Katie Price’s BBL specialist exposed: Dodgy butt lift jabs left women with killer sepsis, shock investigation finds

The chilling cosmetic practices of one celeb-backed liquid BBL injector was today exposed in a shock investigation. 

Raw footage shows ‘beauty consultant’ Ricky Sawyer — whose celebrity clients include Katie Price and Love Island stars — offering to inject hundreds of milliliters of filler into clients’ buttocks to add volume, despite not having a single healthcare qualification. 

Women treated by Sawyer also told how they needed emergency hospital treatment after their procedures to tackle serious complications including potentially fatal sepsis.

One woman said she felt at the time she would rather ‘have died’ than continue with the pain she was in, following the jabs — which contain ‘plumping’ hyaluronic acid.

The liquid BBL procedure is notoriously risky, especially when performed by non-medics. 

This is because when injected into or near a blood vessel, filler can block blood flow leading to tissue death. Inadequately sterilising equipment can too, trigger dangerous infections. 

Cameras also capture Mr Sawyer illegally handing out antibiotics.

All of the hard-hitting clips were secretly captured by a BBC undercover reporter who had booked a consultation with the beautician through his Instagram page. 

Experts today slammed the ‘shocking’ practices that were found in the BBC probe. 

Save Face – which campaigns for greater regulation to cover non-surgical procedures – also revealed it had received complaints from 39 women about Mr Sawyer, all of whom needed hospital treatment.

Its founder Ashton Collins said each had a BBL and suffered complications such as sepsis, necrosis and disfigurement.

‘We’ve encouraged these women to report their experiences to the police,’ she added.

‘Some have, and nothing has been done. He just moves on to different areas of the country and carries on.’

In the new BBC documentary, one woman known only as Joanne, told how she travelled seven hours from south Wales to Essex for the liquid BBL treatment.

The mum-of-two said she had undergone other cosmetic treatments previously and had been persuaded to get a ‘peachy bum’ by Mr Sawyer’s adverts and celebrity endorsements. 

However, when she arrived she realised his clinic was in a block of flats in an industrial estate and she waited in a ‘dingy little hallway’ for roughly half an hour.

‘I should have turned and ran but I had paid £600 deposit and travelled all this way,’ she said. 

After parting with the additional £1,400 for the treatment, she then stood in front of him while he sat on a stool and injected her with a litre of filler.  

‘I felt dizzy, sick and like shaky. My legs didn’t even move properly. And that was all within a minute of him starting,’ she said. 

‘I remember looking round and he had white gloves on that were full of blood.’

By the time she returned to South Wales hours later, the swelling had begun and she could hardly walk.

‘I messaged Ricky loads of times to say how bad I was feeling and how worried I was. He just told me to take my antibiotics,’ she added. 

‘My temperature kept on going up and I felt terrible. I had to phone 999. I was dripping with sweat and screaming.’

In hospital, she was diagnosed with sepsis and attached to intravenous antibiotics. Medics fortunately did not need to operate. 

But another of Mr Sawyer’s clients required life-saving emergency surgery that saw medics cut dead tissue from almost the entire left buttock, the BBC probe found. 

Louise Moller, from Bolton, was hospitalised four days after receiving a liquid BBL at his Essex clinic in October 2023 and was told she had contracted sepsis.

The now 28-year-old rang her mother, Janet, from Salford Royal’s A&E department and said: ‘Mum, I think I’m going to die.’

Janet promised her daughter she would prevent this from happening to anyone else and reported Ricky Sawyer to their local police station in Bolton.

However, the case was passed to Essex Police where the incident occurred and she was told prosecution could be difficult given Ms Moller had signed a consent form. 

Fourteen months on, there has been no progress, Ms Moller said. 

While BBC News approached Greater Manchester Police and Essex Police – both said it was down to the other to investigate.

The probe also saw an undercover reporter pose as a potential client, booking a 45-minute consultation with Mr Sawyer through his Instagram page. 

They told him they wanted a 200ml liquid BBL injection costing £1,200 and paid a £200 deposit.

Upon visiting the clinic in an office block, they discovered that despite having advertised that all liquid BBLs would be carried out under the guidance of an ‘ultrasound specialist doctor’, none was present.

Within five minutes of being in his office, Mr Sawyer had also begun to encourage the reporter to think about increasing the amount of filler. 

‘You might be surprised about how much product you can have and still look natural,’ he said. 

By the end of the appointment, Mr Sawyer had offered to inject a litre of filler – 500ml per buttock – for a cost of £2,000.

Experts today slammed the ‘dangerous’ practices exposed by the probe and warned that the reporter could have risked her life is she had gone through with the procedure. 

Dalvi Humzar, a consultant plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgeon, based in Wolverhampton, said: ‘1000ml in one go is going to put you and your body tissue at risk under the pressure of that volume. 

‘You would have been in intense pain, the infection risk is high and with that large volume, even if you could get the product in the right place, the pressure would cause that product to move.

‘It dissects through the tissue and could migrate to an area that is quite dangerous. 

‘That can cause you major problems. You could die.’ 

When the BBC approached Mr Sawyer outside his clinic he attempted to slam the door on the reporter.

Asked if he was breaking the law by handing out prescription-only medicine, and if he had anything to say to the women affected, he said ‘no’. 

Experts have long warned of ‘non-surgical’ aesthetic treatments carried out by practitioners will little experience and repeatedly called for tighter controls over the cosmetic industry. 

Last September, Alice Webb, 34, died just hours after having a non-surgical butt lift, understood to have been performed in the West Country. 

Two people were arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and bailed, including the beautician Jordan James Parke, alleged to have carried out the treatment. 

At the time, one of Britain’s leading plastic surgeons told this website Ms Webb is believed to have had a ‘large volume of filler’ injected into her buttocks. 

Following her death, Save Face called for a new law banning liquid BBLs from being carried out by anyone other than surgeons registered with the General Medical Council (GMC). 

While the risks of a traditional Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL) are well known — surgery to transfer fat from other areas to the buttocks — a non-surgical methods that aim to create the same result are less understood. 

Unlike a traditional BBL which sees fat transferred from other areas of the body, a liquid BBL involves hyaluronic acid fillers. 

Dermal filler — the same material used to fill lips — is injected in large quantities into the buttock. 

Non-surgical BBLs are not illegal in the UK.

However, some local authorities including Wolverhampton, Essex and Glasgow have banned certain companies from carrying out liquid BBLs in their area.

In 2023, the former Conservative Government conducted a public consultation, on the issue of non-surgical cosmetic procedures and committed to looking at new regulations. 

But no further action was taken prior to the election. 

The Department of Health and Social Care today said the BBC’s findings were ‘shocking’ and that those caught ‘dispensing medication without a licence should feel the full force of the law’.

It also said it was ‘urgently looking at options for tougher regulation’.