Parents put their trust into medical professionals almost every day, blindly expecting that they will take care of their children and do what is medically necessary. But we can’t trust everyone. One man, Dr. Howard Schneider, has been accused of doing horrible things to children in the dental chair such as needlessly extracting teeth, performing painful procedures without proper anesthetics, choking children, and performing other unnecessary procedures.
The dentist, who catered to low-income families on Medicaid, was being monetarily rewarded by the government: to the tune of $4 million in only 5 years.
The investigation began in 2014 when 6-year-old Bri-el Motley was taken in to have a tooth extracted. Her mother was told that there had been an accident while removing her daughter’s tooth, and when she went to check on Bri-el, she found her daughter face down on the floor with scratch marks, bruises, and a mouthful of bloody gauze. The little girl was also missing 8 teeth instead of just the 1 she was sent in to have pulled. [1]
When Bri-el could speak again, she told her mother that the nurse assistant and the doctor were lying to her mother and that he was choking her while performing the procedure. Bri-el also said “that doctor man threw me.”
Motley was enraged and hired a lawyer, who refused to take on her case due to lack of evidence. Seeking vigilante justice, Motley connected with several other parents in the area who had a similar experience with Schneider. They banded together and began protesting outside of his office.
But when a video of a 3-year-old child screaming while having caps fitted on his teeth went viral, Dr. Schneider voluntarily gave up his dental license to avoid a full scale investigation by the dental board. In November of 2015, he was arrested on 11 counts of Medicaid fraud.
Currently, Schneider is set to stand trial for his crimes, as a total of 131 lawsuits against families have also turned up against him. His trial was set to begin June 13, but an expert psychologist for the defense has stated that Schneider is not mentally capable of standing trial. [2]
Schneider is free on a $110,000 bond, living peacefully in St. Simons Island, Georgia.
The case reminds some of how the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), along with the Attorneys General in 50 states, filed charges alleging that 4 different cancer charities had committed fraud.
Sources:
[1] ABC News
[2] News4Jax
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