Desperate times often bring desperate measures. With the current state of our economy, these are most certainly desperate times. Yet even through this desperation, there are some people out there who will stop at nothing to look their best. The days when an empty bank account would prevent people from indulging in guilty pleasures are long gone. Today, if you are savvy enough to forge a few documents, you can get whatever you want.
For Patrice Thomas, a 33-year-old Ft. Lauderdale resident, the prize was a sleek new body. Her method of attaining this body was a tummy tuck. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t afford the cosmetic surgery procedure. She knew how to work the system.
Thomas accessed a stranger’s personal information and used it to apply for a credit card and a photo ID. She used the credit card and ID to pay for her tummy tuck. She could only finance $5,000 on the card, so she fraudulently obtained another credit card to pay for the remaining $4,000 of the procedure.
This is not the first time in recent months that a woman has committed identity theft to pay for cosmetic surgery. There have been two similar cases in California. Unfortunately for Thomas, her story has not ended as well as the other two. On April 9, she was busted for identity theft. She is currently detained at Miami’s Federal Detention Center on $100,000 bail. She may need a few more fake credit cards to cover that one.
Police have charged Thomas with credit card fraud, social security fraud, and aggravated identity theft. They learned of her scam when they searched her house last January in an unrelated case. That search turned up four credit cards all containing different names. This is not her first run-in with the law. Thomas has previously been arrested for drug possession, grand theft, and using a false identification document.
It would behoove cosmetic surgeons to do a better job at screening clients before accepting their money. As the economy continues to plummet, there will most likely be many other women attempting to finance their new bodies on someone else’s tab.
Maybe they can hire the TSA as consultants to help them develop more sophisticated screening systems. After all, American airport security is a model of excellence that should be replicated all over the world in any way possible. I mean, we haven’t caught a terrorist in an airport since 2001. They must be doing their jobs.
In fairness to cosmetic surgeons, the racially biased screening and profiling practices that have served airport security so well in recent years will most likely not be helpful in preventing identity theft among plastic surgery patients. But if you get a patient who leaves a trailer park address on her medical form, you may want to investigate her background a bit further before performing her desired procedure.
As for Patricia Thomas, she may be spending the next four or five years in prison. All of that could have been easily avoided by ordering a few more credit cards to pay for relocation to Brazil. I’m sure her brand new flat stomach would look much better in a bikini than in an orange jumpsuit.
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