A multi-millionaire dentist in France has been jailed for deliberately mutilating patients from low-income neighbourhoods of Marseille, in a money-making scheme in which he performed thousands of unnecessary procedures.
Lionel Guedj, 41, was jailed for eight years and his father, Carnot Guedj, 70, who worked part-time for him, was jailed for five years after a court heard harrowing accounts of patients who had booked an appointment for minor issues, such as a cavity or loose crown, and ended up having scores of healthy teeth removed for no medical reason.
The state prosecution team described how Lionel Guedj deliberately harmed healthy patients from the northern quarters of Marseille in order to defraud the social security system.
He sought to make maximum profits by forcing unsuspecting patients to undergo unnecessary procedures, showing “total disdain” for their health and then reaping payments from social security.
One woman described going to him, aged 18, for a minor tooth enamel issue.
He pulled out 24 of her healthy teeth without properly disinfecting the roots.
She said that since then: “I have pain 24 hours a day … My life is on standby.”
She said she shied away from society and felt shame. “You want to crawl into a hole and never come out again, even to work.”
