After their colleagues started turning up dead, Mexico's plastic surgeons began checking their patients more carefully, refusing those who wanted full facial transformations or the camera-shy ones who didn't want their pictures taken.
Drug traffickers have turned increasingly to plastic surgery in recent years to evade the law, and have proved to be all too willing to kill the doctors who operate on them.
Sometimes doctors are killed to hide evidence, but at least one was murdered out of vanity: A trafficker didn't like the way a liposuction turned out.
At least eight doctors have turned up dead since 1994 after working on drug suspects. The number of drug lords with surgically altered features led Mexican prosecutors to issue a call earlier this year for plastic surgeons to cooperate with police and report suspicious cases.
Some doctors were apparently not aware their patients were drug traffickers; others may have done it for the money. Plastic surgeons say they watch prospective patients for warning signs: one who doesn't want a traditional "before and after" photograph taken, or requests a total change in appearance.
Most plastic surgeons try to avoid the dilemma.
"You can get out of the problem, by quoting a very high price, or telling them their skin isn't right, or that they need more tests," said plastic surgeon Hector Arambula. "Sometimes it backfires, because if you quote a high price, these people can pay it, whereas a normal patient wouldn't."
"But the amounts of money offered can be very tempting, and there is also the problem that drug traffickers can bring pressure to bear," Arambula said. "Between the police and the drug traffickers, plastic surgeons are between a rock and a hard place."
Sometimes, doctors get an offer too good to refuse.
The three plastic surgeons who operated on former drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes in 1997 apparently not only knew who their patient was, but were paid off to kill him with an injection of tranquilizers.
But then they were forced out of the operating room at gunpoint.
A month later, on a highway hundreds of miles away, their gagged, handcuffed and tortured bodies were found packed into oil drums with dirt and concrete.
That same year, four other doctors were slain after they operated on a drug gunman wounded in a shootout in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.
Those doctors showed signs of being strangled or suffocated. At least two had bruises on their hands and knuckles, suggesting they tried to fight off their attackers.
The choice - to operate or not - has cost the life of doctors involved in operations as routine as liposuction, a common procedure that at least one overweight trafficker used to change his appearance.
Known as "The Frog" because of his jowls and double chins, drug suspect Humberto Rodriguez Banuelos was a bad bet as a patient: He once allegedly ordered the killing of a traffic cop who dared give him a ticket.
Prosecutors say he also ordered the 1994 killing of his doctor.
"He ordered the doctor killed, because he said he didn't like the way the liposuction had turned out," said Horacio Montenegro, a former associate who is himself now facing drug charges.
Prosecutors say he also ordered the 1994 killing of his doctor.
"He ordered the doctor killed, because he said he didn't like the way the liposuction had turned out," said Horacio Montenegro, a former associate who is himself now facing drug charges
Humberto Rodriguez Banuelos was notorious as a shooter for the Ramiro Mireles-Felix drug cartel, and possibly also the Hererra family operations- the lines blur somewhat, sometimes multiple players profit from a single elimination, and duplicity and *wearing two hats* is commonplace.
There's little doubt though, that Banuelos was one of the triggermen at the Guadalajara airport in 1993 during which Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo- in which AK47s were also the trademark shooters' tools.
See following. But in my circles, a guy called *The Frog* would be el sapo, rather than La Rana:
MEXICO FINDS WANTED DRUG HIT-MAN
MEXICO CITY -- Police have found one of Mexico's most wanted drug hit men exactly where they want to put him -- in prison.
Humberto Rodriguez Banuelos -- wanted in a 1993 shootout that killed a Roman Catholic cardinal -- was awaiting trial under a false name in a Tijuana prison, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The alleged top hitman for the Arellano Felix drug cartel, known as "La Rana" -- The Frog -- had assumed the name Carlos Duran, had liposuction, a facelift and a hair implant to fool police.
He had been in jail for three months facing separate murder charges before prosecutors discovered his false name, date and place of birth didn't match official records.
The detection was proof that police are hitting hard against all drug gangs, said Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha.
"Neither the Arellano Felixes nor any other drug trafficker is getting impunity," said Macedo de la Concha.
The administration of President Vicente Fox has dealt severe blows to the remnants of the Gulf cocaine cartel in raids earlier this year, but had failed to arrest any top members of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix gang, Mexico's most violent.
The issue is a sensitive one, since Mexico's former top anti-drug official, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, was arrested in 1997 for hitting hard against the Tijuana gang -- in exchange for payoffs from a rival cartel.
The Frog was transferred Tuesday from his Tijuana jail cell to a federal prison in the western Mexico city of Guadalajara.
Rodriguez Banuelos faces charges of homicide, drug trafficking and illegal weapons possession in Tijuana, and organized crime, homicide and kidnapping charges in Guadalajara.
He allegedly masterminded a 1983 assassination attempt against rival drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, and participated in a 1993 shootout at the Guadalajara airport in which Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo was killed in the cross fire.