The downfall of Marilyn Cote, the fake Mexican psychiatrist who claimed to cure depression in seven days

Marilyn Cote talks about Marilyn Cote. She says: she is a lawyer, jurist, and criminologist. She has a doctorate in neuroscience, neuropsychiatry, and neuropsychology. She is simply a psychologist. She was part of the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico for five years. “She created and patented, in 2012, the most frequent indicators for Criminal Profiling in the Rorschach Test worldwide.” She was born in Rome. She was director of the Centre for Mental Disorders Research at the Oslo University Hospital, where she is now an honorary member. She is “the best specialist in the United States and the Netherlands. Now in Mexico!” Previously, only Marilyn Cote talked about Marilyn Cote. Now everyone is talking about her.

Dozens of videos in English, incredible photoshopped images, fake degrees, and prescriptions bearing the Harvard logo. The content created by Cote over the years to pass herself off as “a renowned intellectual in Europe, the United States, and Latin America” has overshadowed Donald Trump’s election victory in the United States or the fight over judicial reform. There is a new protagonist in Mexico. The downfall of this fake psychiatrist, who promised to cure depression in “six or seven days” and anxiety “in three or four,” reveals the iceberg of medical intrusion in the country.

Marilyn Karina Cote Mendieta graduated in 2000 as a lawyer from the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla. Twelve years later, she completed a master’s degree in Criminalistics at the Colegio Libre de Estudios Universitarios. Also, according to the Secretariat of Public Education, in 2015, she completed a doctorate in psychology at the Escuela Libre de Psicología. For each of these three degrees, Cote has a professional license number, but none of them are the one she used on her prescription pad, with which she issued prescriptions for controlled psychiatric medications, and which revealed her scam.

Two months ago Mario (a fictitious name) created the account Medical Charlatans on X. This young doctor was fed up with witnessing people pretending to be medical professionals, posing a “risk to patients” and showing a “lack of respect” for his colleagues “who have written their thesis and passed an exam by the Medical Council” and who do comply with the rules. Before that, he had also exposed a fake geriatrician, a lawyer who pretended to be a doctor, and a doctor who passed himself off as a cardiologist. Until a few days ago, he also received Marilyn Cote’s prescriptions.

These documents perfectly illustrate Cote’s excesses. The lawyer combined the logo of her clinic, “Neuropsychology Clinic Marilyn Cote,” with those of Harvard and Oslo universities. In addition, she signed off on prescriptions with three professional license numbers as if she were a surgeon, a psychiatrist, and a clinical psychologist. She also included the location of her office, in the Torres Médicas Angelópolis, in the Fifty Doctors Hospital complex, a building that houses numerous specialists. But she also tended to add an address in San Diego and the name of Dr. Rodrigo Aquilino, a graduate of the Massachusetts General Hospital. With all this information, the prescriptions for Q-Mind (an antipsychotic used to treat schizophrenia), and Neupax and Kastandi (both used for “major depressive disorders”) reached Mario.

With a little research, the doctor uncovered the fake IDs, the fabricated degrees, the reviews on Google and Cote’s social networks. Everything pointed in one direction: Cote was “another charlatan.” It was Mario put all the pieces together and made a thread, which went viral on X, to uncover the lawyer, but the clues were already there.

In her publications on Facebook, Youtube and Instagram it is easily verifiable that she does not speak English, nor Italian or French; that she uses images of foreign men — some of them clothing models — to Photoshop the name of her clinic and pass them off as part of the staff; that all the articles published about her, in the magazine Chic de Milenio or as the cover of Salud Total, correspond to paid advertorials; that she cuts out her face to place it next to that of other doctors in clinics in the United States, on fake covers of the Italian magazine Grazia (under the title “Bravissima Dottoresa”), or even dressed as the FBI; and that the titles she holds are forged, such as a Forbes plaque that reads: “Best mental disorder expert in Netherlands 2019.″ Only one of all these boasts is genuine: Doctoralia placed her among the best professionals of 2017.

In addition, for five years, Cote has been receiving reviews on Google that reiterate: “Do not fall into the hands of this professional scammer and usurper. She gives unsubstantiated diagnoses and prescribes unlicensed medications.” “If what you want is to spend money and be insulted, this is the place. The lady does not know what she is doing. She is more about destroying you than building you up. She makes things up, such as diagnoses, and even fails in basic knowledge of psychology. After investigating her, I was able to come to the conclusion that unfortunately she is a fraud,” says a patient, who claims to have filed a complaint against her with the National Medical Arbitration Commission: “I lost around $1,000.” Such comments are repeated until the most recent four months ago: “She is a criminal and causes damage to health. She gives all her clients a report with a diagnosis of narcissism and prescribes Duloxetine and Quetiapine. I think she is a dangerous person because we all wonder why the authorities have not done something.”

Several of these reviews have been responded to by Cote herself, in a surreal spiral: “Have you got the balls to stand in front of me, Marilyn Cote, and repeat the string of defamations you are saying. You don’t have the courage. First, because they are lies and you would know that if you stabilized yourself, and not with benzodiazepines, I have never prescribed crap. And second, because as the narcissist that you are, you are full of fear, insecurity and frustration. I’ll wait for you at the Torres Médicas. I think that’s why I own 50% of the most expensive consortium in Mexico, which is Fifty Doctors, the first five-star hospital in Mexico that came from the USA.”

On Thursday, Fifty Doctors denied being linked in any way to Cote and announced legal measures against her for using its logo and name. Also, complaints on social media led the Puebla Health Department to close Cote’s office. “The Directorate of Protection against Health Risks (DPRIS) executed a total suspension, temporarily,” said a statement from the agency, which notes that “it did not have a notice of operation, health license, or title and certificate that allows the practice of medical consultation.” The directorate said that it would remain closed due to “the irregularities, until it is proven that it is safe for patients.”

And that appears to be that. Health policy analyst Xavier Tello insists that Cote’s case is evidence of a much bigger problem. “They’ve closed her practice? She can open another one,” explains the surgeon. “We have a huge loophole, because the professional validation system is dismally backward. There is no way to monitor who is a doctor or a nurse, there is no way to track the validity of a prescription. We have doctors who perform surgeries without being surgeons; the manicurist gives you Botox; gym trainers prescribe things; people who are not doctors acting as doctors, every day. And who goes after them? Cofepris [the Federal Commission for Protection against Health Risks] has no teeth. It can close the practice, but if someone does not file a legal claim there is no prosecution. In other countries, you would be arrested for practicing with a false license. But not here.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition