Exposing the dark underbelly of the cosmetic surgery industry | 60 Minutes Australia

[Music] the big cell is irresistible a glossy appeal to vanity and it works from tummy tucks to brazilian butt lifts australians fork out more than a billion dollars a year on cosmetic surgery i feel like all these like professional photos is what i got sucked in by like but wanting to look younger thinner better doesn't always go to plan anyone with a basic medical degree can call themselves a cosmetic surgeon three surgeons are operating here i'm doing liposculpture you wouldn't know it from their social media accounts but these doctors aren't specialist surgeons happening while the patient is asleep don't look now if you don't like gore it's staggering but loopholes in the law allow them to perform major operations with little surgical training have a look whilst he's still on the table obviously he's lying flat in his position but we've sculpted his chest they beguile patients into believing that they have the necessary surgical skill to perform their procedures and when something goes wrong if they are simply discharged off to the nearest emergency department the truth is weak regulations and a business model that puts profit before patients is leaving a trail of botched and maimed bodies this is bordering on being barbaric this is not what we demand of people performing surgery in australia tonight in a joint investigation with the sydney morning herald and the age 60 minutes exposes the dark side of the booming cosmetic surgery industry where patients are seduced into body modifying surgery by celebrity doctors and cleverly staged before and after photos on social media you're only seeing the best of the best on their instagram pages you're not seeing the women who have had scar tissue that have to keep going back to get things fixed you're not seeing that patients who do speak up are crushed into silence when it all goes wrong they don't get to just do that to me they don't get to just destroy my life and think that they get away with it it's not fair there should be little doubt how dangerous cosmetic surgery can be six months ago i uncovered shocking proof of alarming practices in the clinics of celebrity dermatologist turned cosmetic surgeon daniel lanza [Music] behind the doors of his clinics it included bizarre footage of doctors dancing while thrusting long stainless steel cannulas into an unconscious male patient worst of all a culture of never admitting when things go horribly wrong never ever ever not slightly ever ever ever ever ever ever ever admit to a patient that something's bad or wrong because they'll use it against you a hundred times the rest of your life never ever ever ever own up to anything for daniel lanza the fallout of being found out was swift he was furious there's a well-known journalist her name is adele ferguson she thinks there's some things she has to do to stop dr lanza but unfortunately she did the wrong thing it's a sad story this is the saddest day of my life but things were about to get a whole lot worse for daniel lanza he surrendered his medical registration and headed for israel living in this penthouse other doctors working alongside him had a few regulatory slaps but it's still going on people still don't realize that even if they're going to other cosmetic surgery clinics that it's the standard of care is still not up to board because there's no regulations registered nurses lauren hughish and justin nixon used to work for daniel lanza and saw too much what angers them now is that little has changed i thought there would be like massive changes it's been six months since this has all really come to light but there really hasn't been anything we're still seeing the same sorts of behavior still going on and it's like the doctors seem indifferent to what's been said and they don't seem to care tonight they want to tell how one doctor avoided scrutiny despite being in the thick of it all his name is dr ryan wells he was dr lanza's associate he was the person doing the bulk of the work at the lansa clinic he was dr lanza's workhorse when lauren and justin finally resigned he went into damage control he said be careful who you talk to because it's our life at stake don't just don't talk anything about the clinic don't say anything about your experience at the clinic because if it comes out we're all done for that's very much the culture you know don't jog us but you know when i really went away and thought about it the dog act is not speaking up for the patients and the victims and the people that are harmed after assisting dr wells on hundreds of procedures and consultations they've decided to speak out his practice puts the public at risk and yet yeah the regulators have failed to act quickly dr wells joined the lanza clinics with a basic medical degree and limited surgical experience first case of the week a mega liposuction let's have a look at a before shot within months he was spruiking on social media major procedures such as mega liposuction tummy tucks and many face lifts once again didn't like this bulging droop droopy skin down through her neck as he started earning the big bucks he began flaunting his lavish lifestyle on his social media accounts lance has taught him everything that he knows money was the bottom line for all of the doctors it was not in the interests of the patients back then dr wells distanced himself publicly from the lens of fallout excellence is and always has been our standard i want to reiterate my complete dissociation from dr lanza and his company in an email he sent me dr wells goes even further i operate and manage the brisbane practice within the unit no compromises have ever been taken with regards to patient safety yet at the same