Here's a fun thing to think about while you're seated in the dentist's chair, the anesthesia already beginning to makes its way through your veins: What if the dentist, with her deft hands and genial squint, isn't a dentist at all, but an office manager?
If you've seen "Dr. Val" in the Bronx lately, there's a good chance the woman pulling your teeth and performing your root canals (!!) was actually just "Val," short for Valbona Yzeiraj, a 45-year-old employee at Ultimate Dental Care in Riverdale. And while Yzeiraj did work at a dentist's office, simply being in close proximity to a dentist did not, in fact, make her a dentist. I work in close proximity to a large jar of peanut butter, and yet, that does not make me, personally, a large jar of peanut butter. Do you see?
Yzeiraj is accused of performing at least five procedures while the actual dentist, Dr. Jeffrey Schoengold, was out of the office. They didn't go well! According to the Times, one victim complained of lingering pain two years after seeing Yzeiraj, and the other had an infection following a botched root canal.
Though Yzeiraj told her patients she'd practiced as a dentist in her native Albania, there appears to be no evidence that she'd ever studied or practiced dentistry...anywhere.
Yzeiraj was arraigned on charges including unauthorized dental practice, assault in the second and the third degrees, reckless endangerment and attempted grand larceny. She pleaded not guilty, though the court was also shown “surveillance video of her doing things to patients,” which sounds damning.
Schoengold, who had employed Yzeiraj from late 2012 to the summer of 2013, promptly fired her when he learned of her activities—but not before Yzeiraj also allegedly tried to steal another $20,000 from his payroll department, the Daily News reports.
“There was no record at all,” he told the tabloid. “You hear about things like this. You never think it’s gonna happen to you and here I am and it’s happening.”
