Prisoner in Colombia gets liposuction on the sly

BOGOTÁ, Colombia – A Colombian prisoner given permission to undergo surgery to fix a breast implant took advantage of her trip to the operating room to get liposuction, prison authorities reported Friday.

“When she leaves (prison) she is to undergo a surgical procedure to put back in place the implant which had slid. That’s what was ordered for her, but no one expected her to undergo another, laser-type procedure,” Ofelia Díaz, director of the Buen Pastor prison in Barranquilla, where the case occurred, told Colombia’s Blu Radio.

“She was authorized to get rid of all the ailments, all the discomfort that pain killers weren’t soothing … . The fact that she took the opportunity to undergo another procedure was brought to the authorities attention, and we inside (the prison) also began a disciplinary investigation on the inmate,” Díaz explained.

The prisoner, identified as Steffy Díaz, 26, has been in jail since December 2014 for drug processing and trafficking. According to the warden, her breast implants date from 2013, before she entered prison.

“The doctor who was treating her had to know she was a prisoner and that she could not undergo one of those procedures, precisely because of her situation,” the warden explained.

Regardless of the additional procedure, the prisoner returned the same day to jail, and it was then that the authorities realized what had happened.

More than 200,000 aesthetic surgeries take place every year in Colombia, close to 3 percent of the world’s total, according to estimates by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

The country ranks third in Latin America in aesthetic surgeries, behind Brazil and Mexico.