time he was telling staff something completely different about the media coverage i think it was weak danny might cop some [ __ ] but feel we didn't even get a show up here it'll all be okay but all is not okay at dr wells clinics as much as dr wells can say that he has separated himself and has better standards and that the clinics run completely differently i think that's a joke yeah [Music] it's not only former colleagues bravely speaking up patient kathy hubble wants everyone to know about her experience with dr wells this man is absolutely dangerous to the public he was directly responsible for the procedure on my abdomen which has now left me with chronic pain and uh and tissue that is is hard and rubbery and um and loss of feeling in those areas as well in november 2018 kathy was booked in to have liposuction on her abdomen by dr wells it was two days after undergoing liposuction on her legs by dr lanza having already paid in full she felt unable to back out once you've paid a huge amount of money and you're invested in a procedure that you think is going to help you you can't turn back so you're in too deep absolutely [Music] despite being in excruciating pain she was sent straight home the next day i was at the point where i couldn't stand i couldn't sit i couldn't lie down i couldn't move i couldn't roll over and i was in so much pain that i was actually vomiting and my partner then drove me to the hospital and they said i was actually in septic shock and had celluliters from knee to navel and did they say what caused it well they knew that it was from the procedure that it was a dirty procedure [Music] almost four years later the former theatre nurse is still in chronic pain it interferes with every part of my life every um relationship you know intimacy everything the fact that he is trying to separate himself from the practices of dr lanza is absolutely frightening this man is absolutely dangerous to the public kathy hubble isn't the only person saying it 60 minutes is aware of other unhappy patients of dr wells but they can't speak publicly after signing gag orders in return for refunds after their operations others have joined a class action this woman had mega liposuction on her thighs by dr wells in november 2020 on his instagram he posted this before and after video but let's have a look while she's still on the table and now have a look she's obviously lying flat on her back but we've sculpted all that fat out but this is what she actually looks like she told 60 minutes she feels hopeless and trapped in a deformed body patient stories aren't the only way to find out what really happens inside dr wells clinics unbelievable we've also obtained thousands of internal messages and videos and the contents are shocking that is the most grotesque thing i think i've ever seen in my entire life in the world of cosmetic surgery social media drives business for most patients instagram and tic toc posts are the easiest way to judge a doctor's so-called results dr ryan wells is a leading cosmetic surgeon with thousands of followers on instagram but there's a lot his followers and his patients haven't seen until now liposuction and then we're doing a fat transfer breath this is just bewildering we've obtained thousands of leaked messages and videos that show what really happens behind closed doors at dr wells clinics unbelievable plastic surgeon mark ashton is the professor of surgery at the university of melbourne we showed him some of the disturbing scenes featuring dr wells this video was filmed while the patient was unconscious and naked what was he hitting a fly in the operating theater yes an operating theatre is meant to be an isolated protected area it means it minimises the risk of infection the fact that there is a fly in the operating theatre means that that system has broken down patient was left completely naked with no covering at all whilst he used the blanket to attack the fly we have known in the last 10 to 15 years that one of the most important critically adjustable factors in preventing infection after surgery is keeping a patient warm we've done three mega liposuctions and unhygienic operating theatres are just the start on instagram and tick tock dr wells made a name for himself doing mega liposuction an industry term for removing more than five liters of fat and fluid in a single procedure we know and it's been scientifically proven that trying to perform mega liposuction that is liposuction of more than five liters in a single sitting as a day patient that is where the patient goes home at the end of the procedure is incredibly dangerous here dr wells is boasting to his followers about how much fat he can take out in a single day guess how many liters of fat we took 10 liters of that guess how much fat we took out 9 liters 13 liters of fat 32 liters of fat in total i'm stuffed it's this macabre macho sort of parading as trying to outdo each other 32 litres in three patients is well beyond what the worldwide literature would suggest is the maximum amount of fat that should be taken out of patients there's also another type of liposuction dr wells performs but you'll never see it on social media okay doing really well in this video shared on whatsapp between dr wells and his nurses in october last year a woman is getting fat manually squeezed from her legs she's awake but thankfully she can't see the bloody mess spraying around adele that here jesus where did you get that from unbelievable that is the most grotesque thing i think i've ever seen in my entire life where to start uh lack of sterility lack of infection control biohazards we have contaminated blood and fats being sprayed all over the operating theater the gentleman is wearing normal runners with inadequate protection