When Yulixa Toloza walked into Beauty Láser in southern Bogotá for a laser liposuction and fat transfer, she had good reason to be apprehensive. But while one staff member said she was “a bit nervous” about the procedure, Toloza’s close friend Amalia Pardo told local media she went reassured by the fact people she knew had been to the clinic for the same procedure and “nothing had happened” to them. The reported $900 price tag was also enticing. “I told her that’s very cheap. To me it doesn’t seem secure,” Pardo told El Tiempo. That’s less than a quarter of what the same procedure would cost in one of the city’s many reputable cosmetic clinics. But Beauty Láser was far from reputable. Located in the working-class neighborhood of Venecia and owned by registered nurse María Fernanda Delgado, it was a "garage clinic" operating out of a residential property without the proper licenses or sanitary conditions. Its cosmetic procedures were carried out on the second floor with no oxygen on hand, and it would later come to light that the "surgeon" who did Toloza's lipo, Eduardo David Ramos, had only ever trained as a stylist. Shortly after 7.20pm on May 13, less than twelve hours after arriving at the clinic, Toloza was carried out of the front door, pushed into a grey Chevrolet Sonic and driven away by two men, believed to be Ramos and Edinson Torres, Delgado's legal partner. Caracol Yulixa Toloza Videos captured after Toloza’s procedure by Pardo, who had accompanied her to the appointment, showed the 52-year-old pale, short of breath, unable to eat properly, and incoherent. Pardo told local media she was ultimately convinced to leave at around 4pm to fetch clothes for Toloza, who Delgado said would be kept under observation in one of the clinic’s recovery rooms. Over the following hours, Delgado remained in contact via WhatsApp with Pardo and two other friends who had been sent the videos, Yuri Mora and Estefanía López. Toloza, originally from the northeastern region of Arauca, had lived with López, her mother, grandmother and daughter in their family home for about five years. Not long after Toloza was being taken out of the clinic, Delgado stopped responding to messages. By the time her friends arrived at the clinic, it was bolted up. Mora told local media that’s when they discovering another patient had been left locked in a recovery room. They called in Toloza’s disappearance at 9.14pm. When police finally entered the building in the early hours of the morning, they found part of the facility deep cleaned and the security cameras ripped out. Toloza’s medical record was reportedly left on the reception desk. The day after Toloza's disappearance, her case appeared on late-night news roundup Ojo de la Noche (Eye of the Night), and by the following day the search for Yulixa had become a major story across Colombian media. On May 19, six days after her disappearance, and following a massive search that turned up the bodies of at least four other women, Toloza's body was found dumped on a rural road between Anapoima and Apulo, 90 kilometers southwest of the clinic. By then, Delgado, Torres and Ramos had reportedly escaped to their native Venezuela, while a fourth suspect – "Leo" the anesthetist – remained at large. An autopsy showed that what had been sold to Toloza as a minimally invasive procedure had resulted in 11 puncture wounds and caused severe internal trauma, deep muscle hematomas and acute tissue liquefaction. She had also suffered rib fractures and ketamine toxicity. According to López, staff told her they administered a second dose of anesthetic to try to diminish Toloza's ongoing severe pain. Ultimately, aggressive and unmonitored surgical suction led to fat entering her bloodstream, resulting in a pulmonary fat embolism, respiratory failure and acute anemia. Francisco Castellanos Edinson Torres and María Fernanda Delgado Beauty Láser M.L. had been registered with Bogotá's Chamber of Commerce five months before Toloza's death, in December 2025, under a corporate structure listing Delgado as legal representative and owner. According to Bogotá City Council, the business was registered as a hairdresser and it had never obtained a health license. Bogotá's Health Secretariat later confirmed the business had no authorization to perform invasive procedures of any kind, despite advertising them openly on social media, with prices generally around 3.5 million Colombian pesos (about $900 at the time). Beauty Láser M.L Beauty Láser M.L A Beauty Láser ads openly offering laser lipo for around $900 when it was published in June 2024 The clinic wasn't an isolated operation. Investigators later found it shared phone lines and advertising with a second business, BL Doctora Danubia Blanco SAS, operating on the other side of the city — evidence, authorities are now investigating, of a wider informal network of unlicensed cosmetic clinics. The owner of that second location denied performing invasive procedures there and told reporters she had cut ties with Delgado in October 2025 after Delgado stole from her. According