A mother-daughter duo from Texas have been arrested for allegedly running a nationwide illegal butt injection operation.
The pair — Consuelo Dal Bo, 56, and Isabella Dal Bo, 18 — were busted in a sting operation Wednesday by an undercover cop in Houston, according to ABC 13.
The two women thought they were meeting with a client whom they had charged $6,000 for the illegal procedure.
They had just arrived back from California, where they were also conducting their illicit business.
The mom and daughter were planning to inject the undercover cop with an unlabeled brown liquid, according to court documents obtained by Fox 26.
In an apparent effort to calm the cop down before the procedure, the mother — a licensed cosmetologist in Texas — also allegedly offered the officer a Xanax.
Officers then descended on the scene and collected bottles of illegal injectables and medical equipment from their bags, Click2Houston reports.
The two suspects allegedly claimed they were “not even sure what was in the bottles.”
The sting was orchestrated by the Houston Police Department’s Major Offenders Division, the Food and Drug Administration and Homeland Security.
Both mother and daughter are charged with unlawfully practicing medicine, and the mother is facing an additional drug charge.
They were released on bond and are scheduled to appear in court on April 10, according to Click2Houston.
The FDA has warned for years against using injectable dermal fillers for body contouring, saying it could lead to long-term pain, infections, serious injuries and even death.
“The injectable silicone oil [breaks] off into smaller particles throughout the body, possibly causing permanent damage and life-threatening complications such as stroke, embolism and even death,” Lisa Vasquez, a board-certified aesthetic nurse practitioner at Pearlman Aesthetic Surgery in New York, told USA Today.
She added that it is difficult to reverse an injection, even for the most skilled plastic surgeons.
“Removal will require direct incision or VASER-assisted liposuction guided by ultrasound, [which] removes injected silicone, siliconomas and scar tissue. But there is nothing that can dissolve liquid silicone.”
Any granulomas, or clusters of white blood cells and other tissue, would also need to be “surgically excised,” Vasquez added.
The FDA has also said silicone stays in the body forever because the material does not break down.
