Throwback Thursday: The Disturbing Story of a Rogue Expat Criminal Doctor in Beijing

Throwback Thursday takes a look back into Beijing's past, using our 12-year-strong blog archives as the source for a glance at the weird and wonderful stories of Beijing's days gone by.

Ten years ago this month, the Beijinger reported that one Steven Gabriel Moos was arrested in Dubai. Soon after he was taken into custody, it became apparent that he was none other than the former plastic surgeon of Confident Medical Clinic in Beijing’s Wangfujing who had gone by the false name, Dr. Michael Gabriel.

Just who was this Mr. Moos, how did he end up practicing in Beijing, and why does his last name suggest that he likes to impersonate cattle? Read on to find out the answers to two-thirds of these pressing questions.

(Warning: This week's installment contains content that some readers may find disturbing.)

At the turn of the millennium, Moos – then a physician in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon – was busy helping patients reverse the signs of aging and depleting sexual function. However, even then he was already engaging in some pretty shady medical practices – so dubious in fact that he was indicted and namechecked in a 2004 Food and Drug Administration congressional testimony. The testimony describes how Moos had been illegally importing fake Viagra and misbranded human growth hormone from China and prescribing and dispensing them illegally over the Internet. But the doctor had been dealing in harder stuff as well. A search of his million-dollar home uncovered small amounts of ketamine, ecstasy, amphetamines, cocaine, and marijuana as well as evidence of the latter two in a safe in his private office.

(Around this time, a court also slapped Moos with a stalking protective order in a case related to harassment of his neighbor, but the details are not clear as to why.)

Unable to fight the fraud charges against him, Moos disappeared. But rather than taking the obvious route of hopping the border to Canada, he instead crossed the Pacific, presumably using his contacts in China to land himself a nice new job in Beijing.

By all accounts, "Michael Gabriel," as Moos was known at the time, seemed to be an upstanding expat during his stay in the capital. He enrolled his young children in international schools and performed routine liposuction operations at his clinic. But by 2007, he had reason to believe that the Chinese authorities were cottoning on to his false identity. Spooked, he decided to pack up once again, this time heading for Dubai.

Unfortunately, Moos was not as well behaved in the UAE as he had been in China. Instead of conjuring up a new pseudonym, he began to impersonate Dr. Steven Hopping, a well-known plastic surgeon in Hollywood, except rather than winning renown among celebrities for his preeminent surgical skills, Moos chose the slightly less glamorous option of performing surgery on his kitchen table. As well as continuing to perform liposuction – deduced from the pots and bottles filled with human fat the police found in his kitchen – Moos also dared to attempt smaller operations, for which he was apparently not qualified, despite their relative lack of complexity. As a report from The National described:

One woman, who went to Mr. Moos for a relatively simple procedure on her lips, said that “he just kept cutting,” leaving her face infected. Another said Mr. Moos operated like he was “slicing meat,” and that she lost so much blood that she fainted... The first woman, in her early 30s, claimed he used equipment that was not sterile, which has left her permanently disfigured and without feeling in her lips.

After his arrest, Moos was deported back to Oregon, where he was convicted in 2011 of his outstanding charges for drug possession, as well as separate charges for medical fraud. He incurred hefty fines and a lengthy probation but did not serve any jail time.

It wasn't until 2017, however, that Moos' most heinous crime – the long-term sexual abuse and rape of a minor – came to light. According to court documents, the victim was abused between 2004 and 2015 while she was between the ages of 5 and 17, beginning in China and continuing until the year of his indictment in the US. Moos was finally convicted and sentenced to 44 years in prison at the age of 47.

READ: Throwback Thursday: The Biodome Where Beijing Scientists Lived off Worms

Image: jocelthem (via Flickr)