Facial Peels, Mail Fraud and Culpable Homicide

 

    One of the most successful work-at-home operators was Nels Irwin, who began operating in California in 1953. Irwin sold miniature trees, tropical fish, molding machines for plastic novelties, and other items. Postal inspectors estimated that he made over $3 million before he was prosecuted, convicted, and sent to prison for three years on 16 counts of mail fraud.
     During the early 1950s, deceptive contest promotions were common. Work-at-home schemes like raising mushrooms, breeding chinchillas, or making artificial flowers were popular. The spread of medical quackery affecting both victims’ pocketbooks and their health were also a verdant source of income for fraudsters. One of these was the Italian born Cora Galenti, who ran a “beauty ranch” and promised “new faces for old” to women.
     She advertised the Cora Galenti Method of Facial Rejuvenation using carbolic acid to remove wrinkles, crow’s feet, blemishes and the effects of aging. Her business, the Cora Galenti Facial Peel Treatment, was built up in Hollywood and was supposed to make people look 20 to 40 years younger. Stars such as Marlene Dietrich and Gloria Swanson received treatments. Facial peels weren't anything new. Check out the article on the history of it HERE.
     Her Sunset Boulevard salon was named The Fountain of Youth. There clients went in with sagging and wrinkled faces. After about three weeks of treatment at a cost of $2,500-$3,000 their faces were pink and smooth as a baby's butt.
     Treatment consisted of the application of a 48-percent phenol, or carbolic acid, solution to the patient’s face and neck. This application often resulted in skin discoloration and loss of pigmentation, and even welt-like scars. Phenol can, when applied to skin, travel to the kidneys and bladder where it can wreak havoc.
     The treatment itself was not illegal, but Galenti’s claim that such treatments rejuvenated the face were fraudulent. On January 5, 1962, a federal grand jury indicted her on four counts of mail fraud. In September 1962 she was convicted of two of the counts, fined $2,000 and sentenced to five years in prison, followed by five years of probation. Galenti appealed the verdict and while free on bail continued operating her business after moving to Las Vegas, Nevada.
     After her conviction on the mail fraud charges she beat the rap when she jumped bail before going to prison and fled to Mexico City in 1963. In Mexico she married a Mexican national and obtained citizenship which granted her immunity from extradition. She continued to run her business in Mexico. She died in 1993 at the age of 96.
     This brings us to Joseph Pantuso, grandson of Cora Galenti. He joined his grandmother's business in 1981 and gradually took over her clinic. In April of 2001 Pantuso was found guilty of first-degree murder in Mexico City and sentenced to nearly 24 years in prison. The 59-year old Pantuso was convicted in the December 1997 death of an elderly man whom he was treating with the same cosmetic process that his grandmother made famous in the 1950s. Pantuso's assistant, Fernando Martinez, was also convicted and received the same sentence.
     The victim was 76-year-old Las Vegas producer George Arnold. The prosecutor claimed that the medical evidence showed that Pantuso and his assistant held down and fought with Arnold and forced him to ingest one of the chemicals used in the peeling procedure to sedate him and reduce his resistance. Then they strangled Arnold and broke a vertebra. But the prosecutor did not know the motive.
     Pantuso had argued during the trial that Arnold was a family friend who had been treated by him and his grandmother for 30 years and there was no motive for murder. It was argued that Arnold apparently suffered a heart attack or sudden illness during the treatment and that efforts to revive him failed.
     According to Pantuso, in December 1997 Arnold came to Mexico City for a retouching, or partial treatment, and stayed with Pantuso. On the day after Christmas, Pantuso said he treated Arnold's cheek in his home using a phenol-based chemical to burn off skin layers, followed by the application of thymol iodide to help with healing.
     Arnold was lying in bed and suddenly jumped out and fell into the wall and collapsed. He hit the end table when he fell and when Pantuso lifted him up he noticed some bleeding from his mouth and nose and he was not breathing. Pantuso then used CPR and gave Arnold oxygen with a mask. Arnold seemed to respond and, again, CPR was administered. It was claimed that during the rescue attempt Arnold swallowed some of the thymol iodide that was on his face. Martinez, Pantuso's assistant, was elsewhere in the house when Arnold collapsed and that he ran to Martinez to tell him to summon help. An ambulance crew arrived shortly thereafter, but could find no pulse.
     The ambulance crew noticed the yellow residue on Arnold's face and alerted police. It was the rescue attempt that left blood on Pantuso's shirt. Both Pantuso and his assistant were held for 48 hours for questioning, then released. Over the next six weeks, they were questioned further and their lawyer told them he had been informed that they would not be charged.
     After Arnold's death Pantuso couldn't bear to stay in Mexico City and moved to Guadalajara where, along with Martinez, he set up a new clinic. The business did well, but he claimed his success angered plastic surgeons whose businesses were threatened. Apparently that resulted in his being arrested in February, 2000 and returned to Mexico City.
     At the trial at which testimony continued for almost a year, the defense challenged the autopsy, the basis for much of the case, as unprofessional and filled with errors of procedure and interpretation. The prosecutor's forensic experts appeared to contradict each other. The early evidence alleged that the thymol iodide had caused the death. But the judge brought in an independent forensic specialist and her report said that because the levels of thymol iodide in the body weren't quantified, it couldn't be determined that it was actually the cause of death.
     In July a three-judge Mexico City appeals court panel found the lower court's ruling contradictory and badly reasoned and as a result, substituted the lesser charge of culpable homicide, saying Pantuso did not have available the required medical and first-aid support when he treated Arnold.
     Pantuso was sentenced to two years and four months in prison but took into account the 17 months he had been in custody and released him on parole and a $5,500 bond. He was required report to the court every month for the next two years and could not leave Mexico during that time.