A San Jose Vietnamese-American woman and her husband on Thursday pleaded guilty to practicing medicine without a license, reported the San Jose Mercury News and the San Francisco Chronicle.
According to the plea bargain, the woman, Ha Thithu Nguyen, 47, will be sentenced to about seven years in prison, while her husband Zbigniew Makowski, 61, will get almost three years.
Nguyen ran a home-based business named Thu Ha Permanent Makeup. As clients came to her for tattoos, she talked them into more serious surgery which she performed herself. The home nip/tuck included “face-lifts, lip plumps and tummy tucks.”
According to the Chronicle, “Nguyen performed the surgery and Makowski often helped his wife by picking up and driving the victims to the couple’s San Jose home for the procedures. Makowski also accepted money for the surgery and assisted Nguyen during the procedures, prosecutors said.”
Nguyen is not a licensed doctor in California. It is not clear from the news reports whether she’s ever been a doctor anywhere else.
