Fake-Botox Doctor Gets Some Prison Time

Gayle Rothenberg was convicted way back in 2007 of injecting patients with fake Botox. Today she finally got sentenced.

Rothenberg will serve five and a half months in prison, three years of supervised release, and pay reparations of almost $100,000 to patients, U.S. Attorney Jose Angel Moreno announced this afternoon.

Rothenberg had a pretty good aesthetic-medicine practice going at her Center for Image Enhancement, but when the manufacturer raised the price of Botox, she started using a cheaper item even though it was labeled “FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY, NOT FOR HUMAN USE.”

Amazingly, she did not inform her patients — more than 170 of them — of the switch.

At her initial trial, patients “testified they had not been informed Rothenberg was administering a drug not approved for human use and would not have given consent for the use of such a drug.”

(So there are limits to how far you’d go to fight aging!!)

Rothenberg successfully appealed her conviction, with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals siding with her a year ago.

The feds re-indicted her, and she pleaded guilty last month to misbranding of a drug while being held for sale and making false statements to an agent of the United States government.

So remember, if you’re so aghast that a simple bit of wrinkling has naturally occurred on your face, you want to make sure that the doctor injects you with a needle filled with the proper type of toxic chemical, not some off-brand toxic chemical.

Or you could just, you know, be natural. Because frankly the woman on this BOTOX Cosmetic page looks a little scary, and she’s supposed to be helping to sell the product.