A 22-year-old Czech man and his parents posed as dentistry professionals and performed dozens of root canals and tooth fillings with the help of online tutorials.
Dental procedures can get really expensive, so finding a good deal is sometimes too good to pass up, especially when you’re in a lot of pain and low on funds, but cheap dental work can sometimes be too good to be true. Take, for example, the story of a family in Havlickuv Brod, a town about 100 kilometers southeast of Prague, in the Czech Republic, who posed as dentistry professionals for two years, performing cheap procedures in an unauthorized clinic, with no medical training and only online tutorials for guidance. They performed tooth extractions, local anesthesia, root canals, and tooth fillings on dozens of patients until they were finally discovered by police earlier this year.
Photo: Unsplash
“A 22-year-old man posed as a dentist, although he lacked the necessary professional knowledge,” police said in a statement. “The woman, who worked in the health sector, provided anaesthetics but also other dental material to which she had access, such as fillings, cleaning powder, glue, impression material, and much more.”
The fake dentist’s mother (50) worked as a nurse and could provide the materials necessary for the procedures, while the father (44) produced prosthetic devices for patients. In the two years that the fake dental clinic operated, police estimate that the family of three made four million Czech koruna ($185,500). They were arrested earlier this month and charged with operating an illegal business, money laundering, attempted assault, drug dealing, and theft. If found guilty, the three risk spending up to eight years in prison.
This isn’t the first time we’ve written about someone impersonating a dentist, and the president of the Czech dental chamber, Roman Šmucler, admitted that his institution gets about 10 fake dentist reports per year.
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