Ugliness in the Name of Beauty

Prosecutors also charged a cosmetologist, two aestheticians and a facialist, accusing them of helping Fuente. Their arraignments are scheduled to start this month.

Diane Richie will be arraigned in March. At the time of her divorce in early 2004, she listed $20,000 a month in plastic surgery expenses. Later that year she began dating Fuente.

Federal investigators seized $1.9 million in cash from Fuente's three safe-deposit boxes in Beverly Hills banks, but even if the money hadn't been confiscated, Fuente never would have seen it. One of his customers won a $2 million judgment against him in a lawsuit.

Dr. Douglas Hamilton, a Beverly Hills cosmetic surgeon, treated a Fuente customer whose lip was damaged. He said he sees no slackening in the demand for wrinkle-smoothing fillers.

"They're all I do now," Hamilton said. "You're talking about no surgery. You're talking about something the patient can see immediately."

"It's a youth-oriented culture. It's all about youth," he said. "There's very little value in being old. I think age is seen as a disease."

But doesn't the procedure hurt? Shawn King will speak to that: "Take a hatpin and poke it into your face, and there you have it."

So, with the unknown substance injected into her face, the deception of Fuente and the pain and all, has it caused King to stop using fillers?

"No. In my business it kind of just goes with the territory. But I'm certainly more careful about who and what I let around my face," she said.