Man sentenced to prison in fatal liposuction case

Pleads guilty to involuntary manslaughter

A Middlesex Superior Court judge sentenced a 51-year-old man from Brazil yesterday to 2 1/2 to 3 years in state prison for performing an illegal liposuction surgery in a Framingham basement that killed a 24-year-old woman.

Although Luiz Carlos Ribeiro had characterized himself in court as a skilled surgeon who was caught off guard by a hidden medical condition of his patient, he pleaded guilty yesterday in the Woburn courthouse to charges that included involuntary manslaughter and two counts of practicing medicine without a license.

Upon completion of his sentence, he faces deportation.

The botched surgery on Fabiola DePaula on July 30, 2006, brought public attention to the culture of underground surgeries in the state's Brazilian community. DePaula was getting liposuction in her lower back, buttocks, and thighs when she stopped breathing.

"Luiz Carlos Ribeiro recklessly put the lives of his patients in great danger, performing these illegal procedures on members of the Brazilian community without the proper equipment, medications, or safeguards," Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. said in a prepared statement. "As a result of his reckless actions, Fabiola DePaula tragically lost her life under all too preventable circumstances."

Ribeiro's sentencing by Judge Wendie Gershengorn follows that of his wife, Ana Maria Miranda Ribeiro, 50, who pleaded guilty in September to involuntary manslaughter and distribution of a Class A substance for her role in assisting her husband with the procedure.

She was sentenced to one year in state prison, most of which she had already served by then. She has since been deported.

Another woman, Ana Celia Sielemann, charged with being an accessory before the fact, was deported before trial. The surgery was conducted in the basement of her condominium on a massage table.