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As a method to obtain more profit, a dentist broke his patients' teeth
Approximately 100 lawsuits were filed against the specialist.
Scott Charmoli, a dentist in the United States, greeted his patients and left them worse off than when they arrived.
Charmoli was in charge of drilling and breaking his teeth, in order to offer more expensive services to his patients and thus increase his fortune, according to data from US federal prosecutors.
This bad practice generated large sums of money for the dentist. According to a report by The Washington Post, in 2014 he raised 1.4 million dollars in the application of dental crowns. While, in 2015, he performed more than 1,000 crown procedures, obtaining 2.5 million dollars.
After four days of trial, on March 10, Charmoli was sentenced on five counts of health care fraud. In addition, he obtained two charges for making false statements regarding the treatment of patients.
In June is when the man's sentence will be known. The only information available is that he could receive a sentence of 10 years in prison, for each of the charges of health care fraud.
For the charges of lying about treating patients, he could get five years each.
Defendant's assets
In 2020, the dentist pleaded not guilty. Nila Robinson, his lawyer, explained that his benefits were due to his great effort after many years of work, and for having a good business vision.
Scott's fortune swelled to assets worth more than $6.8 million at the end of 2020 as he owned properties in Arizona and Wisconsin, according to prosecutors.
In addition, the authorities indicated that he had billed 4.2 million dollars for the treatment of dental crowns, between the years 2016 and 2019.
In 2015, the man began to pressure patients, prescribing crown treatments, when they really did not need it. For this, he intentionally damaged the teeth generating breakages or perforations.
As a fraudulent method, he also chose to send photographs of his patients' condition to the different insurance companies. This justified the need for intervention.
Affected patients
At the trial, there were some of the patients that the dentist treated.
They were all surprised when the accused assured that they should undergo crown treatment, despite the fact that they considered that they were fine. Even a former employee also testified against him.
The treatment for which Charmoli was accused consisted of the placement of crowns, in which a damaged part of the tooth is replaced.
In this way, the dentist performed the treatment 95% of the time equivalent to what Wisconsin dentists did, over the course of 2016 and 2019.
Those who were most affected by this situation were people in vulnerable situations, patients experiencing economic problems, or patients who had had cancer.
Thus, a total of almost 100 lawsuits were received against Charmoli, for clear medical negligence.
