The first accused was sentenced to nine months for serious commercial fraud and negligent bodily harm and fined 6,000 euros. His brother received a conditional six-month penalty and a fine of 3,600 euros for negligent bodily harm. The verdicts are not final, the public prosecutor and the defense took time to think regarding it.
The first accused is said to have cheated social security and patients for years. The alleged damage of 300,000 euros had proved to be far too high in the course of the proceedings. Because the dentist was acquitted of a fraud allegation of having collected the prices of high-quality products for allegedly inferior dental crowns. With the reduced amount of damages, the maximum penalty legally possible also fell from ten to three years.
Acted to the best of our knowledge and belief
However, patients suffered massive health problems following incorrect treatment by both defendants. On this point, they confessed, but always want to have treated “to the best of their knowledge and belief”.
The main defendant, a German-Syrian national, had opened an ordination in 2013 as a private doctor in Upper Austria. According to the indictment, he promised patients high-quality crowns, which turned out to be temporary. In 113 cases, he apparently also charged for treatments that he should never have carried out. The brother, who worked in a cash register ordination with the main defendant from 2016, is said to have damaged the health of patients in 16 cases.
“Serious mistreatment”
In 2018, the first suspected mistreatment became known. A patient had received a dental implant in inflamed tissue. This was set by the second accused in the brother’s private ordination. This “serious mistreatment” meant that the patient had to be operated on in the hospital in Linz, the prosecutor explained. There was an incipient sepsis. The patient suffered nerve damage on one side of her face – “permanent damage.”
Police investigations revealed that the “mistreatment” mentioned was not an isolated case, the prosecution emphasized. After four and a half years of investigative work, the list of alleged misconduct was complete.
The 46-year-old main defendant did not want to let the accusation that he had used inferior crowns but actually charged more expensive ones stand. The reason why he used long-term temporary restorations made of a plastic-ceramic mixture was that they were better than “ceramic crowns that became brittle”. He also informed the patients verbally regarding this, he assured. Summoned witnesses might not remember it. “Nothing was explained to me,” said a former patient.
The sworn expert explained that the long-term provisional devices used by the main defendant were “released for permanent use”. Only the plastic-ceramic mixture is not as “colorfast” as a pure ceramic substitute. According to his statements, the defense attorney saw neither the suspicion of deception nor enrichment, and demanded an acquittal on this point.
However, the younger dentist admitted that he had charged the social insurance for services that had not been rendered. With the two ordinations, “I lived beyond my means, then, unfortunately, I made the wrong calculations without thinking that this would also ruin my own future,” he said in court as a motive. He “deeply regrets cheating the cash registers”. In 2018 he owed the “tax office 140,000 euros”.
His brother, who is ten years his senior, also pleaded guilty, but stressed that he had always treated “Lege artis”. His defense attorney presented a stack of additional qualifications for implantology that he had acquired in Vienna.
Insolvency had already been opened for the two ordinations in March 2019. The liabilities amounted to around 500,000 euros, the dental practices were closed following the allegations became known. According to their own statements, the brothers want to build up something new once more as dentists abroad. As the judge has taken from social media, the main defendant is apparently trying to do this in Dubai.
more on the subject
Steyr Cheated and botched: Now the public prosecutor feels doctor brothers on the tooth
