- When we said we support small family businesses, we didn’t mean this.
Going to the dentist is one of the most terrifying experiences in some people’s lives. If you’re one of them, we’re sorry, but this story probably won’t help you at all.
If anything, it might make you compulsively look for your dentist’s diplomas the next time you go in for a checkup.
The police in the Czech Republic recently arrested an entire three-member family. They had operated an illegal, unlicensed dental clinic out of their home.
From there, they performed virtually every type of dental care procedure there is. That includes complex dental surgeries, like root canals.
It’s okay, though. The guy doing the surgery had read how to do it online.
It took two years before the cops caught on to the fake dentist family. All three have pleaded guilty and are facing serious jail time.
We can only speculate on the quality of their care, as the cops wouldn’t say whether they were acting on tips from the family’s patients. Although based on our experience with weird crimes, we can probably make an educated guess.
Family Business
The unidentified family lives in the town of Havlickuv Brod in central Czech Republic, a bit over an hour away from the capital of Prague. Its members are 44-year-old father, a 50-year-old mother, and their 22-year-old son.
Two years ago, the family decided to set up a dental clinic in their home. None of them had any training in dentistry, but hey — a willingness to help people and make big bucks doing so certainly makes up for professional qualifications.
That said, it’s not like the family was entirely without medical knowledge. The mother works in the healthcare industry, after all.
We don’t know if she actually treated anyone, but her real job allowed her to procure materials the family’s impromptu dental clinic needed.
“The woman, who worked in the health sector, provided anesthetics, but also other dental material to which she had access, such as fillings, cleaning powder, glue, impression material, and much more,” the Czech police said in a statement according to the BBC.
In addition to getting the materials, the mother also worked as a nurse in the clinic. The father wasn’t that good at the medical stuff, but he was handy, so the job of making prosthetics fell on him.
And what about the son? Well, he got to be the dentist.
Isn’t it great when a family agrees on how to divide chores?
Learning from the Internet
Of course, the son had no professional qualifications to be a dentist. Working on teeth isn’t exactly simple, though, and he needed to prepare somehow.
So, he turned to the internet. According to the police, the son taught himself dental procedures by reading up on them on the internet.
Now, we don’t know about you, but we wouldn’t be comfortable with a dentist going, “Don’t worry, I learned to do this on TikTok.”
Yet, the family got patients. The dentist son got to perform all manner of operations, from filling simple cavities to applying anesthesia and performing root canals.
The clinic was so successful that in the two years that it operated, the family reportedly raked in nearly $185,600.
Eventually, however, the long arm of the law reached into the illicit dentist’s office. The entire family was arrested in early June.
The son, mother, and father have all been charged with conducting illegal business, money laundering, attempted assault, theft, and drug trafficking. Each has pleaded guilty and is looking at a maximum of eight years in prison.
Subhead
With all that said, if an opportunity makes a thief, the family had plenty of opportunities. Czechs are desperate to see even a quack, as the country is struggling with a serious shortage of dentists.
The lack of dentists has been a long time coming, as Radio Prague reported already in 2005 that the number of dental care professionals in the Czech Republic was about to crash. Things haven’t gotten any better in the 20 years since, and the Czech government passed a law last year allowing dentists from outside the European Union to work in the country.
Yet, it hasn’t been enough and the number of unlicensed dentists has exploded. According to Roman Smucler, the president of the Czech dental chamber, he gets about 10 reports of illegal dental clinics every year.