Hoverboarding dentist found guilty after bizarre tooth extraction caught on tape
No, it isn’t the nitrous oxide — that dentist is really riding a hoverboard.
An Alaska dentist has been found guilty on dozens of charges for pulling a patient’s tooth as he rode on the two-wheeled gadget and other unsavory acts.
Seth Lookhart, 34, was convicted Friday in Anchorage on 46 counts that included reckless endangerment, illegally practicing dentistry and medical assistance fraud.
Witnesses in the case included Veronica Wilhelm, who was sedated when the dentist pulled her tooth in July 2016 as he rode on a hoverboard, news station KTUU reported.
Lookhart allegedly texted a video of the procedure to at least eight people, joking that it was a “new standard of care,” NBC News reported.
The video shows the dentist triumphantly throwing his hands in the air while scooting off from the wheel-y stupid stunt, then spinning around to grin at the camera.
During the trial, Lookhart’s attorney apologized for his client’s “idiotic” behavior.
“I want you to know that as his lawyer, I apologize for what he did on that hoverboard,” defense attorney Paul Stockler said, according to the Anchorage Daily News.
“It’s unacceptable and you can be assured that when I agreed to represent him, I got in his face and told him what I thought about him for doing this, which I think needed to be done.”
But that was hardly the only thing he did wrong.
Prosecutors say Lookhart also defrauded the Alaska Medicaid program by offering more-costly intravenous sedation to Medicare patients instead of anesthesia.
Anchorage Superior Court Judge Michael Wolverton issued the guilty verdict after a five-week trial, calling the state’s evidence “simply overwhelming.”
The judge noted that Lookhart’s own text conversations were incriminating. One message included the dentist explaining to a pal how he pulled off some of his crimes.
“Dr. Lookhart responded, in effect, that unless someone was standing right next to him at the time, no one would ever know,” Wolverton wrote.
Lookhart is scheduled to be sentenced April 30.
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