for himself and his staff there's no facility in which to contain or entrap the biological material which is being forcibly evacuated from the leg the procedure is being performed whilst the patient is awake there is so many things wrong with this scene i just do not know where to begin it would be very difficult to clean i would imagine you can't clean that you to to get that material off the wall you need to do what we call it a deep clean that's about a two hour process it means therefore that every patient coming in from now on is put at risk by the behavior of these individuals yeah it's reminiscent of an abattoir really and we would be expected at the lands of clinics to clean this mess up in under 15 minutes to have another patient through registered nurses justin nixon and lauren hewish say they worked on hundreds of procedures with dr wells they say they were only ever given 10 to 15 minutes never two hours to clean up the room after a procedure there'd be plenty of times later in the day when people say what's that on the wall and there'd be specks of fat and tissue that had been flung around the theater it was yeah not up to standard filthy yeah it would be just a quick little wipe down with the tuffy on the bed a quick little mop of the floor and all the dirty instruments would be chucked into the staff room in a bucket with all the dirty linen right next to it mixed with all the luggage of the clean instruments it gets worse from 2019 dr wells regularly performed surgeries on the first floor of this commercial office building in spring hill brisbane justin nixon worked beside him in this makeshift theater when patients would arrive on the day they'd often be horrified to find out there was no special room there was no uh dedicated theater and they'd say is this it we're going to operate here and the doctors would say yep take off your clothes we're going to do the surgery in this room here they didn't feel like they could leave they had no other choice this is the before image this video shows dr wells performing a breast reduction involving surgical incisions to remove breast tissue on a male patient it's in the spring hill office which isn't a registered day hospital very small very little fat in queensland if you do a breast reduction it must be done in a registered day facility dr margaret foe has spent 40 years researching the health system she believes the surgery conducted at the unlicensed spring hill clinic was potentially an illegal operation breast reduction or anything around a breast reduction like a partial mastectomy which is basically what it is has to be done in a registered healthcare facility and if you're telling me that was not a registered healthcare facility then it appears that that was illegal as well as shocking practices it seems dr wells and his staff are caught up in a secret scheme to jeep the regulator in leaked internal whatsapp messages from last year a senior nurse tells staff to back date paperwork before an audit please have a look around the hospital for all checklists they all need to be backdated to march 2020. back dating you know it points to the issue of patient safety and what you showed me was just like flagrant disregard for obligations under those standards i mean they were falsifying records and so you can't be going back and making up dates because you risk patient safety dr wells team was also asked by a senior nurse on whatsapp to hide certain chemicals and equipment in an attic ahead of an upcoming audit all old owner instruments need to be moved to attic fat tf canisters and equipment need to be hidden in attic another message suggests staff were reusing disposable equipment all disposable forceps suture packs need to be thrown out if they were sterilized that was a heart stop moment for me as i was reading i read it again and it said disposable instruments and packs should be thrown out not re-sterilized why was that a heart stop moment i thought are they are they re-sterilizing single-use instruments because if they are that is unforgivable that is as disgusting as washing a band-aid so that you can use it again right that is not what single-use disposable instruments are intended for if that is what was happening there i found that unconscionable unforgivable despite dr wells best efforts to publicly distance himself from daniel lanza we've discovered they're still in business together 60 minutes can reveal the property of his gold coast clinic is jointly owned by dr wells and daniel lanza and in brisbane lanza also owns dr wells queensland day hospital the clinic is owned by dr lanza he's always going to have a say in what happened look at this fat how fat that's going to pure now injected into her breast the cosmetic surgery industry would have you believe the lanza clinics were cowboy operators in an otherwise professional industry ryan's doing a mini tummy tuck but as you're about to see the problems are industry wide and it's out of control if you want to see what's wrong with the cosmetic industry there it is [Music] in the ultra competitive business of cosmetic surgery it's important to stand out at cosmos clinic operating theatres are used as performance spaces i never really knew that you could dance like this should make a man wanna speak spanish and doctors posed for the camera wearing butt man hats while performing risky surgeries it's earned them almost half a million followers on instagram and tick tock and why did you get into this as a business there are also regular appearances on tv [ __ ] i look good on tv this is why i decided to start up my own clinic and who's coming into your surgery to get this sort of work done cosmos and its doctors are striving to be everywhere hey guys i've got some exciting news it's