Buttock injection death exposes US underworld

A British woman has become the latest victim of America's extensive network of illegal cosmetic surgery practitioners after she died during a buttock enlargement operation in a Philadelphia hotel room.

Claudia Aderotimi, 20, had travelled from London with three friends for an operation to enhance her buttocks with an injection of silicone. Arranged over the internet and carried out in a room at a Hampton Inn hotel near Philadelphia International airport, the operation is thought to have cost more than £1,000.

Around 12 hours after the procedure, she was taken to hospital where she died.

Aderotimi is thought to have died of a heart attack after silicone entered her circulatory system. Police are seeking two people in relation to the death.

The Londoner is reported to have been an aspiring hip-hop dancer who believed that a "big booty" would help her in her quest for fame.

She is just the latest woman to die after undergoing cosmetic surgery on the black market, although in the US such procedures are more normally associated with members of the Latin American community.

In March 2006, a 24-year-old Brazilian woman died of a pulmonary embolism following a liposuction procedure in Massachusetts. Luiz Carlos Ribeiro, a Brazilian doctor who was not licensed to practice in the United States, was later sentenced to up to three years in prison for involuntary manslaughter.

In April 2009, a Dominican woman living in New York died of a pulmonary embolism after a silicone injection into her buttocks and legs. Although her death was ruled as homicide, no charges were filed because the woman who administered the silicone was thought to have fled to the Dominican Republic.

In December 2009 Solange Magnano, a former Miss Argentina, died of a pulmonary embolism following a supposedly routine buttock enhancement procedure

In the United States, liquid silicone is not permitted for cosmetic injections. Dr John Di Saia, a California plastic surgeon described such procedures as "scary", adding: "No reputable plastic surgeon offers them to my knowledge." ·