The Bobster
Senior News Editor since 2004
Black-market NYC plastic surgeon hit with prison time for fatal butt lift
Whalesca Castillo, 49, already had a history of illegal boob and booty jobs when her procedures killed one woman and injured another in 2018 — and will now serve up to eight years in state pr…
nypost.com
Black-market NYC plastic surgeon hit with prison time for fatal butt lift
By
Social Links for Jorge Fitz-Gibbon
Published Feb. 22, 2024, 7:14 p.m. ET
A black-market plastic surgeon who ran an illegal cosmetic clinic out of her Bronx apartment was slapped with a state prison sentence Thursday for botched butt lifts that killed one woman and injured another.
Whalesca Castillo, 49, was sentenced to four to eight years behind bars for killing a 48-year-old woman with a lethal silicone injection in 2018 and leaving a 39-year-old woman so seriously injured that she had to undergo surgery, Bronx prosecutors announced.
“The defendant illegally injected the victim with a silicone substance for cosmetic purposes,” Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said in a statement. “Tragically, the injections killed the victim.
3 Whalesca Castillo was sentenced to four to eight years in prison for performing illegal butt jobs in her Bronx apartment that killed one woman and left another severely injured, prosecutors said Thursday. for New York Post
“The defendant also performed a dangerous cosmetic procedure that left another woman with substantial pain,” Clark said. “These cases hopefully will serve as a warning to the public to not undergo unauthorized procedures that can gravely threaten their health or even cause death.”
Castillo already had a track record of botched cosmetic procedures — she was busted in 2011 for doing illegal boob and booty jobs inside her Mount Eden apartment for up to $1,500 a pop, using shady silicone she got in the mail from pals in her native Dominican Republic.
She was sentenced to nearly a year in jail in 2012 for the black-market plastic surgeries — and was locked up for another nine months in 2014 for performing the procedures while free on supervised release.Castillo was back at it in February 2018 when she injected Marisol King with the shady silicone, leaving her with an extensive infection and severe pain in her thighs and buttocks, prosecutors said.
On June 17, 2018, the unlicensed plastic surgeon injected Lesbia Ayala in another illegal procedure, this time with fatal results.
Ayala died as a result of a systemic silicone embolism syndrome, according to the DA.
3 Whalesca Castillo, who has a history of botched illegal cosmetic procedures, leaves court in 2011after an earlier arrest. Chad Rachman/New York Post
3 The family of Whalesca Castillo, whose botched plastic surgery killed a woman, leaves Bronx Supreme Court after her arrest in 2019. for New York Post
Castillo was arrested in 2019 and charged with manslaughter and assault, pleading guilty in both cases on Dec. 18 and sentenced in Bronx Supreme Court on Thursday.
She was hit with the four-to-eight-year sentence on the manslaughter charge and got three years for the assault charge, with both sentences to run concurrently, the DA’s office said.