Updated news on the Gambino, Genovese, Bonanno, Lucchese and Colombo Organized Crime Families of New York City.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Plastic surgeon sues Renee Graziano from Mob Wives for $77 million


A Manhattan plastic surgeon says “Mob Wives” reality star Renee Graziano is trying to whack his career.
Dr. Andrew Klapper, 43, has filed a $77 million defamation lawsuit in Brooklyn Supreme Court, charging that Graziano falsely claimed he botched her full-body makeover.
“She has been on a media campaign to destroy this man’s professional reputation and she has succeeded,” mob lawyer Barry Levin, who is representing Klapper, said Monday. “His practice has diminished considerably in the last year.”
The Mafia diva, the daughter of Bonanno family consigliere Anthony Graziano — who was sentenced Monday to 19 months in jail for extortion — went to Klapper in 2011 for a full-body lift, including a tummy tuck and butt lift. The procedure was done as the reality show’s cameras rolled.
Since then, Graziano — far from taking a vow of omerta — has bad-mouthed Klapper on her show and in media interviews.
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Renee Graziano is the daughter of of Bonanno family consigliere Anthony Graziano, who was sentenced Monday to 19 months in jail for extortion
 
“I went in beautiful, I came out ugly,” Graziano says during the season two premiere last fall.
Levin said Monday that Graziano’s vendetta against his client included the filing of a false report with the state board that licenses doctors last March. He said she falsely claimed Klapper never informed her of the risks and says she lost six pints of blood and almost died during the procedure.
The lawsuit, filed by Levin on Friday, says the state took no action against Klapper.
It also says Graziano never paid the surgeon, even though she claimed in interviews that the procedure cost her $30,000.
The suit seeks damages from the production company of Graziano’s sister Jennifer, who created “Mob Wives,” and from VH1 and The Weinstein Co., which produces the show.
“I have no comment and neither does Renee,” said Jennifer Graziano.
A spokesman for VH1 refused comment and calls to Weinstein were not returned.
The lawsuit mentions an interview Graziano gave to OK! magazine in July 2011 after she got out of the hospital in which she said she tore open her stitches when she moved the wrong way after coming out of anesthesia.
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“I went in beautiful, I came out ugly,” Graziano says of Klapper's surgery during the season two premiere last fall. 
 
But the court papers say Graziano awoke from anesthesia and in the presence of the television cameras began to thrash about and attack the attendants in the recovery room.
“Defendant Graziano was aware she was being filmed for a future episode of ‘Mob Wives’ and conducted her theatrics for the benefit of her television show,” the lawsuit contends.
The lawsuit says Graziano maligned Klapper in a January interview she gave to a radio station in which she said Klapper was “found guilty of killing a woman” and that his sister, a federal prosecutor, and his brother-in-law, a federal judge, “covered it up.”
“Those comments are so outrageous,” said Levin.
Court papers in Manhattan Supreme Court show that Klapper and an anesthesiologist are defendants in a medical malpractice lawsuit that seeks damages over the death of a woman in 2007 after a tummy tuck. The lawsuit is pending.
 


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