been a long time coming but we've finally done it we've put all the pieces together we've found the right doctor and the right location and we're coming straight to you in october 2019 cosmos announced it was opening a new cosmetic surgery clinic in hawthorne melbourne founder dr joseph ajaka used instagram to reveal the doctor of choice to lead the victorian business we had to find the perfect fit for cosmos and this man is the perfect fit for cosmos with great honor i present to you doctor all right [Music] we've been working with dr reza since the end of last year and we're gonna see him move to melbourne which we're all sad about because he's really been part of the sydney team i'm very excited about it and i'm looking forward to seeing you guys in melbourne cosmos's hyped recruit dr reza mahdi is a gp in 2018 he trained overseas at the european college of aesthetic medicine and surgery and then back to here and then follow the curvature what's the difference for example to manage because an organization that teaches courses in facelifts and tummy tucks in as little as 15 hours he used his training to dazzle patients and perform other risky surgeries including the brazilian butt lift posting it all on social media tight body in about half time body we can't inject too much fat otherwise the fat can't survive you're going to die you wouldn't know it from cosmos's social media posts or tv appearances but the brazilian butt lift or bbl is considered so dangerous that many trained plastic surgeons like professor mark ashton refused to do them brazilian butt lift is the most dangerous operation you can possibly consider undertaking i don't think there is any plastic surgeon in australia who would seriously consider doing brazilian butt lifts knowing what we know now about the risk i saw their instagram page and they had lots and lots of photos from lots of different girls i basically just couldn't find anywhere else other than cosmos that had those results so they sounded like they were the perfect fit yeah they basically advertised and made everything seem like it was totally like the best decision you could make well they want you to think that it's as easy as one two three you can just go in get your surgery within two weeks you'll be back to your normal life in march last year 26 year old kisha omoa booked in for a consultation with dr reza and there was no um frames on the wall with his qualifications on it like you would normally see in a doctor's office but that didn't set any alarm bells for you um in hindsight now yes of course it's set it sets off a lot of alarm bells but at the time i'm thinking to myself he's a trained surgeon there is no way in australia that a person can perform surgery on somebody when they're not actually a plastic surgeon after a brief chat keisha signed up for liposuction and a fat transfer for a babyl i can't believe something this audio is the ambulance call she made in the clinic hours after waking up from surgery what unit number are you in golden column oh cosmos clinic yep okay i can see that one there okay is there anyone else nearby you no i'm just out of procedure there could be something seriously wrong i really need to get the laws i know and that's why we've got all of that organized for you as soon as i woke up i instantly knew that something was seriously wrong because i'd never felt pain like that before in my life and i kept telling them from the beginning i'm in pain i need help something's wrong something's wrong and it just felt like somebody had stabbed me and i just could feel this burning pain inside my like my abdomen and it just wouldn't stop and it kept getting worse and it got to the point where i just kept passing out like throughout the time that i was in recovery because the pain was so bad he was basically just telling me that i'm not handling the pain very well and it's all normal and you know it will stop and i need to calm down he was unaware that she was starting to bleed because he didn't have the surgical skills he didn't have the surgical background he didn't have the surgical training i practically begged them just to call an ambulance and once i realized that they're not going to do it for me i realized i had to do it for myself the medical staff there were oblivious to the fact that she was almost dying in front of their own eyes five hours after waking up kisha finally reached the hospital the tests came back after a few hours saying that i had multiple liver lacerations to my liver and there was a pocket of blood because there was internal bleeding and that's the reason why i was in so much pain after she left the hospital on may 3 she went to see dr reza who admitted he'd stuffed up he basically said that you know he made a mistake and that he might have went too deep and you know he mostly just apologized days later she followed up with head office in sydney making a detailed complaint it just seemed like they weren't really believing what i said about what happened because on my end i was the only one who was saying my side of the story despite the warnings cosmos allowed dr reza to continue operating on other unsuspecting patients for many months like sinead molelli in july she had a bbl with dr reza after surgery the results were nothing like she'd seen on instagram i had a lot of build up in the bottom of my abdomen um and also both of my buttocks was like a different size and had a different shape there was like a flatness to one of my butt cheeks like i had been pressed up against a wall they didn't tell me that there might be a risk of both butt cheeks being of different sizes um and they also didn't tell me that i would be at risk of maybe some type of nerve damage but i do have pain that shoots down my leg and that