International. Seth Lookhart was convicted Friday on 46 counts of felony and juvenile offenses in the Superior Court of Anchorage by Judge Michael Wolverton, who rated the evidence presented by the state during a five-week trial as “overwhelming,” the Department said in a press release.
A lawsuit filed by the state in 2017 accused Lookhart of “illegal dental acts,” saying its patient care did not meet professional standards.
Lookhart, according to demand, “performed a dental extraction procedure on a sedated patient while riding a hoverboard,” filmed the procedure and then sent it to several people.
In at least one conversation, Lookhart joked that performing oral surgery on a hoverboard was a “new standard of attention,” the lawsuit said, citing phone records.
Lookhart was also charged with health care fraud for billing Medicaid for procedures that were unnecessary or not properly justified and stealing $25,000 or more by diverting funds from Alaska Dental Arts, among dozens of others.
The evidence indicated that Lookhart “believed he could get away with fraud indefinitely and that he believed his plan was foolproof,” Judge Wolverton said, according to the Law Department press release. That evidence “was often supported, and often in excruciating details, by Lookhart’s own texts, photos and videos.”
A lawyer for Lookhart, who pleaded not guilty on all charges, declined to comment on Sunday.
He is expected to be sentenced on April 30.
The Alaska Law Department thanked several of Lookhart’s former patients who testified during the trial, including the patient whose tooth was removed while Lookhart was filmed on the hoverboard.
Veronica Wilhelm testified that she did not consent to being filmed while sedated or having a tooth removed while Lookhart was on the hoverboard, CNN affiliate KTUU reported last month.
Wilhelm didn’t even know about the video until she was contacted by investigators, she said.
“I would have said ‘hell no!’ No, that’s unprofessional,” KTUU said. “It’s crazy.”
Stockler apologized to Wilhelm in court on behalf of his client.
“It’s unacceptable and I’m sure that when I agreed to represent him, I confronted him and told him what I thought of him for doing this,” he said.
According to KTUU, Wilhelm turned to Lookhart and told him that he thought he “could have made better decisions.”
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