Listen: if the dentist says he doesn’t mind dropping by your house to pull a few teeth, you might want to double check and make sure he’s a real dentist before you open wide.
Police in Manatee, FL, say a man claiming he’d been a dentist in South Carolina was performing tooth extractions, giving dental exams, and making dentures out of his home or patients’ homes, the Bradenton Herald reports.
According to investigators, this man had never been a dentist, and had no dental or medical license in Florida. State records confirm he had been a licensed dental technician in South Carolina from Feb. 2004 to March 2006. The Herald reports that he was disciplined during this time.
The sheriff’s office first heard about the allegedly faux dentist when a couple came in looking to speak to a detective. They said they were introduced to the man by a mutual friend, and that he later told them he was a dentist who’d had a practice in South Carolina before moving to Florida. They said they paid him cash, and that he told them he could perform the work at home to keep costs low.
After he pulled a tooth from the wife and left a fragment of it behind, she experienced medical complications. That led them to dig around a bit, and they soon realized he wasn’t a dentist.
Another potential patient they had introduced to the man — before they knew the truth — told police that the fake dentist had pulled about 10 of his teeth without anesthetic.
Undercover detectives contacted the suspect and arranged to meet him for dental work, according to investigators. He was arrested on Wednesday and charged with practicing dentistry without a license
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist