Wisconsin dentist guilty of breaking patients’ teeth in insurance fraud scheme

MILWAUKEE — This was not a crowning achievement for a career dentist.

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A Wisconsin dentist was found guilty of health care fraud for intentionally breaking patients’ teeth and claiming they needed crowns, prosecutors said Thursday.

A federal grand jury convicted Scott Charmoli, 61, of Grafton, of five counts of health care fraud and two counts of making false statements related to health care matters, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

Charmoli faces up to 60 years in prison when he is sentenced in June, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. That includes a maximum term of 10 years of imprisonment for each health care fraud conviction and a maximum term of five years of imprisonment for each false statement conviction, according to the news release.

Prosecutors said that Charmoli attached more than 1,600 crowns over a 20-month period, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. An executive with an insurance company testified that, on average, Wisconsin dentists installed fewer than six crowns per 100 patients. In 2019, Charmoli was putting new crowns in patients’ mouths at 32 per 100 patients, the newspaper reported.

According to U.S. Attorney Richard Frohling, beginning in 2015, Charmoli started to “aggressively sell” patients on the need for crown procedures.

“After convincing patients they needed crowns, Charmoli intentionally broke his patients’ teeth with his drill and took pictures and X-rays of the damage he caused,” Frohling said in a statement. “Then, Charmoli sent images of the damage he caused to insurance companies as support for his requests for payment for the crown procedures.”

The companies assumed the damage was pre-procedure and paid the claim, the State Journal reported. Evidence showed that Charmoli billed more than $4.2 million for the work between 2016 and 2019.

The scheme was revealed after Charmoli sold his practice in 2019, and the new owners realized after reviewing files that the crown numbers were unusually high, the Journal-Sentinel reported.

Charmoli, a licensed dentist since 1986, was indicted December 2020 on eight counts, according to the newspaper. After a four-day trial, a jury found Charmoli guilty of five fraud charges related to four patients, and two charges of making false statements related to two of the same patients, the Journal-Sentinel reported.

Charmoli will be sentenced on June 17, according to prosecutors.

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