The medical clinic of a former doctor arrested for performing surgery without a license was a family operation – with his beauty-queen wife and architect brother acting as his “medical assistants,” a former patient charged yesterday.
Carol Browne made the shocking claims in a lawsuit just as the disgraced doctor, José Lopez, was set to be released on $100,000 bond for allegedly offering to perform plastic surgery on a woman in a New York office earlier this year.
Lopez, 41, had both his New York and New Jersey medical licenses revoked in 2003 after one of his liposuction patients died and five others suffered life-threatening complications.
Browne, 31, didn’t know about Lopez’s shoddy record when a friend referred her to him in late 2001.
She told The Post she ran his name through a New York state Web site, and didn’t find any complaints against him.
She went to him for liposuction on her stomach and thighs in April 2002.
She didn’t see Lopez before the $8,000 surgery – only his brother, Wilson, who gave her a pill that put her to sleep.
After the procedure, she said she had “open wounds” on her stomach, sides and thighs. Lopez’s office assured her the wounds were “normal and that they’d heal.”
When they didn’t, she was told she had to change her surgical dressings regularly – which just aggravated the wounds. “Everything he told me worked against me,” Browne said.
She developed heavy scarring, and José told her he’d need to do “a correction” on her in a few months because her “skin type” wasn’t reacting well.
She went for the laser correction in early 2003, and broke down in tears as she described how it felt. “It was like my whole body was on fire. I felt like I was in flames,” she said.
She said the last part of the procedure was performed by José’s wife, Diana Figueroa, reportedly once a runner-up for Miss World Colombia.
In tremendous pain with even more scarring, Browne went back on the Web, and only then discovered Lopez had already lost his license when he operated on her.
Browne’s lawyer, Emmanuel Roy, said another doctor who examined her said “this could not have been performed by a doctor. This was done by somebody who didn’t know what they were doing.”
Lopez’s brother and wife couldn’t be reached about the allegations. José’s criminal lawyer declined to comment.
A spokeswoman for the state Attorney General’s Office, Maritere Arce, declined to comment on Browne’s claims, but said the investigation is continuing.