WASHINGTON — A shady plastic surgeon nicknamed “Dr. Frankenstein” confessed to escaping from Florida with help from his “friends” in Brazil’s Miami consulate to avoid trial for allegedly butchering and stealing from patients — an explosive admission that threatens to unravel diplomatic relations.
Joao Araujo, 57, insists he had little choice but to take a boat to the Bahamas on Aug. 1 and then fly to Rio de Janeiro, claiming he was the victim of political persecution by the Trump administration due to his personal clash with a State Department envoy and the fact that his wife, the Jeffrey Epstein-connected former model Amanda Ungaro, purports to know secret information about first lady Melania Trump.
Araujo, however, was being prosecuted by a Democrat-led state attorney’s office and his former patients said he disfigured them with botched liposuction, fillers and laser treatments. Brazil’s constitution restricts the extradition of native-born citizens, meaning Araujo is unlikely to return to stand trial.
“Any idiot knows how to leave the United States. I had all the support of the Brazilian consulate,” Araujo bragged to “The Bad Decisions Podcast” host Scott Michael Nathan, who published part of an interview he conducted with the fugitive on Saturday.
An unpublished two-minute portion of the interview, provided to The Post by Hurrdat Entertainment, which produces the podcast, featured Araujo describing the mechanics of his escape. He had surrendered his only known passport, from Brazil, as a condition of his pretrial release but apparently was issued a new one to facilitate his international travel.
“They are all my friends. Both the Brazilian federal police and the Brazilian embassy gave me all the support in Miami,” Araujo told Nathan, calling a Florida police detective assigned to his case “an idiot.”
“When I decided to leave, I simply cut off the electronic ankle bracelet. I took [Interstate] 95. I took a boat owned by an acquaintance and went to [the island of] Bimini [in the Bahamas], [then to] Nassau, Panama, Rio de Janeiro,” he said.
Araujo — who faced 14 counts, including felonies for grand theft, practicing medicine without a license and fraud — offered a detailed chronology of his escape.
“I left at 4:30 a.m. I arrived in [the island of] Bimini [in the Bahamas] early. From Bimini, I took a plane at 230 p.m. I arrived in Nassau 40 minutes later. Because the flight was fully booked to Panama, I had to spend the night,” he said, adding that he then went “from Panama to Rio de Janeiro.”
He said that his past military training prepared him for the mission.
“I was in the military so I tested this [ankle] monitor all the time to see its range several times I went to the airport. I would take Amanda’s bags and come back…. I could move anywhere in the radius. I couldn’t go past West Palm Beach,” Araujo said.
Although he didn’t name which officials at the consulate helped him in his conversation with Nathan, in an earlier podcast with Brazilian journalist Hildegarde Angel, he said “the consul in Miami is my friend” and used the first names of both the current general consul and his recently departed predecessor.
Cristiano Berbert is now the acting consul general in Miami. Andre Odenbreit Carvalho left in May.
In that interview, he also mentioned Marcelo Ivo, who was the Brazilian Federal Police Liaison for the Consulate in Miami. The US government in April asked Ivo to leave his post in a reciprocal action after Brasilia booted an unnamed American official in apparent retaliation for US immigration officials briefly detaining a former Brazilian congressman. It’s unclear if Ivo later returned to Miami.
Since then, the diplomatic relationship has soured further.
Brazil in July withheld accreditation of the incoming Senate-confirmed US ambassador, former Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, and denied visas for two State Department officials who reportedly intended to monitor the country’s October election, in which leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva faces conservative Flávio Bolsonaro, who met with President Trump in June.
The Trump administration retaliated and canceled the visa of the Brazilian ambassador, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti.
Araujo did not walk back any of his claims in an email to The Post, writing, “I believe that you, New York reporters, should be concerned not with me, as I have absolutely nothing to declare, but rather with Paolo Zampolli.”
Zampolli, Trump’s special envoy for global partnerships and the man widely credited with introducing Melania Trump to the future president in 1998, is the former romantic partner of Ungaro, Araujo’s wife, with whom he has fought a custody battle over their teenage son.
Ungaro self-deported last year after being detained by immigration officials for living in the US on an expired visa. She claimed Zampolli set in motion her legal issues, including also facing charges related to the unlicensed plastic surgery operation.
‘Serious breach of diplomatic status’
The apparent involvement of Brazilian officials in Araujo’s escape opens a new chapter in the diplomatic slugfest.
“If true, the direct assistance of diplomats in the flight of a fugitive would be a serious breach of diplomatic status,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told The Post.
“For any diplomat, this would be the knowing commission of a criminal act as an accessory after the fact. While diplomats have immunity, they could be declared persona non grata under Article 9 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.”
In rare instances, a country can waive diplomatic immunity for consular officials who have committed a crime, but there’s no indication Brazil intends to do so.
Carlos Poggio, an expert in US-Brazil relations who teaches political science at Berea College, told The Post that “Araujo’s allegation that he had the support of the Brazilian consulate, the Brazilian Federal Police and the Brazilian embassy is a serious allegation if true, because it would move this case from an individual bail-jumping incident into the realm of state complicity in obstructing US justice.”
Poggio cautioned that Araujo may have a political incentive to inflate his relationships with Brazilian officials as he boasts to a more sympathetic domestic audience.
“From the political perspective, it’s important to notice that this isn’t happening in a vacuum. It lands amid the worst US-Brazil diplomatic situation in decades,” Poggio added.
Those tensions also include Trump’s 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods tied to the treatment of [former President Jair] Bolsonaro, Magnitsky Act sanctions against Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes and the visa and diplomat accreditation drama, Poggio noted.
The Brazilian embassy in Washington said it “does not handle consular matters.” The consulate in Miami did not respond to requests for comment.
Brazil’s foreign ministry said: “In compliance with the right to privacy and in accordance with the provisions of the Brazilian General Data Protection Law, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil does not disclose personal information regarding citizens requesting consular assistance, nor does it comment on eventual requests for, or the issuance of, documents on their behalf.”
“The issuance of passports by Brazil’s consular network follows the procedures established under Brazilian law, according to which Brazilian citizens may request the document and submit the required documentation for analysis by the consular authority,” the foreign ministry said.
“With regard to matters concerning border control in the United States, we recall that this subject lies outside the responsibilities of the Brazilian government.”
In his podcast interview, Araujo said he plans to one day live and work in Europe.
Zampolli told The Post: “Brazil will protect them and not extradite them. But they should have an Interpol warrant for this kind of crime so at least we are safe when we travel to Europe.”
The State Department and the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a further twist, Ungaro claims to be in contact with congressional Democrats making allegations connected to Zampolli and Epstein.
Ungaro reportedly arrived in the US as a 16-year-old model aboard Jeffrey Epstein’s plane and this April raged against Melania Trump in since-deleted tweets, writing: “Maybe you should be afraid of what I know … of who you are, and who your husband is.”
Hours after Ungaro’s tweets, Melania Trump gave a shocking public statement declaring “I am not Epstein’s victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump,” with the first lady’s office saying “the lies must stop.”
