Rosemary Diaz worked as a model. But she says she can no longer get modeling jobs because of permanent scars she got when there were problems with her surgery to have implants replaced.
"I cannot model anymore," Diaz said. "I cannot do bikini models anymore."
Diaz came to South Florida from her home in Orlando in May 2015 for the surgery at the cosmetic center that used to be named Encore Plastic Surgery. The doctor she had scheduled was changed at the last minute. The person who did the surgery on May 14, 2015 was Dr. Osak Omulepu.
She says soon after her surgery, she felt sick.
"I started bleeding through my mouth and I felt very sick to my stomach," she said.
But she wasn't happy with how her surgery turned out and scheduled another to repair what went wrong.
Even after those two surgeries she has a large T-shaped scar on her breast. She says it's much larger than what Dr. Omulepu told her to expect.
Diaz is now suing Omulepu, the clinics and their current and former owners.
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Omulepu worked as a contractor for Encore Plastic Surgery in May 2015. In 2016, the company changed its name and ownership. It is now known as Eres Plastic Surgery.
"We are alleging that the owners of these companies are playing a shell game in order to avoid liability," Andres Beregovich, Diaz' attorney, said about the suit filed in January in Miami-Dade County.
State records show the surgery center has changed names and ownership multiple times since first incorporating in 2007.
"The owners of the corporation are abusing the corporate form and when you abuse the corporate form in certain instances you can go after the actual owners of the company," Beregovich said. "By constantly opening up new companies under new names, under new ownership, it confuses the public and it also confuses the patients who’ve had problems there."
A spokesperson for Eres Plastic surgery called the Diaz lawsuit a "fishing expedition" and said the suit is trying to "find fault where there isn't any." The spokesperson in a statement said the lawsuit isn't about Eres and their lawyers have asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit.
An attorney for Omulepu did not return calls or emails made for comment.
The NBC 6 Investigators are aware of ten women who say they suffered complications after surgery with Dr. Omulepu.
The state recently accused Dr. Omulepu of committing medical malpractice in the cases of four women who made complaints with the state.
An administrative judge ruled in January that he committed malpractice in two women's cases. The state's medical board is meeting Friday to determine if the recommended discipline including a fine and probation is acceptable.
Those two cases that Omulepu is being disciplined for happened the same week as Rosemary Diaz' first surgery in May 2015. The NBC 6 Investigators discovered five women who had problems after surgery with Omulepu had those surgeries in a three-day span between May 14 - 16, 2015.
"If I knew that, I’d never gone inside," Diaz said when she learned about the other women's problems.
