An unlicensed doctor was released without bail early Tuesday after a patient who went to his Bronx wellness center for a controversial anti-aging procedure endorsed by influencers and celebrities died.
Luis Rojas Cabrera used an intravenous tube to administer NAD+, or Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, to 27-year-old Elizabeth Baron, prosecutors said during his arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court shortly after midnight Tuesday.
“Ms. Baron immediately went into cardiac arrest and later was pronounced dead,” Assistant District Attorney Ethan Reisbaum said in court.
“The defendant does not have a license to practice medicine in New York State and has no legal authority to administer NAD+ via an IV. Furthermore, administering NAD+ via an IV requires a prescription from a medical professional.”
Rojas Cabrera, 55, charged with reckless endangerment and unauthorized practice of a profession, was granted release without bail.
But the city Medical Examiner is conducting an autopsy Tuesday to determine exactly what killed Baron and Rojas Cabrera could face upgraded charges, prosecutors said.
The benefits of NAD+ have been the subject of debate but it has been endorsed by popular influencers and been boosted by celebrities including Kendall Jenner and Hailey Beiber.
Baron died at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital Sunday afternoon, shortly after medics rushed her there from Rojas Cabrera’s Bereshit Lifestyle Center in Riverdale. Baron lived in a luxury condo complex in the same neighborhood as the wellness center.
Elizabeth Baron (pictured) died after getting an anti-aging injection at Bereshit Lifestyle Center, a holistic wellness center in the Bronx, and the unlicensed doctor, Luis Rojas Cabrera, has been arrested. (Facebook)
Rojas Cabrera was arrested twice last year at Newark Liberty International Airport upon returning from his native Dominican Republic, Reisbaum revealed in court.
He was busted Nov. 6 for possession of a metal baton and then four days later for possession of almost 200 vials of prescription medications, plus more than 30 tablets and 10 syringes of lidocaine, an anesthetic.
Elizabeth Baron was rushed unconscious and unresponsive from Bereshit Lifestyle Center (pictured) on Riverdale Ave. in the Bronx to New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital Sunday, cops said. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
The status of those cases was not immediately clear Tuesday.
Cabrera, dressed in a tan suit and wearing a yarmulke, was supported in court Tuesday by his rabbi and son in court.
Before the arraignment, the son, Luis Rojas Cabrera Jr., 26, spoke highly of his father.
“He’s a good man, a good father and a good doctor,” the son told the Daily News. “That’s why I’m so shocked.”
Baron’s father, reached by phone hours earlier, was too grief stricken to say more than a few words.
Elizabeth Baron was rushed unconscious and unresponsive from Bereshit Lifestyle Center (pictured) on Riverdale Ave. in the Bronx to New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital Sunday, cops said. (Rebecca White / New York Daily News)
“That was my daughter,” the father said. “I don’t have anything to say. It’s under investigation.”
Cabrera, pictured smiling broadly on the Bereshit Lifestyle Center website, says he is a “M.D., Surgeon, Naturopath.”
“We have carefully chosen all of the products that we carry to make sure that you have the latest innovations and best products to help maintain a healthy lifestyle,” he boasts on the center’s website.
His bio on the website says he is board certified in holistic health and alternative medicine and that he is from a family of medical professionals in the Dominican Republic including his mother, whom beginning when he was 11 he assisted “in various nursing and medical procedures, thus causing an immense desire to continue studying in the area of nursing and medicine.”
“It gives me great pleasure,” he says on the website “to help individuals gain improvement in their health condition and lifestyle through natural methods and simple therapies.”