Seth Lookhart Anchorage hoverboarding dentist found guilty of unlawful dental acts and Medicaid fruad as license is suspended.
An Anchorage, Alaska, dentist caught on video extracting the tooth of a sedated patient as he rode a hoverboard has been found guilty of all 46 counts levied against him after the incident expanded into a wider probe of his practices.
The Friday guilty findings against Seth Lookhart, 34, included counts of ‘unlawful dental acts,’ reckless endangerment and Medicaid fraud, as per Anchorage Superior Court Judge Michael Wolverton written document.
Among the allegations outlined in charging documents was the hoverboard incident in 2016 which involved the dentist ‘performing a dental extraction procedure on a sedated patient while riding a hoverboard and filmed the procedure and distributed the film to persons outside his dental practice’.
Citing phone records, investigators said the dentist texted the video to at least eight people and described his actions as a ‘new standard of care,’ KTUU reports.
But there’s more.
Rogue dentist sedated patients so he could ride hoverboard unimpeded:
Prosecutors said he sedated patients needlessly then billed taxpayers $10,000 for the procedures. Prosecutors say Lookhart performed the sedation so he could ‘likely’ perform his ‘rogue dentistry’.
Lookhart and his former office manager, Shauna Leigh Cranford, were charged with billing nearly $2 million in intravenous sedation without proper justification. The sedation was undertaken to illicitly maximize Medicaid payments.
A wider probe revealed Lookhart defrauding Medicaid out of $1.9million the dailymail reports.
The patient in the video, Veronica Wilhelm, testified against Lookhart in December, saying, ‘What you did was outrageous, narcissistic and crazy.’
His attorney, Paul Stockler, apologized on behalf of his clients’ ‘idiotic behavior’, saying in court, ‘I want you to know that as his lawyer, I apologize for what he did on that hoverboard.’
The Alaska Dental Board suspended Lookhart’s dental license.
Lookhart is scheduled for sentencing on April 30.
