The house in the 2500 block of Iowa Street in Granite City where an illegal dental office operated. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Beth Hundsdorfer)
Article Summary
- Prosecutors charged two Venezuelan dentists with operating an unlicensed dental practice out of a Granite City home.
- Idania Moreno-Paal worked as a dentist in Venezuela, then came to the United States in 2022, records show.
- She and Rodolfo J. Figuera, of Rolling Meadows, face felony charges of practicing medicine without a license, a felony.
- Police said they found money, dental equipment and a cache of extracted human teeth during a search of the home. Moreno-Paal, her husband and four children no longer live there.
This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
GRANITE CITY — In a small, two-story brick house on a one-way residential street a couple of blocks from the police station, a bootleg dental practice operated, marketed through an encrypted app to the Hispanic community, authorities said.
Clients seeking dental care were led up the back stairs of a house in the 2500 block of Iowa Street and into a darkened room where there were dental chairs, suction hoses, dental surgical tools, orthodontics equipment and an X-ray machine. Cash was the expected payment for services…