Business ProfileforNW Face and Body

The following describes a pending government action that has been formally brought by a government agency but has not yet been resolved. We are providing a summary of the governments allegations, which have not yet been proven.

On December 29, 2022, in the United States District Court, Western District of Washington at Seattle, the State of Washington filed a Complaint for Declaratory Injunctive, and Other Relief against Alderwood Surgical Center, LLC; Allure Esthetic Plastic Surgery; Northwest Nasal Sinus Center P.S. and Javad A Sajan, M.D. for falsely and illegally inflating its ratings on online rating platforms such as Yelp and Google. The company intimidated patients into removing negative reviews and ordered its employees to post fake positive reviews.

The lawsuit asserts Allure and its owner broke the law in numerous ways, including:

Requiring patients to sign unlawful non-disclosure agreements before receiving any treatment that restrict them from posting truthful reviews about their experiences with Allure. Over 10,000 people signed these NDAs.
Threatening to take legal action against patients, telling some patients it would sue them for monetary damages if they refused to delete their negative reviews.
Offering patients cash and free services or products for taking down their negative reviews.
Requiring patients who accepted these bribes to sign a second non-disclosure agreement stating they could face a $250,000 lawsuit if they continue to post negative reviews.
Editing “before and after” photos to make the results of its procedures look better than they actually were.
Applying for rebates on behalf of its patients without their consent and keeping those rebates. Allure used hundreds of fake email accounts to register for rebate programs intended for real patients. Allure received thousands of dollars every month from these rebates — rebates that should have gone to patients.
One former employee, a videographer, said she quit her job at Allure because she “felt it was unethical and deceptive to alter photos to that extent, especially knowing that most consumers rely on before and after photos when choosing a surgeon for cosmetic surgery”. She was not the only employee who quit over ethical concerns. One of Allure’s in-house attorneys left her job over concerns that Allure’s NDA practices were unlawful and unethical.

The Attorney General’s Office received four complaints from patients alerting the office to Allure’s practices. One Seattle woman who accompanied a family member to a consultation for gender-affirming care wrote a complaint to the Attorney General’s Office that she was “greatly troubled by the practice of forcing patients to sign a NDA before they even see the doctor”.

Allure is a major provider of plastic and cosmetic surgery procedures in the Seattle area, with offices in Seattle, Lynnwood and Kirkland. Allure does business under several names, including Allure Esthetic, Gallery of Cosmetic Surgery, Seattle Plastic Surgery, Alderwood Surgical Center, and Northwest Face & Body. The company conducts both surgical and non-surgical treatments, ranging from Botox to gender-affirming procedures. Allure has prominently displayed its “5-star” Google and Yelp ratings on its website.
Individuals rely on online reviews to help them find a doctor. According to a 2020 survey, over 70 percent of patients use online reviews as the first step to finding a new doctor. Patients need accurate information about their doctors to make an informed choice about their medical care.

Allure used NDAs, legal threats and bribes to suppress negative reviews

From 2017 to 2019, Allure required patients to sign a non-disclosure agreement that required them to contact the business if they had any concerns instead of posting a “negative review.” The NDAs required patients to “not say anything” that would “damage the reputation” of the office. The agreement stated that Allure considered anything under four stars a “negative review”.
Allure gave these NDAs to prospective patients in a stack of pre-procedure paperwork that they were required to sign before receiving any services from Allure. In many cases, Allure required patients to pay a $100 consultation fee before disclosing that they must sign the NDA. 

Under this “pre-service” NDA, Allure required patients to agree to “pay monetary damages to the practice for any losses” if they did not take down a negative review. These NDAs also required consumers to waive health privacy rights, stating consumers must “allow a response [to the review] from the practice with any personal health information” if they post a negative review. The lawsuit asserts this provision is a violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Allure updated the NDAs in 2019 to remove this language, but they still required patients to contact Allure to “reach a resolution” directly with Allure instead of posting a negative review. They used these “pre-service” NDAs until March of 2022.
These were not empty threats — Allure in fact followed up with patients who posted negative reviews after their treatments, offering them money and free services to “make it right” if they took down their review. Sajan’s former assistant called the clinic’s efforts to get people to take down negative reviews “relentless”. If bribes didn’t work, Allure threatened to sue consumers.

If a patient accepted Allure’s offers of cash or services, Allure then required the patient to sign a second NDA requiring them to remove any negative reviews and to refrain from posting negative reviews in the future, with a $250,000 penalty if they fail to comply.
Allure began using this second “post-service” NDA in September 2017, and Ferguson asserts the company still follows this practice. Allure sent cease-and-desist letters to two patients over these NDAs, both threatening to enforce the NDA for monetary damages.
Allure used a VPN to post fake reviews and pocket rebates intended for consumers

Allure and Sajan directed employees to post fake positive reviews. Former web designers who worked there from 2018 to 2021 said they regularly posted fake reviews by creating fake email accounts and fictional online personas. At Sajan’s direction, employees used stock photos and built a “persona” to create a more realistic profile to post reviews from. These employees told Sajan that they believed the practice was unethical and refused to continue creating fake reviews. In response, Sajan said he would get another employee to continue posting the reviews.

Allure used a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, to conceal the IP addresses of reviews. Allure posted the fake reviews while signed on to the VPN so they couldn’t be traced back to the Allure Esthetic offices or be flagged by review sites as false.
One web designer said, “Whenever we were to do something that was immoral or illegal, we would sign into the VPN… and then when we were done, we would sign off of the VPN.” Allure employees also used the same VPN, and hundreds of fake email accounts, to allow the clinic to take skincare rebates intended for patients. The company used real patient names and birthdates, without those patients’ consent, to register for rebate programs through a skincare brand Allure used on its patients. Allure received thousands of dollars every month from these rebates — rebates that should have gone to patients.

