Veronica Perasso on the Illegal Procedure She Says Nearly Cost Her Everything: “I Put My Health in GREAT Danger”

Venezuela-born model and social media influencer Veronica Perasso claims that she cannot undo the illegal silicone injections she got at a friend’s place because it would require open surgery and a month-long stay in another country.

Perasso, who has over 4.7 million followers on Instagram, recently began posting video tutorials about her cosmetic procedures. She emphasized that she intends to educate, not to advertise plastic surgery.

In her exclusive interview with Where Is The Buzz, the influencer elaborated on her experience. She revealed details about the night when she got injections, the advice she received from the surgeons, and explained why she feels ready to give up on her earnings for the sake of publicizing her story.

Why she is speaking now

According to Perasso, she started getting plastic surgeries at the age of 20, but she chose not to conceal her breast augmentation.

“I had no problem talking about my breast augmentation, but after I did the silicone injections I felt embarrassed of what I have done to my body,” she said.

Her shame stemmed from the size of her audience and the fact that people would assume she was endorsing the procedure.

“Also felt like other girls would do it at that moment just because mine looked good,” she said.

She remained silent on the matter for years, seeing it as protective for both her and her young female audience.

“I tried to protect myself from horrible comments from the internet but also other girls from just doing my same mistakes,” she said.

From a $10,000 injectable to a house call

Perasso stated that she paid $10,000 for Sculptra, a procedure that stimulates collagen formation and is sometimes marketed as the liquid version of a Brazilian butt lift. She needed more volume than she got from surgery.

“Sculptra was me trying to add volume to the BBL. It didn’t work, so I did silicone injections,” she said.

Silicone gave the effect she wanted, but Perasso admitted she later realized she couldn’t dissolve or reverse it.

“Silicone did give me the volume I was looking for, but I realized later that it was not going to look good forever and I couldn’t reverse it or dissolve it like fillers, and that I put my health in GREAT danger,” she said.

She listed some of the complications she learned about, all of them in accordance with federal safety warnings.

“These illegal procedures can lead to hard lumps, skin death, chronic pain, and blocked blood vessels,” she said. “This damage can cause lung failure, stroke, and death.”

Her experience confirms the warnings. In 2017, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned about the risk of serious injury and disfigurement from illegal injectable silicone and from the products falsely labeled as FDA-approved fillers for enlarging buttocks, breasts, and other areas.

The FDA approves injectable silicone only for use inside the eye. According to the FDA, the side effects may include chronic pain, scarring, tissue necrosis, and permanent disfigurement. Injectable silicone may spread beyond the injection site and cause stroke or death.

The agency cannot assess the extent of the damage because unlicensed professionals do not report the injuries, and injured people rarely know they have the right to file a report.

“They were being really secretive”

Perasso described the events of the day she underwent the procedure. It started with a regular day of hanging out at her friend’s apartment.

“That day I had a regular day. I went to my friend’s house,” she said.

Her friend had already undergone the procedure. According to Perasso, this was her vetting process.

“She told me she had done it, and then they were safe, and then she didn’t want to do it again, but she told me I would be OK, so trusting her experience, I decided to do it,” she said.

The procedure cost less than at the clinic, which made it tempting to Perasso. She has mentioned this in her videos as well.

“I think it was around $2,000 or $3,000 for the shots,” she said.

She noticed the red flags before she was injected.

“Obviously I felt like I wasn’t doing something right because these people were being really secretive,” she said.

She was not given basic identification information about the injector, and the person performing the procedure spoke only English.

“My friend didn’t want to give me the phone number or the name of the lady who was going to inject me. When she arrived, she was really quiet,” she said.

She admitted that she was sedated with pills in the bedroom before the injections were performed.

“They told me to lie in the bed and give me pills, and they waited until I was kind of drugged, and it was kind of a painful feeling the first injection,” she said.

She could hardly remember the actual procedure.

“The needles were huge, and I just remember some sort of liquid or release substance going in,” she said.

What she remembers clearly was her reaction to the results.

“But honestly, at the moment I was so happy to see the big difference; they look amazing,” she said.

Her opinion about the procedure changed dramatically since that moment.

“I put my life in danger, and I regret it,” she said.

Federal authorities are pursuing similar cases. As the FDA reported, the agency cited examples of arrests of two Miami spa owners who illegally performed silicone injections in 2017.

What removal would involve

According to Perasso, the material was injected in her lower back and buttocks. She consulted several surgeons and was told that removing all of it is not feasible.

“Removing liquid silicone injections from the buttocks is extremely difficult because the liquid spreads and mixes directly into human tissue, fat, and muscle,” she said.

The body isolates the foreign substance, creating hard nodules that make the surgery very large.

“The body reacts to the foreign material by forming hard scar tissue and painful lumps called granulomas, making a complete cleanup nearly impossible without destroying normal body structure,” she said.

