Lionel Guedj and his father Carnot, two former Marseille dentists, were respectively sentenced to eight and five years in prison on Thursday, with immediate warrants, for having mutilated hundreds of patients by enriching themselves on the way to Social Security and the mutuals.
For the president of the criminal court, Céline Ballerini, the two men had put in place “uniform and systematized treatments” which “destroyed” lives, which had become “without a smile” and “with intolerable pain”. The decision was welcomed by the applause of the hundred complainants present in the room, before being taken up by the president for whom we should “never be happy about a prison sentence”.
Placed under judicial supervision since 2012
The convicts, who held each other’s arms, remained impassive behind their surgical masks before being placed in the box in the courtroom. For the magistrate, who explained the court’s decision at length, with a lot of pedagogy, these sentences are justified by “the number of victims”, the number of years during which the facts took place (six years), “the very serious damage” to Social Security and the “very large sums committed to repair” these patients.
In addition, “they abused their worthy and acceptable quality of dental surgeon”, a “respectable status of knowing who obviously overwhelms your case”, she insisted. Placed under judicial supervision since their indictment in November 2012, they had never spent a single day in pre-trial detention.
He fitted 28 times more prostheses than the average
According to a calculation by the Marseille public prosecutor’s office, Lionel Guedj, then a young dentist living in the poor northern districts of the city, had devitalized 3,900 healthy teeth, without any therapeutic justification, out of 327 patients, for the sole purpose of fitting them with very profitable bridges. . He posed 28 times more prostheses than the average French dentist, had estimated Social Security.
The prosecution had demanded ten years in prison against Lionel Guedj, 42, tried for willful violence resulting in mutilation for acts committed between 2006 and 2012, and five years in prison, including one year suspended probation for three years, against Carnot , says Jean-Claude, 71 years old.