has been consistent since i had my surgery with dr rizza in my experience they didn't even tell me about the risks when sinead booked in for a follow-up appointment with dr reza she told him she felt mislead it got to a point midway through our appointment where i actually thought we were going to have a physical altercation like he started yelling at me telling me that he'd been doing this for so long the slate that his technique was the best i feel like he was practicing on my body and it didn't go accordingly and he just moved on to the next people feeling abandoned connected online with other cosmos patients like taylor i don't feel like i was cared about as a patient i feel like i was just a dollar sign and in and out taylor had a bbl with dr reza in march last year more than a year after surgery she's still in agonising pain i have an egg-shaped rock basically in my right cheek that causes me daily pain and it really just feels like someone's stabbing me i've not been able to sit down comfortably since my surgery which has been over 12 months ago ultimately if it wasn't for their social media i wouldn't have chosen a cosmetic surgeon taylor and sinead say they both complained to cosmos's head office in sydney taylor feels they didn't take her pain seriously enough i'm telling you i'm in significant pain every day and it's nearly been 12 months and you're not following it up at all so it didn't get better once you started getting in contact with head office it just got worse after several emails head office offered sinead a refund but there were strings attached i got an email from the general manager and the attachment it read that in order for me to get the refund which they call a settlement i would need to sign an nda and i haven't signed it the nda basically meant that i couldn't speak about them in any way moving forwards that they weren't admitting that anything had been done wrong so they basically wanted to silence you yes yes yes that's how i read it absolutely sadly it's a common story for unhappy patients who try to speak up after surgeries at cosmos clinic i was just sick of people raving and saying look how many followers look how great they are and that's why i left the google review but that along with a few others all were deleted when you look at its slick social media profile it's obvious that at cosmos clinic cameras are as essential as liposuction cannula with clinics and day hospitals in five states the fast-talking face of cosmos is founder dr joseph ajaka the latest in skin timing his skill at the big cell might impress some but it horrifies others and we found that the laser helped to tighten the skin while he's talking to the camera he's shoving a long thin instrument that is about 18 inches long backwards and forwards into the abdomen and he's got no idea where the tip of that is at all [Music] in another instagram post dr ajaka is filmed operating on a patient without wearing a mask it's a practice plastic surgeon professor mark ashton would never do any surgical procedure requires the people performing that procedure to adhere the basic principles of sterility that includes wearing a mask it means they either don't care or they haven't done sufficient training to know that it's important what is important to them is protecting their image by making sure no one says anything bad about them among the tens of thousands of online posts it's almost impossible to find a negative review or comment about cosmos clinic but that doesn't mean unhappy patients don't exist i just thought that's not fair they don't get to just do that to me they don't get to just destroy my life and think that they get away with it it's not fair this patient has asked us to call her rebecca in july 2020 the 28 year old community nurse booked in for liposuction and a brazilian butt lift with dr ajaka and another cosmos doctor after surgery she saw her results when you get lipo it's because you have you want it to be flat that's why you get lipo to your abdomen so it's more defined it's a more defined abdomen i had what looked like rolled out play-doh in a snake bulging out of my abdomen like a flap there's not one area that he touched that looks better than it was before especially my abdomen my abdomen is is it's not just not good it's abnormal did dr ajaka seem shocked when he saw it when he first saw it he didn't exactly react you know he touched it he pulled it he tugged at it um but he didn't seem surprised um and but he did advise me that this was the first time that this had ever happened to any of his patients how did that make you feel well not special that's for sure did he ever admit that he had caused this no he just said it's your thin skin you know we could never have predicted this it was just your thin skin and i just said that's not possible it's not possible for skin to be the way my skin is after revision surgery with dr ajaka and another doctor failed in september rebecca posted about it on a private instagram account so i created a page where you know i took videos of you know what what it was like first day home what you wear what you know you had to wrap things around you because you were leaking and so i recorded all of that and then i stopped posting on my instagram page why did you stop because i received a letter from their lawyer threatening to sue me for defamation and i didn't know what to do i had to you know seek my own legal advice because i i didn't know what would happen after that it was just a letter to scare me off um you know to try and make me disappear really it didn't work outraged she decided to sue her doctors at cosmos clinic i just thought i'm not going to be like that it's not fair i don't have i don't there's no reason why i deserve to live with what