Her plan, according to the surgeons’ advice, does not include easy surgery.

“I have talked to a couple of doctors, and the solution is opening big incisions all around the buttock area,” she said. “The scars are big so that they can remove all the material possible.”

And even if it is removed, there is no guarantee that it will be fully removed and the healthy tissues will remain intact.

“It’s never possible to remove 100% of it, but to be able to remove the most, they’re gonna have to take all the fat and cut out a lot of tissue,” she said.

The recovery period will be long and will require help.

“The recovery will be very painful, and I will need a lot of help,” she said.

That’s why she hesitates.

“Right now I struggle making the final decision because the best doctors at the moment, I believe, are in Colombia because they deal with these situations every day,” she said.

Research findings confirm her statement. Surgeons in Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia, conducted many scientific studies on removing injected silicone and biopolymers (synthetic materials used in some injectable procedures).

They describe the open flap technique, MRI mapping before surgery, and buttock reconstruction using the patient’s own tissue. According to the surgeons, imaging helps map how the material spreads.

For Perasso, traveling to another country means weeks of absence from her routine life.

“And to recover, I will have to spend over a month in a different country away from my home, my pets, and my family. It’s scary to do it away from home,” she said.

She did not specify when exactly she will be undergoing the surgery.

“Right now I’m trying to get in stable peace of mind where I can handle doing all tha,” she said.

Fibrosis and what she was never told

Moreover, she has developed fibrosis, which is a complication of the liposuction procedure. She was not warned about it before she had the procedure.

“Nobody warned me about fibrosis,” she said.

As far as Perasso is concerned, the industry’s financial interests take priority over informed consent.

“The most important thing for them is for you to give them a deposit, lock in a date, and get you in the operating room as soon as possible,” she said.

Miami, love, and self-worth

Perasso moved from Caracas to Miami in 2016 and claims that the pressure to look a certain way was too high in the city.

When asked what proportion of her surgeries stemmed from self-image versus pressure from dating or her audience, she said it started with self-image.

“I don’t think at that point in my life I loved myself,” she said.

She said she was thinking transactionally about her body.

“I thought I needed to look in a certain way to deserve attention or love or have a relationship,” she said.

But now she thinks differently.

“The truth is that I cannot expect others to love me if I cannot love myself, and I didn’t have respect for my body or my emotions,” she said.

She also criticized the city’s artificial environment.

“I think Miami is a very artificial place. It is wonderful and full of fantasies,” she said.

She said it influenced her.

“Everybody loves living in a fantasy and pretending they’re rich and pretending everything; the beauty is fake, so by being surrounded by that, I started to believe that was reality,” she said.

Where the line is now

Perasso has undergone some corrective procedures, changed to gummy bear implants, and dissolved her facial fillers. Talking about going natural as much as she can, she mentions direction, not the endpoint.

“For me now my goal is becoming more natural,” she said.

The silicone is her current goal. She understands that reversal won’t restore the body to its natural state.

“I think my goal right now is removing the silicone injections out of my butt, but I know I will never be able to go back to the original body,” she said.

Removal of the breast implant is a more distant goal and will include more scarring.

“For example my breast: that’s another big transition that I hope to do later in life, removing the implant, do a lift and cut a lot of tissue to be able to have my natural breast again without the extra skin after being stretched by implants,” she said.

Going natural is her main principle. She draws the line at maintenance, not modification.

“I think and hope I don’t cross any more lines with my body,” she said. “I think right now I have made peace with Botox and facials and lasers and eating well, drinking water, and I hope I never modify my body so much that I cannot go back to my natural self.”

Profiting from a look she warns against

Perasso earns money from her looks, and her audience consists mainly of young women. When asked about the potential conflict between warning people against plastic surgery and earning money from her modified look, she said she was ready to accept the consequences.

“I’ve accepted the fact that I may earn less money,” she said.

She described the choice clearly.

“I have decided that I wanna be true to myself. I want to be honest. I’m not perfect, but I want to try to be more honest, more transparent, and also do things that I love,” she said.

She was frank about the persona she had been promoting and what it lacked.

“I used to just do this persona or this acting where I was OK with sexualizing myself and just constantly showing my body in bikinis and nothing about who I truly am,” she said.

Breaking away from it makes her warning believable.

“And that’s why I can tell the truth to young women and sacrifice my profit from my looks,” she said.

She realizes that it will affect her appearance negatively.

“I know that I won’t look as beautiful as before, but I want to learn to love my scars and feel beautiful with them,” she said.

She realizes that the emotional part of this process is yet to come.

“I have a long way to go. I think my real goal is to be reborn like a Phoenix,” she said.

Whether her audience will follow her or not is up to them.

“If I get any support or love for showing who I am, then amazing, and if it doesn’t happen, also amazing,” she said. “But I want to get to a place in my life where I won’t modify my body to profit or get attention anymore.”