A New York man has been busted for luring women to the Dominican Republic to perform bargain-basement plastic surgery on them -- leaving them disfigured and in pain, authorities said yesterday, NYPost reports.
Hector Cabral, 51, who is not licensed to practice medicine in New York, has allegedly been collecting victims since at least 1999.
Back then, a Manhattan singer told The NY Post he performed liposuction on her and left her with a near-deadly infection.
He was not charged at the time, but investigators with the state Attorney General's Office have now charged Cabral in four other cases. .
And "it's hard to believe there aren't more victims," a law-enforcement source said.
Officials said Cabral would seek out his prey in salons and spas throughout the five boroughs of New York, mainly in Washington Heights.
A fixture at the shops, he would chat up female customers -- and then whip out his black marker on the spot to indicate where on their bodies they needed a tuck and liposuction, court records say.
He used cheap prices as bait, officials said.
The women would then fly down to his office in Santa Domingo for the surgery, officials said.
But the thrifty medical procedures came at a steep cost. The women suffered substantial pain, scarring and permanent disfigurement afterward, authorities said.
Cabral was arrested Monday on charges of unauthorized practice of a profession, according to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
The timing of his bust was particularly inconvenient. He had already scheduled several consultations for the week, law-enforcement sources said.
A woman who answered the phone at his mother's home in Yonkers and identified herself as the housekeeper defended Cabral.
"I think all this is a big mistake -- he's a wonderful man," said the woman, Maria Jimenez.
"In the Dominican Republic, he's been a licensed doctor for almost 20 years. He went to France to get a degree in plastic surgery.
"I know people who had surgery with him in the Dominican Republic, and they said he was good."
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