A Florida woman was convicted of involuntary manslaughter Monday for administering illegal gluteal injections to a woman — cultivating a career as a Kim Kardashian lookalike — who then died the next day due to complications from the procedure, prosecutors said.
Vivian Alexandra Gomez, 53, was also convicted of practicing medicine without a license and enhancements for causing great bodily injury related to the procedure that caused the death of Christina Gourkani, 34, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office.
Gourkani, who had nearly 140,000 followers on Instagram and more than 200,000 on Twitter, posted photos of herself as a Kardashian lookalike and was open about her passion for plastic surgery. Shortly after her death, her father told Bay Area News Group that she had worked for a Walnut Creek-based cosmetic surgeon, where she underwent procedures to amplify her natural resemblance to the reality TV star.
“This is one where we don’t have a lot of experience. We’ve done involuntary manslaughters loads of times, but one like this was new for us,” said San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe. “We weren’t confident which way the jury would go, but the jury clearly had no trouble with it. They deliberated for just three hours and arrived at their guilty verdicts.”
“The bottom line to it was that, this time (Gomez) injected not silicone, but a drug into a human being, and that human being immediately reacted and was dead the next day,” he added. “A human being lost their life.”
Geoff Carr and May Mar, Gomez’s defense attorneys, said that Gomez took the news of her conviction “stoically.” Carr added that Gomez feels “sad” and “personally responsible.”
During the trial, they argued that there were “interesting issues about causation” – whether the gluteal injections of a product called Biosil directly caused the medical issues that killed Gourkani, Carr said.
“The question was, what exactly had killed the woman?” Carr said. “Not whether our client did something, but whether what our client did actually kill her.”
Carr added that there was also not further investigation into what was actually in what Gomez injected. She believed it was Biosil, which is at times marketed as being made with silicone and at times marketed as not being made with silicone. Gomez “may have been injecting silicone not knowing about it,” or the product may have not been what it was represented as, he said.
The drug that Gomez injected was “something in the silicon family,” Wagstaffe said.
The procedure is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration due to its health danger, prosecutors said.
“She had no license at all to do it,” Wagstaffe added.
Carr said that Gomez learned to do the procedure in Colombia, where it is legal, and had been offering it on and off for about ten years.
Gomez could face up to seven years in prison pending her sentencing, prosecutors said.
The jury came to its verdict after a 15 day trial, prosecutors said. The trial was overseen by San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Leland Davis.
Gomez, a resident of Palm Beach, Florida, ran an unlicensed cosmetology business in her home state, prosecutors said. On April 19, 2023, Gomez flew to San Francisco International Airport to meet Gourkani, who hired her to administer the gluteal injections.
Gomez, Gourkani and Gourkani’s fiancé met at a hotel in Burlingame, where Gomez administered the injections, prosecutors said.
Gourkani “quickly fell very ill,” prosecutors added, prompting her fiancé to call 911. Gourkani was taken to the Mills Peninsula Hospital, where she died one day later due to a pulmonary embolism and respiratory failure.
Gomez left California and returned to Florida, where she was soon arrested and extradited to San Mateo County.
Wagstaffe said that other women Gomez had previously done the procedure on complained that it made them “feel poorly.” Carr added that previous clients of the procedure developed infections and lumpiness at the site of the injections.
Gomez will next appear in court May 5 for her sentencing. She remains in custody on no bail status. She was previously out on $200,000 bail.
Wagstaffe said that Davis’ decision to remand Gomez into custody is indicative that he “equally views this as a very serious conviction.”
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