Saratoga man charged with posing as doctor for Botox work
SAN JOSE >> A Saratoga man has been charged with posing as a doctor to perform an unlicensed Botox injection on a woman, which comes on the heels of him avoiding a jail sentence after he was prosecuted for similar acts in Miami, according to authorities and court records.
Brody Amir Moazzeni, 37, faces one felony count of practicing medicine without certification, which was filed in Santa Clara County on Nov. 16. He was arraigned Dec. 14 and faces a maximum sentence of a year in county jail if convicted on the charge.
Deputy District Attorney Ann Huntley said the charge is based on an allegation by a 26-year-old Stockton woman who met Moazzeni — who in the South Bay criminal complaint has listed aliases of Amir Moazzeni and Gianni Muzzati — through the Bumble dating app.
According to the investigation, the woman said she knew the defendant as Gianni Muzzati and that he told her he was a doctor opening his own cosmetic clinic. The two began a romantic relationship, and on Sept. 25, 2021, they met at a Sunnyvale hotel where Moazzeni allegedly offered to give her free Botox injections in her face and other injections in her torso.
Huntley said that a few weeks later, the woman noticed her right eyelid was drooping and saw an ophthalmologist who told her that her procedure was not done properly. After she got her eyelid treated, Moazzeni continued to pressure her into letting him do more cosmetic work, leading her to question his qualifications, the woman told investigators.
That suspicion was inflamed by his refusal to substantiate his medical background — state records later would show he had no certification or medical training of any kind — and he was evasive when she asked to see his clinic, Huntley said. The woman reported her suspicions to Sunnyvale police, and the case was eventually taken over by the District Attorney's Office's bureau of investigations.
“He's out there doing this, and it's concerning because of the manner in which he met her,” Huntley said.
Huntley added that the woman found Moazzeni to be convincing because he had a real medical bag containing shrink-wrapped bottles with seemingly legitimate medical labels. It is unclear how Moazzeni obtained the Botox doses, if they were indeed authentic.
A message left at a listed phone number for Moazzeni was not immediately returned Dec. 20.
He was implicated in a similar case in March 2021 when he was charged with practicing unlicensed medicine and sexual battery involving a woman in Miami Beach, Florida, according to court records there.
According to local news reports, authorities alleged that Moazzeni began dating a woman he met through a friend and purported himself to be a cosmetic doctor. He reportedly invited her to his home and gave her injections in her face, arms and legs. When she had bad reactions to the injections, he gave her a drug that sedated her and later had sex with her, which she told police was not consensual; he claimed the opposite.
Court records show that Miami-Dade prosecutors initially filed at least seven felony and misdemeanor charges against Moazzeni, but ultimately pursued two felony counts and one misdemeanor count, all involving the unlicensed medicine accusations. Those same records show that Moazzeni was allowed to participate in a pretrial diversion program to avoid a potential conviction and jail time, and that his charges were dropped Sept. 23 after he completed the program.
That was two days before the reported Botox encounter in Sunnyvale that led to his criminal charge in Santa Clara County. The new alleged offense has no consequence for his case in Florida since it was dismissed, according to the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office.
Still, that overlap has Huntley and investigators concerned there could be other women who received unlicensed cosmetic work from Moazenni and suffered health problems as a result.
“Given the sensitive nature of how he manipulates women,” Huntley said, “these women might feel used and bamboozled because of the way they were taken advantage of.”
To this point, Huntley said, there is no evidence that the defendant ever asked for payment for the procedures. “It's a power and control thing,” she said.
Moazzeni is currently out of jail custody and is scheduled to return to court Feb. 28. Anyone with information about the case, or other people who might have received unlicensed medial procedures from the defendant, can contact Santa Clara County DA Investigator Krissi Durant at 408-792-2567.