‘Dr. Laguna’ was Instagram famous, but patients call his ‘mommy makeover’ surgeries dangerous

Dr. Arian Mowlavi promised bigger breasts, hourglass figures and butts with “pop” to tens of thousands of his followers on social media, where the Laguna Beach plastic surgeon would say he alone could perform that “Mowlavi magic.”

What the Instagram posts and YouTube videos didn’t show, dozens of patients now allege in court, is what they endured: botched surgeries, unsightly and unexpected scars, and infections that needed follow-up care.

In a series of malpractice lawsuits filed against Mowlavi, women allege he submitted them to degrading demands, such as making them get completely nude for an examination, then touching their bodies without asking permission. While they were being prepped for the operating room, multiple patients allege, Mowlavi would try to upsell them on additional procedures just minutes before they went under the knife.

On social media accounts and his websites, Mowlavi branded himself as “Dr. Laguna,” touted himself as a “renowned body sculptor” and charged tens of thousands of dollars for some procedures. He pitched himself as the surgeon who had literally written the book on “High Definition Liposuction” — which he sold for $49.95.

Dr. Arian Mowlavi plays guitar in his Laguna Beach office in 2008.

(Don Leach / Coastline Pilot)

But former patients and the California Medical Board accuse Mowlavi of not performing some of the surgeries himself. Instead, they allege, Mowlavi had an unlicensed technician do some of the work, such as liposuction procedures, for him.

In one such case, according to the medical board, two unlicensed techs performed liposuction on a patient in 2018 who, hours after the procedure, passed out at home and was taken to the emergency room. She was pronounced dead two days later.

“This case is about a doctor that believes he is above the law,” reads one suit, filed on behalf of more than 20 women in 2021.

Another plastic surgeon in Orange County grew so concerned after treating some of Mowlavi’s patients post-surgery, he reported Mowlavi to the medical board.

“Dr. Mowlavi is a danger to the community and his plastic surgery patients,” Dr. Robert Kachenmeister, head of plastic surgery at Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, said in a declaration submitted to court.

In August 2021, the medical board filed a formal accusation against Mowlavi, alleging that he committed gross negligence, aided the unlicensed practice of medicine and overstated the number of procedures he’d performed, among other violations. In September 2022, the board resolved the case by suspending Mowlavi’s license for 90 days and placed him on probation for 10 years.

Mowlavi did not admit to wrongdoing, but accepted the board’s ruling.

Since 2020, Mowlavi has faced five medical malpractice suits in Orange County that echo the allegations made by the medical board. Four of the lawsuits were filed by individual patients, whose claims include the following:

• After Mowlavi failed to remove a patient’s leaking breast implant capsules during surgery, doctors later discovered silicone granulomas in her lymph node and lungs, resulting in scar tissue and leaving her with persistent health problems.
• As another woman was being prepared for “mommy makeover” surgery, Mowlavi told her for the first time that she’d need a more extensive procedure, leaving her “little to no time to consider her options or to question the change.”
• A woman wound up in the ER feeling dizzy and having redness in her skin a day after undergoing surgery with Mowlavi. In the ER, Mowlavi removed more of her breast tissue without having discussed the procedure with her.

In court filings, Mowlavi has denied the allegations, stating that patients were made aware and assumed the risks that surgeries can have.

Neither Mowlavi nor the attorneys representing him in the malpractice lawsuits responded to requests for comment.

A graduate of UC Berkeley, Mowlavi went on to study medicine at UC San Diego’s School of Medicine. Mowlavi told the medical board that 80% to 90% of his practice consisted of VASER liposcutions, also known as “high definition” liposuctions, which include melting and siphoning away liquid fat.

Using Instagram and YouTube to promote his work, he attracted more than 80,000 followers on social media, where he would often take viewers inside the operating room of his beach-side clinic. Those videos frequently included patients who had just undergone surgery, still anesthetized and unconscious on the operating table, their breasts and buttocks often blurred or thinly covered.

“We’re making some beautiful butts, so come with me,” he says in one video, The camera then pans to the unconscious patient, facedown on the operating table. Her face is covered, but her buttocks are exposed.

“This ass has pop,” Mowlavi says in the 2018 video. Medical equipment whirs and beeps in the background. The blue markings of the surgeon’s skin pen and red wounds where the incisions were made are still visible on the body. “This is what we’re talking about, guys. Body by Mowlavi.”

Many of the short videos Mowlavi posted on YouTube and Instagram are similar.

“Let me show you how I got this butt to be a perfection,” he says in one video, with the camera panning to another patient in the operating room.

Someone is seen off-camera behind the patient, holding the woman’s hips up just slightly off the operating table, so that Mowlavi can point to what he says is “a butt that now has pop.”

Hundreds of court and medical board pages reviewed by The Times showed Mowlavi’s legal troubles began to build in 2018, after one of his patients died just days after undergoing surgery.

That patient — identified in court records but not in the medical board’s documents — was Irlanda Swarthout, who went to see Mowlavi for liposuction, breast implants and other procedures. About five hours after leaving Mowlavi’s office, the board said, the patient was brought to the emergency room unresponsive after complaining about shortness of breath and collapsing at home.

She never recovered, dying in the hospital three days after the surgery. The final diagnosis, the board said, was internal bleeding that caused her heart to stop, cutting off oxygen to her brain.

