Network of Illegal Aesthetic Medicine Products Dismantled in Alicante

The Civil Guard has dismantled a criminal organisation dedicated to the importation, storage, and distribution of illegal medicines and healthcare products related to aesthetic medicine operating from the province of Alicante, as well as in Málaga, Cádiz, Córdoba, and Sevilla.

Among the buyers of these substances were various legally established aesthetic clinics and other clandestine ones, as well as individuals practising this type of medicine without official qualifications.

In total, four people have been arrested and 41 investigated for 53 crimes against public health, fraud, professional misconduct, and belonging to a criminal organisation, with large quantities of illegal medicines and healthcare products mainly from Korea being seized, along with materials for their conditioning, storage, and distribution.

In parallel, the Risk Analysis Unit of the Seville Customs, formed by officials from the Customs Surveillance Service of the Tax Agency and Civil Guard agents, had been carrying out a significant number of seizures of illegal medicines and healthcare products at Seville airport, mainly from the Republic of Korea, whose final recipients were directly or indirectly related to aesthetic medicine.

These unauthorised medicines and healthcare products in Spain, which were often offered through the websites of various Korean pharmaceutical companies, entered the national territory in a concealed manner, usually under false content declarations, to hinder their detection.

Subsequently, they were stored by members of the criminal organisation, who, after carrying out the appropriate advertising of them, directly or through social media profiles, distributed them to clandestine clinics and unqualified personnel to perform these interventions typical of specialists in aesthetic medicine.

The activity of the suppliers was not limited to the national territory, as shipments of the aforementioned products to Portugal were also detected, in addition to having a network of people and bank accounts located in different countries to conceal the profits that the criminal organisation obtained from its illicit activity.

During the exploitation phase of the investigation, four home searches were carried out, specifically in San Pedro de Alcántara (Málaga), Torrevieja, and Cartagena (Murcia), as well as 24 inspections in clinics and clandestine establishments in the provinces of Cádiz, Madrid, Málaga, Córdoba, Sevilla, and Alicante, resulting in 40 seizures of illegal medicines and healthcare products.

In these operations, four people have been arrested and 41 investigated, who are charged with a total of 53 crimes against public health, fraud, professional misconduct, and belonging to a criminal organisation.

Among the illegal medicines seized in these operations, it is worth highlighting 700 vials of botulinum toxin, 275 vials of hyaluronidase, more than 200 containers of lidocaine, as well as over a thousand pre-filled syringes of hyaluronic acid, lifting threads, and specific machinery such as centrifuges for performing platelet-rich plasma treatments, all without the traceability, quality, and preservation required for official products and therefore without the assurance that the content is as stated on the labels.

Although this criminal organisation is considered dismantled, complaints are currently being collected from potential victims of these treatments, with cases of high severity due to the sequelae suffered after the application of these illegal substances by unqualified personnel.