Lionel's Ex Hits Legal Wrinkle

Wed., Nov. 17, 2004 5:00 PM PST by Sarah Hall

Looks like love won't conquer all for Lionel Richie's estranged wife, Diane.

The Beverly Hills matron has been charged with letting her boyfriend, Daniel Tomas Fuente Serrano, use her mansion as a home base from which to administer illegal anti-wrinkle injections to her celebrity friends and other patients.

Richie was taken into custody Monday and slapped with two counts of aiding and abetting Serrano, who is not licensed to practice medicine in the state of California, though he is a doctor in his native Argentina.

She spent the night in jail, but was released Tuesday after posting $25,000 bail. Serrano was still in custody Wednesday, pending a bail hearing set for Thursday.

The faux physician, who purportedly referred to himself as "Dr. Daniel," allegedly used the wrinkle filler Artecoll, which has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, on his patients.

Lionel Richie paid his ex-wife's boyfriend several hundred dollars for injections in his chin, forehead and cheeks, and Shawn King, wife of Larry, paid thousands to have Serrano fill in "smile lines," the "corners of her eyes" and to plump her lips, according to an affidavit posted on CelebrityJustice.com.

Both the pop star and King told investigators they believed Serrano to be a real doctor at the time they received the injections.

According to court papers, King developed a "displeasing bump" on her lip after she was treated by Serrano, and has since had to seek help from two doctors because she has difficulty enunciating some words and drinking from cups and glasses.

King and Lionel Richie weren't the only ones duped. A Richie employee told investigators that between 20 and 40 people came to the house from July to December last year to seek Serrano's services.

The Richies separated in October 2003 and filed for divorce in January.

In March, Diane Richie filed court papers demanding that her ex dole out $300,000 a month in support payments in order to allow her to maintain the extravagant lifestyle she had become accustomed to during her marriage.

"We could comfortably afford to spend unlimited sums of money on everything and anything we chose," she wrote in her court filing. "I had no limit on what I could spend."

Part of the budget she outlined in the filing included $20,000 a year in plastic surgery expenses, as well as $3,000 a month on skin care and $1,000 a month on laser hair removal.

Meanwhile, in other Richie news, Nicole Richie was due to return to Fox's airwaves Wednesday night with sidekick Paris Hilton for a special showing of never-before-seen footage from The Simple Life 2.

The saucy celebutantes have been at "work" taping the third season of their hit reality show since last month; Simple Life 3 is expected to premiere early next year.