A dentist is facing up to three years in prison on charges of defrauding a city dental clinic out of $10,000, and investigators are examining additional claims that he ran a separate scam that literally left patients toothless.
Officers from the city police's economic crimes department arrested the 47-year-old suspect during a Jan. 10 sting operation in which he accepted $5,000 from the head of the dental clinic to take care of a nonexistent run-in with police inspectors, police spokesman Igor Tsirulnikov said. Police have not released the suspect's name.
Weeks earlier, economic crime investigators had conducted a routine inspection of the private clinic, which specializes in tooth restoration and replacement, Tsirulnikov said. The suspect, an aquaintance of the 38-year-old woman who runs the clinic, learned of the inspection and told the woman he could get her out of any sticky financial troubles if she gave him $10,000 to pay off the police, to which she agreed, said Tsirulnikov.
The police inspectors found no serious violations, but before the woman was informed of this, she gave the suspect half of the suggested amount, Tsirulnikov said. But the woman became suspicious and went to police after the suspect told her a few days later that he needed the additional $5,000 to make the deal, said Tsirulnikov. The suspect was arrested after a sting operation on 13th Parkovaya Ulitsa.
But according to Tsirulnikov, the story doesn't end there. After the suspect was arrested, investigators received information that he had scammed a former business partner and more than 50 patients whose teeth he had removed but not replaced.
The former partner claims they set up an arrangement last year in which the partner would provide an office while the dentist would do the dental replacements, the police spokesman said. The profits were then to be split down the middle.
Many of the new clinic's patients paid several thousand dollars up front to have their teeth replaced. Police have evidence that the doctor removed teeth from around 50 patients and sent them home to let them recover before having prosthetic teeth implanted, but the suspect disappeared with all of the money before even one patient had returned, Tsirulnikov said.
Investigators are examining the claims by the former partner, and the dentist has not yet been charged in the alleged scheme, Tsirulnikov said.
