Tonight’s I team report from Elizabeth Sanchez is about beauty. Or more accurately, about spending money to be enhance your face, your arms, your back, your legs, to look younger, thinner or whatever you wish. It’s the age of narcissism and what better way to cash in than opening a clinic in Southern California (North County) promising restored beauty, pain free.


(The Promise)

But is it worth the thousands they charge and who are they anyway? That was our mission on this investigation. Let me begin by explaining investigations often deal with “after the fact” circumstances. You already have X number of victims and you want to warn other potential targets. Or the crooks have come and gone but the scam is worth telling viewers or online readers about because of copyscats. That means we already have victims to help us in understanding what is going on. Whenever the I-Team is working on this sort of story, our promotions people want interviews with victims for the television spots they create. It helps set the issue quickly; it is useful in creating interest in a very short period of time-fifteen or twenty seconds. When our reporters and producers tell the story, we have time to develop all the elements but these spots are short, must be to the point and hopefully interest our viewers to tune in. It's an art form in itself. And having done this sort of reporting for some time, I certainly understand the need to show those affected by the misdeeds of others.


But the truth is, I really LOVE the stories where you head the bad guys off at the pass. You bust them before they rustle the cattle and run off to Mexico. That's why tonights is about -- a warning BEFORE many use this BEAUTY clinic which opened late last year and we begin looking into in mid-January.









(A Doctor Doesn't Believe)



The tip came from the East coast, from someone very familiar with the clinic's track record in New York and Florida. No names but let’s just say they know some of the bosses very well, very well indeed.

It certainly got me curious, so Elizabeth, producer Kristen Castillo and I began to do some reseach. We didn’t have to dig very deep before we hit pay dirt.Our team found New York State enforcement agencies were not particularly happy with the clinic’s training, sales practices and services offered in that state. If they had these kind of problems in New York, what's to say they would behave themselves here? I am of the belief the culture of a business goes with it. Our team felt we had something that we needed to investigate and report on, even if we had no local victims. We did find some unhappy customers and a former employee but they were out of New York so we did satellite interviews with them. We also found a lawsuit where the clinics were alleged to have stolen some “before” and “after” photos from another beauty clinic. They used Oprah’s name in their sales pitch but not with her permission. That's not good. I also came across stories from the CBS and FOX affiliates in New York City where they both “crashed” the clinics. “Crashed" or "crashing” is a term we use to describe attempting to interview a subject without telling him or her in advance. It is a strategy you use because your subject is NOT going to want to talk to you. How do we decide who to crash? It's from our research, from a evaluation of the type of people who run the enterprise and a gut feeling. Even if I hadn’t seen the other television reporter’s stories in New York, I would probably have determined the only way we get something out of these people is to “crash” the North County location. This proved to be the right decision because neither the doctors, owners nor the attorneys involved with the North County clinic have called us back even after we “crashed” their place and called them several times.



(Crashing the clinic)

The "crash" had two elements. The first part was sending in Ms. Castillo and myself to gauge their staff’s competence, the sales pitch and the layout of the clinic. We developed some information after this first visit which we looked into. Several days later, it was time for Elizabeth and crew to “crash” the clinic, this time with the camera’s rolling and our confidence pretty high that these guys needed a story told about them. And we have that story for you tonight. Right after the Oscars.


So hang around, it’s worth watching.

jwblog@10news.com