A Woman Accused of Faking Credentials Faces Deportation to Iran

In late May, an Iranian woman traveled from her home in Atlanta to Toronto to speak at the launch of a new biotech company called Phiusion Labs.

Shohreh Ghasemi, 42, posted photos of the event to her Instagram account, which has nearly 70,000 followers. In one, she stood before a lectern in a white dress and blazer. The caption celebrated her role in a “movement” that’s on the cutting edge of “modern facial rejuvenation.”

Over the next few weeks, Ghasemi tried repeatedly to return to the U.S., where she has lived off and on since about 2019.

At a Toronto airport on May 27, U.S. immigration officials did not allow her through security. Later that day, she drove to a border crossing near Niagara Falls; again, she was turned back.

A few weeks later, she tried again at a port of entry in Michigan, where immigration officials questioned her and then issued an expedited removal order — a fast-track deportation — that banned her from reentering the U.S. for five years. The order said she admitted to using a fake birthdate on her passport and other official documents.

Then, on June 26, U.S. Border Patrol agents in Vermont following up on a tip found Ghasemi and a man who is also from Iran lying on the ground near the border and Interstate 91. The pair were wet and muddy, waiting for someone to pick them up after they had crossed into the country illegally on foot, according to a Border Patrol agent’s affidavit.

Ghasemi was arrested and pleaded guilty on July 21 to one charge of illegal entry into the U.S., a petty misdemeanor. She was being held in the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility and is now fighting deportation. She says she fears persecution if returned to Iran, where she says she was imprisoned for about a month for political reasons in 2023.

Her case has caught the attention of politicians, local immigrant-rights advocates and colleagues in the world of cosmetic surgery, who have called her detention politically motivated at a time when the U.S. is at war with Iran. But court records paint a much murkier picture of Ghasemi’s past that prosecutors say raise serious questions about her professional credentials — and her right to be in the United States.

Colleagues and friends have posted videos on Instagram to raise awareness of her case, calling her an internationally recognized oral surgeon, humanitarian and lecturer.

Before her court hearing in downtown Burlington on July 21, advocacy group Migrant Justice sent a text blast to its “rapid response network,” calling for supporters to rally for “Dr. Ghasemi, an Iranian asylum seeker.” A crowd gathered outside the courthouse.

U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Georgia), who represents the district in which Ghasemi lives, wrote a letter of support touting Ghasemi’s “impeccable credentials,” including a PhD and two master’s degrees and a faculty position in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Augusta University.

“Whatever’s happening here is a travesty,” said Jeffrey Rosenthal, a plastic surgeon from Connecticut who is a friend of Ghasemi’s. Rosenthal said the two have lectured together at conferences in Miami and Las Vegas since they met about a year and a half ago. He said Ghasemi is a gifted doctor who lectures around the world.

“I think this is politically motivated,” said Ario Khoshbin, the Iranian Canadian businessman who invited Ghasemi to speak at his aesthetic medicine company’s event in Toronto after the two connected through Instagram. “Being Iranian, the way the world views you with the war with the U.S. going on, it’s a perfect storm for her.”

In a phone interview, Khoshbin said he and Ghasemi met at his event. She stayed at his house while she was stuck in Canada. After U.S. immigration officials turned her away several times, Khoshbin said, he chartered a plane to take Ghasemi into the U.S. But she was not allowed to board.

In an “impossible position,” she decided to walk across the border, Khoshbin said.

“This was her last resort, because she couldn’t stay in Canada; she didn’t have the legal right to stay in Canada,” Khoshbin said.

The night Ghasemi crossed, she texted someone saved in her phone as “Ario” and “AK” saying: “Yes and someone will pick up us [sic].”

“Ario” responded with an image of a map near the Derby Line port of entry with a black line routing a path around the official crossing, saying, “Stay with the trees.”

Ghasemi responded “Yes,” with a thumbs-up emoji.

“If you stay in the tree line it’s the safest,” Ario responded.

Asked about these messages, Ario Khoshbin said he did not feel comfortable discussing the topic without his lawyer present.

In a phone call from prison last Thursday, Ghasemi said she believed her green card application was still pending when she left for Canada and that she would be able to return. Records show she was granted advanced parole in 2024, a status that generally allows noncitizens with pending immigration applications to come and go.

Ghasemi began applying for a green card in 2022. She was then an adjunct assistant professor at Augusta University’s Dental College of Georgia in the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Department.

On the side, she was also working at a medical spa that offered Botox injections and other cosmetic procedures. According to a motion for detention filed by prosecutors, colleagues at the med spa reported Ghasemi to Augusta University’s board of ethics in February 2023 and later to the Georgia Board of Dentistry and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations.

In a letter to the FDA, a physician assistant with 23 years of experience said she witnessed Ghasemi perform a surgical procedure called a “MACS lift,” a less invasive type of facelift.

It became clear during the procedure that “Ms. Ghasemi was grossly unfamiliar with standards of medical care here in the U.S. and that her care was a danger to the public,” the letter reads.

