BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts woman who was paid by customers for illegal face and buttock injections using potentially deadly silicone oil has been sentenced to two years in prison, according to federal prosecutors.
Gladys Araceli Ceron, 73, of North Andover, was also sentenced Wednesday to two years of probation and ordered to pay restitution in an amount to be determined by a judge at a later date.
Ceron pleaded guilty in April to performing illegal buttock or face wrinkle injections on five customers, but the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts estimated that from 2004 until 2019 she may have had hundreds or even thousands of customers at her Lawrence business.
She used a material that she obtained from a source in Florida that was determined by lab tests to contain silicone oil, a substance that the Food and Drug Administration warns can travel through blood vessels and cause permanent disfigurement, a stroke, or death, prosecutors said.
“For 15 years, Ms. Ceron chose to make money by injecting her cosmetics customers with toxic silicone — all the while knowing that by doing so she was exposing them to serious harm, disfiguration and potentially death,” acting U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Mendell said in a statement.
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