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State officials launched a criminal investigation into an Albuquerque natural beauty salon owner soon after two former clients had been identified with HIV in 2018 and 2019.
On Friday, the previous salon operator pleaded responsible to 5 felony counts of working towards medicine with no a license and faces up to 7½ several years in prison.
A prosecutor mentioned Friday that Maria de Lordes Ramos de Ruiz, 61, offered a procedure called “vampire facials” to each purchasers in 2017 and 2018. The treatment includes injecting blood into the face.
She also offered three other methods constrained to the apply of licensed physicians, claimed Zach Jones, senior prison counsel for the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office. Ramos de Ruiz is not a licensed medical doctor, he said.
State Division of Health and fitness officers who inspected the now-shuttered VIP Splendor Salon and Spa in 2018 claimed they uncovered unwrapped needles and unlabeled tubes of blood in the small business.
They also located fake certificates for Botox and “vampire facial” coaching hanging on the walls.
Jones reported the process termed “vampire facials” is known in healthcare practice as platelet-abundant plasma injections. The treatment will involve injecting a concentrated variety of the client’s personal blood into the skin.
Ramos de Ruiz also performed a few other procedures minimal to the apply by a certified medical professional on a person or both of the victims, Jones claimed.
In advance of accepting the plea on Friday, 2nd Judicial District Judge Lucy Solimon stated she could sentence Ramos de Ruiz to up to 7½ several years in jail under the plea settlement. No sentencing listening to has been scheduled.
The plea offer also demands Ramos de Ruiz to pay back restitution to both of those victims in amounts to be identified in independent hearings, Solimon claimed.
The Section of Health and fitness learned in August 2018 that a human being with no clear hazard aspects for HIV experienced contracted the blood-borne disease following having a “vampire facial” at the salon.
In February 2019, the Department of Well being identified a next man or woman who contracted HIV immediately after obtaining 4 treatment plans from Ramos de Ruiz.
Both equally men and women had the exact same pressure of the HIV virus, the company reported. The two advised investigators they believed Ramos de Ruiz was certified to conduct the treatments because of to the education certificates she shown in the salon.
Medical professionals use platelet-wealthy plasma injections to take care of a variety of musculoskeletal injuries, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine’s web-site.
Jones claimed other methods Ramos de Ruiz practiced have been Botox injections, cryolipolysis or “cool sculpting,” and a fourth known as “stem-cell remedy,” which evidently didn’t use real stem cells.
