Riverside County woman gets 15 years to life for deadly buttocks injection in Malibu

A Riverside County woman convicted of second-degree murder for injecting silicone oil into a woman’s buttocks in Malibu, just over a year after being found guilty of a lesser charge stemming from another woman’s death under similar circumstances, was sentenced in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Nov. 5, to 15 years to life in prison.

Jurors, on Oct. 9, found Libby Adame, 55, guilty of the murder, along with a count of practicing medicine without certification. The charges stemmed from the March 24 death of Cindyana Santangelo, 59, of Malibu.

Adame and her daughter, Alicia Galaz, were found guilty in March 2024 of involuntary manslaughter stemming from the Oct. 15, 2019, death of Karissa Rajpaul, 26, following buttocks injections administered at a Sherman Oaks home. Adame was also convicted last year of three counts of practicing medicine without a certification, while her daughter was found guilty of two counts of practicing medicine without a certification.

Adame was sentenced in April 2024 to four years and four months in state prison, while her daughter was sentenced to three years and eight months in state prison, with Judge George G. Lomeli subsequently agreeing with an argument by Galaz’s attorney that the two were entitled to credit for the time they underwent electronic monitoring while out of custody following their August 2021 arrests at the home they shared.

Santangelo died after being taken from her Malibu home to a nearby hospital, with authorities subsequently determining that her cause of death was an embolism caused by a silicone injection.

Adame was arrested May 12 by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department personnel and has remained behind bars since then, jail records show.