2 Charged With Illicit Dental Work

A San Fernando Valley man and woman accused of operating an underground dental clinic in Van Nuys were charged Wednesday with practicing dentistry without a license.

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office charged Carlos Andrade, 34, with two counts of practicing dentistry without a license and one count of furnishing dangerous drugs, Assistant City Atty. Betsy Mogul said. Carmen Cevallos, 39, was charged with one count of practicing dentistry without a license, Mogul said.

Police said they stumbled onto the clinic in August when they went to a house three blocks from the Van Nuys police station to investigate a child-molestation complaint.

The clinic was littered with bridgework, dental tools and drugs, and a porcelain spit bowl channeled blood and saliva through a pipe into the backyard, police said. The house was a “filthy mess” and had a “bad odor, like something out of the Dark Ages,” Detective Steve Merrin said.

Andrade and Cevallos, who police said are natives of Ecuador now living in Van Nuys, are to be arraigned today in Los Angeles Municipal Court.

Recent undercover police operations also have broken up underground dental clinics in Los Angeles and Walnut Park, authorities said. Most patients in each case appeared to be illegal aliens who learned about the clinics through word of mouth.

Georgetta Coleman, executive officer of the California Board of Dental Examiners, which licenses dentists, said prosecuting such cases is often difficult because suspects flee and set up operations elsewhere.

In the Van Nuys case, Andrade could be sentenced to up to 18 months in jail and fined $9,000, and Cevallos could be sentenced to six months in jail and fined $3,000, Mogul said. Authorities have been unable to locate a third person identified by patients as a dentist there, Mogul said.