he's given me i'm outraged that they think that i'm just another person that can just shove under the rug and forget about the legal action is ongoing and as each week drags on rebecca's trauma continues to grow i'm still in pain today i'm in pain 24 7. what sort of pain my abdomen it's a continual numbness and it just feels like there's pins all the time pricking me across my entire abdomen i occasionally get burning feeling like a burning sensation it's destroyed my life if it wasn't for my family i would be homeless um i sorry just take a minute i think i need it i physically cannot work full-time it is too exhausting um and my pay literally just covers just normal you know day-to-day expenses it doesn't cover any of my house bills it doesn't cover any of my rent that's how bad it is it's smoke and mirrors it's all an illusion and as a consumer you can't tell you just have no idea what's real and what's not social media is the shop front of the cosmetic surgery industry and what we're finding is that the doctors who perform cosmetic surgery are actually making the patients the mannequins in the window and the goal is to get more people in those shop fronts to advertise more services and get more patients in the door madison johnston and michael fraser was so concerned about the way the cosmetic surgery industry manipulates patients it's like a dangerous procedure and he's laughing about it they started tracking the social media content because there's so much content that surgeons put out there we had to find a way to sort of look at all that data and see what kind of problems existed for example with the expiring posts where they are putting more risque posts in the expiring content but also to be able to look at patterns of a particular set of doctors for example over a period of a month and see what kind of conduct happens on a day-to-day basis they've developed software to capture everything that's posted on the instagram and tick tock accounts of australia's leading cosmetic surgeons tens of thousands of videos and photos going back more than eight years i think it's something that regulators should be using or something similar to that because it will give them oversight should the public or member of the public complain about their surgery or the conduct of a doctor they can actually go back and see everything that happened within a time frame including expiring content [Music] it's not just misleading in many cases the content posted by cosmetic surgeons is breaching the rules failing to tell patients about the risks what we're seeing is multiple breaches every other day essentially you know things like inaccurate before and after photos using testimonials that's against the national law there's this big theme that surgery is for cosmetic reasons it's just it's no big deal it's walk in walk out almost giving you the impression that it's the same day which is obviously not the case the patients were nestled or snuck in their beds while visions of sports illustrated bums danced in their heads a wink of his eye and a twist of his head soon gave me to know i had nothing to dread i think social media it makes it look so glamorous like it makes it seem you're gonna walk out like a kardashian and you're not you're in a lot of pain you're bleeding everywhere for days and you're a mess and yeah there might be a few people that did turn out good like looking great and good i'm glad but that's unfortunately not for everyone why do you think it is so hard to find stories like yours on social media people are just so just scared because these people are so powerful they have so much money they have so many resources yeah just the tiniest bit in 2018 social media influencer rosie terry signed up with cosmos to promote its brazilian butt lift surgery hey guys i'm live with cosmos clinic today at 12 running a little bit late but i'm excited i did promote them i think we collabs on the live and i was meant to get fillers or botox but then what happened was my surgeries came first and they were so bad i never went back for fillers or botox ever that would make me a hypocrite from influencer to patient rosie had a brazilian butt lift at cosmos in september 2018 unhappy with the results she posted a one-star review on google hey guys you're probably like why is she posting about them all of a sudden later she shared her experience with her followers on instagram i promoted for them they offered me free fillers for promotion i said i will never let you touch me again after what you did to my body a 23 year old girl days after the post the founder of cosmos dr joseph ajaka filed a defamation claim in the federal court but that only made rosie more determined so what made you fight the the legal threats i think i just got to the point like what can they take from me what can they do to me i just wasn't ready to let them get away with it still the legal claim has been dropped but rosie is refusing to stay silent i feel like the more me or anyone else speaks up it's going to bring a lot more awareness and people are going to speak up a lot more because it's not fair as more and more brave patients speak out the holes in our health system are plain to see it's worse than the wild west to my mind that is something that we should be looking at criminalizing [Music] far from the city amongst her horses kathy hubble feels she can finally relax even if only for a moment i've now moved to the country where life is so much less stressful i have to be in a low stress environment where i can be with my animals and my horses and my partner gorgeous boy after cosmetic surgery with dr ryan wells and his then boss the scandal played dr daniel lanza she was left with lifelong scars i've now got chronic pain in my abdomen and it's