The five-week trial found Seth Lookhart, DMD, guilty of medical assistance fraud, scheme to defraud, illegal practice of dentistry and reckless endangerment. The dentist unnecessarily sedated patients to maximize Medicaid payments, removed teeth without permission and failed to meet professional patient care standards. His practice, Lookhart Dental, was also found guilty of all 40 counts alleged against it.
Superior Court Judge Michael Wolverton said the state’s evidence was “often supported, and often in excruciating detail, by Lookhart’s own texts, photos and videos,” according to the news release. In July 2016, the dentist filmed a “dental extraction procedure on a sedated patient while riding a hoverboard” and then sent it to several people. Dr. Lookhart joked that treating patients on a hoverboard was a “new standard of care,” according to phone records cited in the lawsuit.
Dr. Lookhart’s sentencing is set for April 30.
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