to Juan Camilo Caicedo, the lawyer representing Toloza's non-biological family — who raised her since she was a toddler — the sheer number of procedures passing through Beauty Láser should have caught the authorities' attention. A surgical assistant who had worked at the clinic told El Tiempo and La FM that she and her colleagues had already carried out somewhere between 500 and 600 procedures there before Toloza's death. "That means they'd already been doing this routinely, almost constantly, without the district of Bogotá taking any action," Caicedo said to Bored Panda. "That's absolutely unacceptable. There was negligent conduct on the part of the authorities." Consejo de Bogotá The façade of Beauty Láser and a business’ registration document Bogotá Mayor Carlos Fernando Galán called the case a wake-up call and said the city's health and security secretariats had been instructed to support the investigation. The following day, he announced a crackdown against clandestine clinics across the city. He did not address why a facility located on a major public highway and openly advertising surgical procedures online, for months, had escaped enforcement before a woman died inside it. When asked about the crackdown, the Attorney General’s Office (Fiscalía) told Bored Panda the question fell outside its jurisdiction and redirected this reporter to Bogotá's Health Secretariat. That agency had not responded to a request for comment by the time of publication. Miguel Ángel Ruiz, the lawyer representing Toloza's biological mother, believes Beauty Láser’s ability to operate openly for so long ultimately lays a great part of the blame on the authorities that failed to shut it down. “We've concluded that the party most responsible for all of this is the Colombian state, the national government, the mayor's office of Bogotá, and the local mayoralty of that zone, who never did their job — they should have carried out oversight and inspection. They failed in their objective duty of care." Ruiz told Bored Panda. When asked in late August if he had seen any results from the crackdown announced by Galán more than three months earlier, Ruiz was unequivocal. “Not long ago another case appeared on television of another woman who also died in similar circumstances," he said, referring to Adriana Manotas Rodríguez, a 52-year-old content creator who died in July after an unlicensed cosmetic procedure in a clandestine clinic a few miles from where Beauty Láser operated. “So, they haven’t done anything.” Filming by Ramsés Palma Through his foundation, GAB Fundación Social Internacional, Ruiz says he is now seeking to work with legislators on a proposal for a specialized police or intelligence unit dedicated to investigating unlicensed medical practitioners and cosmetic clinics. López, who Toloza lived with, was one of the first people to raise the alarm when she went quiet, and spent the following six days publicly leading the search for her friend — organizing volunteers, keeping reporters engaged, and giving interviews in which she described Toloza as generous almost to a fault. She had undergone the same procedure at the same clinic herself, months earlier, without complication. None of López, Pardo, or Mora could be contacted directly for an interview for this story. According to Daniel Solarte Bastidas, a partner at legal firm Erazo & Solarte, who is representing López, she now only communicates through her legal team after being subjected to threats. Noticias Caracol Yuri Mora speaks to reporters in the evening of Yulixa’s disappearance “She decided, due to the threats, to hide,” Solarte told Bored Panda. “She left us a signed power of attorney… but she just disappeared.” While López wasn't at Beauty Láser on May 13, she was in direct contact with Toloza via WhatsApp, and began exchanging messages with Delgado after seeing the videos taken by Pardo. According to messages later obtained by El Tiempo, Delgado told her Toloza's pain was being managed with a double dose of ketamine and that this was normal — "not every body is the same," Delgado wrote. When López tried to reach the clinic again that evening, Delgado didn't respond for nearly thirty minutes, then told her Toloza had already left on her own. But after Toloza's body was found, López became the target of a campaign of abuse. Videos reportedly generated with artificial intelligence began circulating that cast her as a "recruiter" who funneled patients toward Beauty Láser. Solarte says the accusation has no basis, and López has denied having any relationship with the clinic's owners. Conducta Delictiva Estefanía López appeared on podcast Conducta Delictiva before going into hiding "Our client did everything within her reach," Solarte said. "It was never within her power to stop the procedure." The accusations against López and Mora have gone further than online rumor. In early June, Ruiz said that anyone who accompanied Toloza to her appointment should be formally investigated for failing to render aid, during an appearance on podcast Más Allá del Silencio. He said