For illegally injecting liquid silicone into women’s butts in a business she ran from her home – even after pleading guilty to it – a 38-year-old Bronx woman was sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay $100,000, federal prosecutors said.
“Whalesca Castillo’s underground ‘augmentation factory’ endangered women’s health and lives,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Monday in a statement. “She remained open for business even after pleading guilty, demonstrating a blatant disregard for the danger to which she was exposing the women whose money she took, and for the law.”
Castillo, who holds no U.S. medical or nursing license of any kind, imported silicone from the Dominican Republic and charged women hundreds of dollars a shot, prosecutors said.
“One woman, who paid Castillo $1,000 for injections, experienced pain and shortness of breath following the procedure, and fainted within hours,” prosecutors said in the statement. “When the woman called Castillo to report her medical symptoms after being revived by her boyfriend, Castillo discouraged her from seeking proper medical attention, saying that a hospital would not help her because the procedure was illegal.”
In a raid on her home in late 2010, police found “numerous trash bags in the vicinity of Castillo’s home,” prosecutors said. “The trash bags contained over 100 bottles, some of which contained silicone residue on them, syringes, needles, bloodied gauze, and dozens of tubes of Krazy Glue, which unlicensed practitioners sometimes use to seal puncture wounds.”