Swarthout’s family sued the plastic surgeon in May 2019, accusing him of “negligently, carelessly, recklessly” performing VASER liposuction.

Two years later, the medical board filed its accusation, alleging that Mowlavi allowed surgical technicians to perform the ill-fated liposuction. He did not contest the board’s allegation.

In response to the family’s lawsuit, Mowlavi alleged that her death and injuries were because she failed to “exercise due care on his/her/their own behalf.” The two sides agreed to settle the case on Aug. 11, 2020, with Mowlavi paying the family $1 million, according to court records.

The following July, Chalene Johnson, a social media influencer and podcaster from Orange County with more than 770,000 followers on Instagram, sought out Mowlavi for surgery.

A month after her surgery, Johnson began to detail what she called her “plastic surgery nightmare” to her audience. She alleged Mowlavi had ordered her to “get naked” for examination, and that the plastic surgeon “was quick to tell me that my ‘ass’ needed a lot of work.”

Johnson also alleged that Mowlavi aggressively grabbed her body without permission.

After her story began to circulate, Johnson said on social media that she had been contacted by other former patients of Mowlavi who shared similar experiences, including being ordered to get naked when it was unnecessary and having their bodies shown to staff or other patients after surgery without their permission.

Since then, Mowlavi has sued Johnson for defamation, alleging she became obsessed with his work and made false accusations on her podcast and social media. In court records, Mowlavi maintains Johnson received proper care before, during and after the surgery.

Johnson declined to be interviewed for this article, citing the ongoing case. According to court records, Johnson and her attorneys are fighting the suit, claiming the allegations she has made about Mowlavi are “substantially true.”

An attorney representing Mowlavi in the defamation suit declined to comment.

Then in December 2021, more than 20 patients filed suit against Mowlavi, raising issues similar to the ones alleged by Johnson and the medical board.

Several patients also alleged that, although they were aware of Mowlavi’s social media presence, they had specifically asked that their pictures and videos not be posted on social media. All the same, several said, their bodies were photographed in the operating room after surgery while they were still unconscious, then the pictures were posted online.

One patient, identified only as K.M., alleged that neither Mowlavi nor his staff brought up the possibility of video from her surgery being posted online. Nevertheless, a video was posted of Mowlavi showing off her body before and after surgery.

“This woman had no magic, no pop, had a square masculine shape,” Mowlavi says in the video before showing her post-surgery body, according to court records. “Look what I can do.”

According to the suit, the woman did not consent to be filmed, “must less be insulted.”

When another patient told Mowlavi’s staff she didn’t want her images posted, she said, staff told her it was “an honor to show up on Instagram and the patient has no control over whether their photos are placed on social media.”

Sworn declarations submitted to court show that other medical personnel and some of Mowlavi’s employees had raised similar concerns about the doctor.

A former employee, in a sworn declaration, said she saw Mowlavi leave the operating room for hours at times. A sales representative said she saw the doctor in one instance comment about a patient who was under anesthesia, “So hot, look at that,” and then slapped the patient’s butt twice.

A registered nurse who worked briefly at Mowlavi’s clinic said in court documents that he saw Mowlavi “rip out [a patient’s breathing] tube and throw it across the room” during surgery because he was frustrated with the patient.

“I was extremely disturbed by Dr. Mowlavi’s behavior” and yelled at him, Jason Vance wrote in a declaration. “At any other institution, this would be grounds for immediate termination. I was worried for the patient’s health and safety.”

Vance grew so concerned, he said, that he texted Mowlavi’s wife after the incident, telling her he was concerned the doctor was “off his rocker.”

“I think he’s lost his mind,” he wrote her.

Another registered nurse said he’d seen and heard Mowlavi and his anesthesiologist make “inappropriate and lewd comments” about patients while they were lying on the operating table, including once hearing Mowlavi saying he would “do some crazy things to those lips.”

Mowlavi’s work also caught the eye of at least one plastic surgeon.

Kachenmeister, chief plastic surgeon at Mission Hospital, wrote in a declaration that he had become acquainted with several of Mowlavi’s patients who needed care due to complications from Mowlavi’s surgeries.

At one point, Kachenmeister said, he had become so concerned about Mowlavi that he reported a case to the medical board.

“The frequency of complications and poor results by Dr. Mowlavi’s procedures are unacceptable and not within the standard of care,” he wrote. “My understanding based on my own conversations with the patients [is] that they were being pressured and persuaded by Dr. Mowlavi to perform these procedures even though they were not in the patient’s best interests.”

In selling surgical procedures, Kachenmeister wrote, Mowlavi had put his financial interests ahead of the patient’s safety.

In February 2022, Mowlavi filed for bankruptcy, and in court documents said he faced $10 million to $50 million in liabilities. He listed the lawsuit by more than 20 patients as the largest unsecured claim against him.

He’s asked for a stay in most of the lawsuits, including his defamation case against Johnson, citing his bankruptcy filing.

In June, the Orange County district attorney’s office filed suit against Mowlavi as well, alleging unlawful and unfair business practices, including false advertising and allowing an unlicensed technician to perform surgeries.

In addition, the district attorney’s office alleged that Mowlavi transferred $13 million in assets and property to his wife before filing for bankruptcy to “avoid and/or minimize the potential financial liability.”

In the court filings, prosecutors with the district attorney’s office stated that Mowlavi is also under an ongoing criminal investigation.