Gladys Araceli Ceron, Silicone Injection Scheme, MA 2024

Gladys Araceli Ceron, 71, of North Andover, was charged today in federal court in Boston with peddling dangerous silicone injections for cash, operating a back-alley body-altering business that put lives at risk. The indictment alleges Ceron performed illegal gluteal and facial injections for money, using unregulated silicone oil obtained from Florida.

Ceron faces one count of delivery for pay of an adulterated or misbranded device received in interstate commerce—a federal charge carrying up to one year in prison, one year of supervised release, and a $100,000 fine. She is scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate Court Judge Donald L. Cabell at 3:40 pm today in Boston.

According to court documents, Ceron ran her operation out of Lawrence, sourcing “gluteal material” from a Florida supplier for over eight years. In 2016, a federal raid at that supplier’s home uncovered plastic bottles of suspected cosmetic silicone fillers. Lab analysis confirmed the presence of silicone oil—a substance the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) explicitly warns can migrate through blood vessels, causing strokes, permanent disfigurement, or death.

By 2018, a cooperating witness began recording phone calls with Ceron to arrange buttock-enhancing and facial injections. During a recorded meeting on May 24, 2018, Ceron allegedly quoted $500 for buttock injections and $60 per wrinkle treatment. A June 2018 search of her Lawrence business turned up multiple bottles and syringes filled with silicone oil, along with numerous uncapped, used syringes strewn around the premises.

The case was announced by United States Attorney Andrew E. Lelling; Jeffrey J. Ebersole, Special Agent in Charge of the FDA Office of Criminal Investigations, New York Field Office; and H. Peter Kuehl, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the FDA’s Miami Field Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Rachel Y. Hemani of Lelling’s Health Care Fraud Unit is prosecuting.

Anyone who may have received injections from Gladys Araceli Ceron is urged to contact the U.S. Attorney’s Victim Assistance Unit at usama.VictimAssistance@usdoj.gov. The charges are allegations only—Ceron is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.