The PA grew suspicious of Ghasemi’s qualifications and found that she did not have an active medical or dental license in the state of Georgia.

“Ms. Ghasemi has a pervasive pattern of misrepresenting herself as an ‘oral surgeon’ and properly licensed dentist,” she wrote to the FDA.

Ghasemi was fired from the spa, and the FDA and the Georgia Board of Dentistry launched investigations.

In one case in February 2023, the Georgia Board of Dentistry received a letter on Augusta University letterhead purporting to be written and signed by Babak Baban, a professor and associate dean for research at Augusta University.

The letter confirmed Ghasemi’s association with the university and asked for help to “facilitate and expedite her presence as a Health care Provider … not just in the University but in all Healthcare centers and Institutes in Georgia State.” The letter was riddled with grammatical and spelling errors.

When an investigator from the Georgia Board of Dentistry presented the letter to Baban, he responded that the letter and his signature were “fabricated” and “falsified,” according to a copy of their email exchange filed in the motion for detention.

Baban wrote that Ghasemi had been hired to work on a research proposal that the university planned to send to NASA in hopes of securing funding.

“None of those goals was met,” he wrote.

Augusta University informed her in March 2023 that her adjunct faculty appointment would not be renewed.

Ghasemi also claimed on her personal website to be a faculty member at the Georgia School of Orthodontics, an institution where she had only given a single guest lecture on Botox and fillers, according to emails from Ricky Harrell, the school’s program director at the time and Jessica Wynne, an attorney for the school.

Harrell invited Ghasemi to give the lecture in January 2022. Months later, he was contacted by investigators at the Georgia Board of Dentistry and the FDA who asked him to confirm Ghasemi’s teaching duties at his school.

Harrell informed the investigator that Ghasemi was not a faculty member and had never been offered such a position. The investigator sent him a copy of a contract that appeared to be signed by him that stated otherwise. Harrell said he never signed it.

“It is very disturbing that someone would be so deceitful and fraudulent,” he wrote in an email to the investigator.

Wynne sent Ghasemi a letter demanding that she take the false claims off her website, a copy filed by prosecutors shows.

Harrell contacted a friend and faculty member who co-directs an oral surgery program at the International University of Catalonia in Barcelona, where Ghasemi said she had trained as an oral surgeon. The friend informed him that Ghasemi had only finished one year of the three-year master’s program in oral surgery before leaving for the U.S., according to copies of their email exchange filed in court.

Harrell forwarded that information to the FDA investigator.

“This has been a voyage into the dark underside of clinical academia,” Harrell wrote.

In July 2023, Ghasemi signed a voluntary cease-and-desist order from the Georgia Board of Dentistry, acknowledging that she did not possess a license to practice as a dentist there and agreeing not to perform procedures.

Ghasemi also sued the med spa employees and Harrell, alleging defamation. She later dropped the case.

In a phone interview from prison last week, Ghasemi denied wrongdoing. She said she had not practiced dentistry or performed surgical procedures at the med spa. She claimed to be working at a chiropractic office where that would have been impossible.

Ghasemi said she signed the voluntary cease-and-desist letter in a fragile mental state several months after her sister died. She didn’t realize it would be visible online. Ghasemi later requested that the Georgia Board of Dentistry remove her cease-and-desist order because it was affecting her ability to lecture worldwide, the board’s meeting minutes show. The board denied her request.

Ghasemi claimed in an interview that she currently has an active medical license in Georgia. A spokesperson for the Georgia Composite Medical Board told Seven Days that there are no active medical licenses under her name. Her cease and desist from the state dental board remains active.

During a late 2023 visit to Iran, Ghasemi said, she was detained in the notorious Evin Prison for about a month for political reasons. Her attorney, Nathan Virag, said Iranian officials accused her of being a spy for the U.S. After she was released, she returned to the U.S.

About five months later, she returned to visit Iran again to commemorate the anniversary of her sister’s death with family, according to court records.

If I go, nobody knows what will happen to me.
Shohreh Ghasemi

Ghasemi said she fears she could be publicly executed if she returns to Iran. She is now seeking to have her deportation deferred under the Convention Against Torture, which allows immigration judges to block removal to a country where a person is likely to be tortured. A decision is pending.

“If I go, nobody knows what will happen to me,” she said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to respond to questions about whether the U.S. is currently deporting people to Iran.

In February 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied Ghasemi’s green card application with a finding of fraud, based on her submission “of falsified evidence to USCIS,” according to a letter filed in court records.

Ghasemi appealed the decision, according to records filed in her court case. On June 20, while she was still stuck in Canada, her appeal was denied.

The dismissal letter from USCIS cited “inconsistencies, misrepresentations, and fraudulent documentation in the record” as the reason for her initial denial and said she had not filed new evidence that showed the initial denial was wrong.

Six days later, border agents found her by the interstate. ➆

The original print version of this article was headlined “A Degree of Doubt | The U.S. says a woman exaggerated her medical credentials. She says if sent home to Iran, she could be tortured.”