like thousands of red ants biting under the skin dr wells tried to distance himself from daniel lanza and in november last year he and his nurses posed for photos as they scraped lansa's name from the clinic's window last month he rebranded the business but for patients like kathy hubble this is nothing more than slick marketing how important is it for you to speak up about dr wells dr wells has actually now distanced himself from dr lanza and yet he is probably the worst culprit in the procedure that was done on me and he is still practicing this person is barbaric he needs to be stopped [Music] just like dr wells cosmos clinics dr reza ahmadi was a prolific user of social media sharing before and after surgery photos on expiring instagram stories but many of the posts forgot to mention the risks regulation of the cosmetic surgery industry is almost non-existent it's just full of holes and for patients um they are not safe so who's going to protect you no one basically it's buyer beware you're on your own did you do this procedure inside a registered health care facility dr margaret foe is a lawyer and expert on australia's complex health care system one of the areas that needs close scrutiny and attention in my opinion is this practice of paying influences and or giving them free cosmetic surgery so that they promote that surgery because they are influencers to my mind that is something that should be we should be looking at criminalizing in january this year dr reza's details disappeared from the cosmos website welcome to the game of the week and his social media appeared to be professionally wiped from the internet kisha omoa and other patients were never told where he'd gone or why they basically wouldn't tell me much because i assume that they can't but i'm definitely not the only person that this has happened to and i'm definitely not going to be the last when dr reza operated on keisha it was a disaster so we're doing really well everything's really sitting down well we've got a little bit of fluid here last december she booked in with leading plastic surgeon professor mark ashton to fix her scarred body and today she's meeting him for a checkup following revision surgery to remove painful scar tissue and when we looked and found out where that scar tissue was what we found is it was just as you can see here just a dense block a very thick scar tissue [Music] this is the amount of scar tissue removed from kiesha's abdomen caused by liposuction by dr reza so is that almost the size of a palm about the size of the palm of your hand i've never seen it before the medical report from the hospital says kesha's liver was lacerated multiple times from liposuction with kisha what happened was he went too deep because he was unaware as where that cannula was positioned he was unaware he was too deep and he started liposucking quiche's liver it's worse than the wild west the wild west at least you knew you were going into an environment which was dangerous professor ashton says after seeing kisha in december last year he had a mandatory obligation to report dr reza to the national health regulator opera early last month it banned dr reza from all cosmetic surgery but allowed him to work as a gp but that's not enough for dr foe if the conditions on dr reza aren't appropriate what is appropriate i would think suspend his registration perhaps not indefinitely but suspend his registration i'm not seeing that they even really understand the magnitude of what they're dealing with [Music] we tracked down dr reza to this no-frills gp clinic on the outskirts of melbourne until conditions were placed on him the clinic was offering cosmetic appointments with the now fallen doctor we approached the founder of cosmos dr joseph ajaka for comment in the days before this story was originally due to be broadcast back in may however dr ajaka rushed off to court to stop the show abigail boyet it was an action that outraged new south wales mp abigail boyd last friday 13th of may the new south wales supreme court issued an extraordinary order granting double bay cosmetic surgeon dr joseph ajaka of cosmos clinics access to draft pre-publication copies of an upcoming 60 minutes episode this court order is unprecedented around the same time cosmos was busy deleting more than 100 posts from its social media accounts but we've got them all the batman videos and dancing in the operating theater are now gone so too has the putin horror show other more risque posts have also been wiped from their accounts trick or treat our gorgeous client of cosmos is definitely looking like a treat as has the video of dr ajaka performing liposuction while looking at the camera instead of the patient who is this joseph ajaka who has the means and the incentives to attack so aggressively one of the pillars of our democracy in the defense of his private financial and reputational interests what guilty conscience has now prompted this defensive posture ajaka may have a lot to lose if he can't control what is said about him but we all have a lot more to lose if journalists are prevented from speaking truth to power hello i'm tara brown thanks for watching 60 minutes australia subscribe to our channel now for brand new stories and exclusive clips every week and don't miss out on our extra minutes segments and full episodes of 60 minutes on com dot ninenow.com u and the nine now app

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 2,513,791

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Tom Steinfort, Sarah Abo, karl stefanovic, 60Mins, #60Mins, cosmetic, botched, exposed, investigation, industry, surgery, fake, doctors, tiktok, instagram

Id: _zQGdYVPfbg

Length: 54min 13sec (3253 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 09 2022