Allure posted altered “before and after” photos on social media that were edited beyond basic photo touch-ups and removal of identifying features. Allure directed its employees to make major alterations to photos.
One former employee said, “I was asked to move a nipple several inches on the ‘after’ photo to make it appear symmetrical with the other. I was asked to manipulate the ‘after’ photograph of a patient to make it more symmetrical with the other. I was asked to manipulate the ‘after’ photograph of a patient who had hair plugs to cover a bald spot. And I was asked to Photoshop the photos of patients who had tummy tuck procedures and make them look curvier and flatter”.

Legal claims

The lawsuit asserts that Allure and Sajan violated HIPAA, the Washington State Consumer Protection Act (CPA) and the Consumer Review Fairness Act (CRFA), a federal law that protects consumers’ rights to post truthful reviews about a business.
Allure violated the CRFA each time it required patients to sign NDAs restricting negative reviews. Allure required over 10,000 patients to sign the “pre-service” NDAs, and hundreds of patients signed the “post-service” NDAs. All of Allure’s and Sajan’s violations of HIPAA and CRFA are also violations of the CPA.

The lawsuit asks the court to:

Order that all NDAs Allure required patients to sign are void and unenforceable, and require Allure to inform its patients in writing that these NDAs are invalid;
Block Allure from enforcing or threatening to enforce the NDAs;
Require Allure to pay penalties up to $7,500 per violation; and
Require Allure to pay restitution to patients for the $100 pre-service consultation fee and any cash rebates Allure kept that were owed to patients. The exact amount of restitution owed to each patient will be determined in further discovery.

Assistant Attorneys General Matt Geyman, Camille McDorman and Zorba Leslie, Investigator Victoria Suner, Paralegal Miranda Marti and Legal Assistant Christopher Kiefer are handling the case for the Attorney General’s Office.

For more information, please contact the Washington Attorney General’s office at https://www.atg.wa.gov/ or (360) 753-6200.

On April 15, 2024, a federal judge ruled that Seattle plastic surgery provider Allure Esthetic and its owner, Dr. Javad Sajan, illegally prevented patients from posting negative reviews about the business.

The Attorney General of Washington filed a motion for partial summary judgment in a lawsuit against Allure and Sajan, asking the judge to rule ahead of trial on a key claim in the lawsuit. Specifically, that the clinic broke the law by requiring more than 10,000 patients to sign illegal non-disclosure agreements before receiving any treatment. In many cases, patients learned they had to sign only after paying Allure a nonrefundable $100 consultation fee.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez granted the Attorney General's motion on Friday, finding that Allure’s “pre-service” non-disclosure agreements violated a federal law that protects consumers’ rights to post truthful reviews about a business. The penalty for this violation will be determined at trial, which is scheduled for September.

On March 27, 2023, Allure Esthetic provided the following response to the Attorney General's lawsuit.  Allure Esthetic's statement defending the allegations will remain on BBB's Profile until the case is Final.

"Our sole focus since we began our practice has been serving patients, making people happy and whole. Thousands of satisfied patients who’ve entrusted Allure with their care will tell you we’ve done just that. We practice with the highest ethical standards and dedication. So we were stunned and disappointed to learn of the Washington Attorney General’s (WAG) lawsuit.

The lawsuit makes numerous allegations that paint a false or misleading picture of our practice. Those allegations are unproven. We strongly disagree with the state’s interpretation of the law and its characterization of the facts. We are confident we will be exonerated of wrong-doing when all the facts come to light during litigation. And we encourage everyone to keep in mind allegations are just that. They are not facts.

As mentioned, it’s most important to reiterate there are no claims that Allure provided anything less than outstanding care and service to our patients. There are no claims of medical negligence, no allegations regarding patient safety or the expert skill of our providers. This is strictly a disagreement about marketing practices. 

The facts:

To provide the highest level of service, Allure utilized pre-consultation documents with patients. Those documents were intended to ensure patients had explicit understanding of our practice and their upcoming procedures, and contacted us first if they were dissatisfied with our care for any reason.
Our priority has always been doing everything in our power to satisfy our patients and resolve any issues they might have. This document did not prevent patients from expressing their concerns in online reviews or elsewhere.
The WAG wrongly argues the now discontinued documents somehow prevented patients from ultimately sharing their opinions about our practice. That’s just not true.
We also implemented the pre-consultation documents some years ago because our competitors aggressively and unethically tried to undermine our practice by anonymously posting false and negative reviews online. We were simply protecting our patients and practice from unscrupulous competitors.

Patient privacy laws prevented us from addressing individual complaints publicly. And online platforms like Yelp and Google make it virtually impossible to prove and remove false reviews despite our appeals.

These documents were drafted by legal counsel to ensure their compliance with the law. And they were discontinued in March of 2022. We now instead provide patients with a “Customer Satisfaction Policy” that states our commitment to the highest level of medical care and our good faith efforts to resolve any issues in a timely manner. We stand proudly and strongly by our practice, and our commitment to excellence in our care with a sole dedication to our patients. The thousands of patients we’ve served will agree. We vehemently dispute the unfounded allegations and false characterizations of our practice. We encourage anyone with questions about our practice to contact us by phone at 206-209-0988. And we are confident these issues will be resolved as we continue providing what is widely recognized as among the most expert care in our medical field."