filming her deterioration instead of intervening met the legal threshold for the offense. Toloza's nephew, Carlos Antonio Ramírez, backed the call publicly. Solarte questioned that logic and suggested it would frighten the people who actually know what happened inside the clinic. "It's more convenient for them to stay quiet," he said. "And not talk, because they'll directly become targets themselves." But in comments made to Bored Panda, Ruiz went even further. “My view has always been that these women had to have participated as a link in the criminal chain, and they should be prosecuted and sentenced, because that's the example that needs to be set for society," he said, without providing evidence of that alleged link. By the time Toloza's body was found, Delgado, Torres and Ramos had already crossed into Venezuela. They were captured within hours of each other on May 19 and 20 in the state of Portuguesa. Two more men — Jesús Alberto Hernández Morales, an uncle of Delgado's, and Kelvis Sequera Delgado, a taxi driver — were arrested separately in Cúcuta, on the Colombian side of the border, after the gray Chevrolet used to move Toloza's body was traced there. Colombian prosecutors have formally charged both with obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence for allegedly helping the others flee and attempting to dispose of the vehicle. Francisco Castellanos Eduardo David Ramos after his capture Delgado has since told investigators that Toloza was still alive when she left the clinic and died only during the drive out of the city, according to RCN. But that timeline is at odds with witness accounts, video evidence, and the autopsy. Asked for an update on the case, the Fiscalía confirmed in a statement provided to Bored Panda that two people remain in custody as alleged participants in concealing evidentiary material. In late July, authorities formally identified the anesthesiologist as Leodelvis Acosta Rodriguez. Bored Panda found evidence online of a person with an almost identical name and similar physical characteristics to photos published by Focus Noticias prior to the formal identification, suggesting that Acosta was previously involved in a Cuban international medical brigade and had specialized in anesthesia after graduating medical school. According to Ruiz, information he has received from “informal sources” suggests that Acosta is being protected across the Venezuelan border by an “international terrorist socialist-communist armed group.” “They're sheltering him, protecting him, giving him some kind of care so he won't be extradited to Colombia," Ruiz said. Focus Noticias An image purportedly of “Leo” the anesthetist What happens next depends on a legal question that lawyers involved in the case can't agree on. Caicedo has publicly and repeatedly called on Colombia's Fiscalía and Foreign Ministry to formally request extradition of the three suspects held in Venezuela, and has criticized the ministry for what he calls a total absence of engagement with the case. He argues extradition remains viable despite Venezuela's constitutional bar on surrendering its nationals, pointing to the Bolivarian Treaty, a multilateral framework both countries have signed, and to shifts underway in Venezuela's judiciary. However, at time of publication, the Fiscalía had not announced a formal extradition request under that treaty, despite saying it would do so immediately after Toloza’s body was discovered. On June 11, Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice set a 90-day deadline for Colombia to formalize the request – running to roughly September 9. Solarte, who has closely followed the extradition question, believes it is ultimately “something impossible.” He points to the case of Marcelo Pecci, a Paraguayan prosecutor murdered on Colombian soil in 2022 whose alleged killers fled to Venezuela and have never been surrendered despite years of diplomatic pressure. Ruiz agrees that extradition is unlikely to happen, and also doubts real progress will be made in the case unless overseas pressure is laid on the authorities overseeing it. "I believe that without international judicial intervention, this case... at the rate it's going, there won't be justice or reparation for the victims," he said. Francisco Castellanos Edinson Torres and María Fernanda Delgado after their capture In the absence of extradition, the case may end up proceeding on parallel tracks: a Colombian prosecution built largely on the testimony of employees and friends too frightened to go fully on the record, and whatever Venezuela chooses to do with three suspects now inside its own judicial system. As for Leo, investigators have said they believe he crossed into Venezuela around the same time as the others, but his whereabouts remain unknown. In his absence, Delgado has given testimony that places him at the center of the decision to move Toloza's body rather than call for help. It was Leo, she says, who made the call once the situation turned critical, apparently telling the others: without a body, there's no crime.
