Why This French Businessman Is Going To Prison

Jean-Claude Mas, the 74-year-old founder of French breast-implant manufacturer Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP,), has been sentenced to four years in prison. The crime? Mas sold hundreds of thousands of defective breast implants in over 65 countries.

Isabelle Traeger, a woman who received a PIP implant and attended the trial, told the BBC that she thinks four years in jail wouldn’t be enough punishment for what Mas had done. "They explained what was in them: inflammable substances, substances to make your car work, and that at a certain point they said to the engineer who made them, 'How did you make them? How did you mix together these substances?' And he said, 'You use your best guess.’”

Woah.

Last spring, Mas and four of his employees were found guilty of aggravated fraud for using a less expensive, industrial-grade silicone to fill breast implants. They did this for roughly a decade, and the lesser quality silicone caused many implants to rupture. It affected 300,000 women around the world, and prompted a huge health scare.

The defective implants came to the public’s attention in 2011, and the French government suggested that women have their PIP implants removed. The scandal has been ongoing since, and in addition to facing jail time, Mas was fined 75,000 euros.

"We got sick, and then they told us it's not the silicone's fault. But it was. It was the silicone's fault," Martine Favret told News.com. "This is more dangerous than a medication that you can just stop taking. We have these inside us. If we want them gone we have to undergo surgery. We have to stop protecting these giant industries just for cash. Cash is good, but health is better.”