The British branch of a cosmetic tourism agency that arranged the fatal surgery of a British woman in Turkey is a boarded-up terraced house, the Daily Mail can reveal.
An inquest heard this week how Morgan Ribeiro, 20, died in January 2024 from an infection caused after her small intestine was cut by mistake during a weight-loss operation.
Ms Ribeiro paid £2,500 to Global Medical Care (GMC) for a gastric sleeve procedure that would have cost up to £10,000 in Britain.
The agency, which also arranged her travel to Istanbul, boasts of having ‘four offices across three continents’. But its UK phone number – sited prominently at the top of its website – is linked to a vacant, dilapidated house on the outskirts of Wimbledon, south London.
A Google search of the address and GMC’s name brings up four different websites advertising the business at that location, including Directory Enquiries, while Google’s AI function states the address is a ‘healthcare organisation located at 5 Stane Close, Merton, London, SW19 2XQ’.
It was previously listed on Yell.com, where businesses can input their own details without checks, but was removed last year.
The marketing firm 118 Group, which provided GMC’s details to Directory Enquiries, has now launched an investigation into the use of the address.
The local authority, Merton Council, said the address was being used ‘fraudulently’.
Morgan Ribeiro, 20, (pictured) died in January 2024 from an infection caused after her small intestine was cut by mistake during a weight-loss operation
Pictured: The derelict site of Global Medical Care’s UK base
Ms Ribeiro opted for GMC after being taken in by a social media advert and because of its boasts of having its headquarters in Switzerland, her parents said. Its website also has phone numbers for offices in France and Spain.
The image portrayed online is a far cry from what we were greeted with this week at its UK ‘base’ on the run-down High Path estate.
No one lives on Stane Close, and the house the phone number is linked to has been used as an address by dozens of companies.
Ms Ribeiro’s father Richard Ribeiro, 46, told the Daily Mail: ‘She booked with that company because it looked reputable.
‘How can it be OK to have its number registered at an address on all these websites when it’s not even there? How can this be legal? Surely there can be protocols brought in that mean foreign companies that do not have our standards cannot advertise themselves as having UK links?’
Her mother Erin Gibson, 46, also urged UK authorities to act, adding: ‘It’s incredibly important people know about this. GMC claims to be the best at what it does in Europe, but you cannot trust something that appears to be registered in this country but actually does not exist here.’
Ms Ribeiro was operated on at the privately run Medivita Hospital in Istanbul by Dr Serkan Bayil, who insists he did nothing wrong and claims she must have died from an embolism brought on by her flight home.
The surgery took place on January 5, 2024, and Ms Ribeiro was cleared to fly home by Dr Bayil on January 8. But she fell ill on her flight back to London and the plane was forced to land in Belgrade, Serbia, where surgeons discovered that her small intestine had been cut. She died from an infection on January 13.
Ms Ribeiro paid £2,500 to Global Medical Care (GMC) for a gastric sleeve procedure that would have cost up to £10,000 in Britain
The inquest into her death was adjourned until August because Dr Bayil could not be tracked down. Reading out the findings of Ms Ribeiro’s post-mortem examination, which was carried out in Serbia, Assistant Coroner Laura Stephenson told South London Coroner’s Court that her death was caused by ‘diffuse inflammation of the retroperitoneum’ and ‘rupture of the intestinal wall’.
It is thought her small intestine was punctured during surgery in Turkey, causing the infection and her death, but Ms Stephenson was unable to record a conclusion until hearing from Dr Bayil.
Merton Council said: ‘Fraudulent use of addresses, such as by Global Medical Care, is a scourge and needs action nationally to crack down on. Unfortunately, businesses worldwide can get a UK domain without any physical presence in the UK.’
GMC has denied operating fraudulently in the UK and said it does not claim to have an office here. It previously said it was ‘deeply saddened’ by Ms Ribeiro’s death and no longer worked with Dr Bayil or Medivita Hospital.
