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It might SEEM like dentists are just trying to torture us, but they're not . . . except in this case when they totally ARE.
A dentist in Wisconsin is facing up to 20 YEARS in prison for cracking his patients' teeth on purpose, so he could charge them more money.
His name is Scott Charmoli, and he's 61. It turned out he'd been doing it for years, and wasn't caught until he sold his practice in 2019.
The new owners were looking through his records, and things didn't add up. The average dentist in Wisconsin does about six crowns for every 100 patients they see . . . and he was averaging 32 crowns per 100 patients.
He'd lie and claim an X-ray showed a crack in their tooth. Then he'd use a drill to ACTUALLY crack it and take more X-rays to submit to their insurance.
He billed more than $4.2 MILLION between 2016 and 2019. And that's just for installing crowns. It's not clear how long he'd been doing it, but he's been practicing since 1986.
His license to practice got suspended last year, and almost 100 former patients are suing him now.
A jury convicted him last week on five counts of fraud, and two counts of making false statements. He'll be sentenced in June.
(JSOnline / Washington Post) (Here's a photo.) Image © 2022 Getty Images