A doctor who injected cosmetic patients in Tigard and Salem with a Botox substitute was sentenced to 18 months in Federal prison Monday.

KGW file photo

Dr. James Lentini, in a prior demonstration, shows an injection of a patient.

Dr. Jerome Lentini was also ordered, along with his office nurse Catherine Garcia, to pay restitution of $330,306.76.

Lentini was ordered to turn himself in on January 25th, 2007. He was also sentenced to one year of post-prison supervision.

Lentini ran the "A Younger You" clinics until January of 2005, when FBI officials began investigating complaints.

A federal grand jury handed down an indictment last summer, charging Lentini and Garcia with more than 50 charges ranging from mail fraud to misbranding drugs.

According to the indictment, Lentini and Garcia injected patients with a form of botulinum toxin that has not been approved for use on humans by the federal Food and Drug Administration.

Federal officials think Lentini and Garcia injected more than 800 patients with unapproved drugs in a 13-month span, according to records.

"Lentini and Garcia made repeated material misrepresentations and omissions intended to mislead patients into believing they were being treated with an FDA-approved toxin when in fact they were being injected with non-FDA approved (drugs)," read the indictment. Four people in Florida who were injected with the unapproved drug in 2004 contracted botulism.

Federal investigators in those cases concluded that the botulism was caused by the same nonapproved forms of drug allegedly used by Lentini.

In past statements, Lentini has said he stopped using the anti-wrinkle product because of its poor performance. He said he made that decision before the product was linked to the botulism cases in Florida. Lentini also claimed he did not know that the substitute had not been approved for use by the FDA.

The doctor said he started using the substitute after hearing it praised at a medical conference at the University of Kentucky Medical School.

Two of Lentini's employees, knowing of the Florida cases, became concerned when they witnessed Lentini drawing on what they believed to be large stocks of a non-FDA approved drug. One of the employees contacted the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners and the FBI, triggering the investigation.