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Lima, Peru. Police say a gang in the Peruvian jungle has been killing people and draining fat from the corpses to sell on the black market for use in cosmetics, although medical experts doubt a major market for fat exists.

Three suspects confessed to killing five people, but the gang may have been involved in dozens more, said Col. Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru’s anti-kidnapping police. He said one suspect claimed the gang was not the only one doing such killings.

Mejia said two of the suspects were arrested carrying bottles of liquid human fat and told police it was worth $60,000 a gallon ($15,000 a liter). The fat was sold to intermediaries in Peru’s capital, Lima, and police suspect it was then sold to cosmetic companies in Europe, Mejia said, but he could not confirm any sales.

A dermatology professor at Yale University, Dr. Lisa Donofrio, speculated that a small market may exist for “human fat extracts” to keep skin supple, but she said that scientifically such treatments were “pure baloney.”

Police exhibited bottles of fat recovered and a photo of the head of a 27-year-old male victim. Suspect Elmer Segundo Castillejos, 29, led police to the head, recovered in a coca-growing valley last month, Mejia said.

Six members of the gang remain at large, Mejia said. Among them was the band’s alleged leader, Hilario Cudena, 56, whom Castillejos told police had been killing people to extract human fat for more than three decades.

This year, at least 60 people are listed as missing in Huanuco province, where the gang allegedly operates even though it is home to drug-trafficking leftist rebels.

Mejia said police received a tip four months ago that human fat from the jungle was being sold in Lima. In August, he said, police infiltrated the band and later obtained some of the fluid, which was confirmed as human fat.

On Nov. 3, police arrested Serapio Marcos Veramendi and Enedina Estela in a Lima bus station with a liter of fat. Their testimony led to Castillejos’s arrest three days later at the bus station.

The three are charged with homicide, criminal conspiracy, illegal firearms possession and drug trafficking, according to a statement from Lima Superior Court. Police said they were searching for the alleged buyer.

Police dubbed the gang the Pishtacos after a myth dating to pre-Columbian times of men who killed to extract fat, quartering their victims with machetes.

Experts said human fat was used in anti-wrinkle treatments — but was extracted from the patient who is being treated, usually from the stomach or buttocks.

“There would be a risk of immunological reaction that could lead to life-threatening consequences” if fat from someone else were used, said Dr. Neil Sadick, a dermatologist at Cornell Weill Medical College in New York.

Dr. Adam Katz, a professor of plastic surgery at the University of Virginia, was incredulous when told about the gang.

“I can’t see why there would be a black market for fat,” he said.

“It doesn’t make any sense at all, because in most countries we can get fat so readily and in such amounts from people who are willing and ready to donate that I don’t see why there would ever be a black market for fat tissues.”



Associated Press