Woman gets 40 days' jail for performing unlicensed home-based dental procedures
SINGAPORE — A woman who provided home-based dental services out of her public flat even though she was not a registered dentist has been sentenced to 40 days' jail in lieu of a S$10,000 fine she was unable to pay.
Ubaidah Nuruljannah Abdullah, 35, pleaded guilty on Friday (May 12) to four counts of providing customers with dental braces cleaning and maintenance, as well as teeth whitening services, without a dentist's registration or a practising certificate.
Five more charges of similar nature were taken into consideration for sentencing.
To protect the customers' identities, both their names and the location of Ubaidah's residence were removed from court documents by the Ministry of Health (MOH).
HOW IT HAPPENED
MOH's prosecutor Zhou Yi Hong told the court that on March 9, 2021, a member of the public had informed the Health Promotion Board that an Instagram account with the username "gigi_chantek" had been offering home-based dental services.
The case was forwarded to the ministry for investigations, which revealed that Ubaidah was the creator and user of the Instagram account.
Using the account, Ubaidah posted before-and-after photographs of customers with braces as well as a price list for her services.
The prices ranged from S$75 for monthly servicing of the upper and lower teeth to S$150 for the monthly servicing of full braces, and S$600 to fix a full set of braces.
Ubaidah told potential customers to "direct message" her Instagram account on how to book a slot with her or enquire about the dental services she was offering.
Ms Zhou stated that from Sept 1 in 2020 to June 19 in 2021, Ubaidah had carried out the cleaning and maintenance of braces for three customers who each paid S$150.
All of them had been interested in her services and sent a direct message to her. They made an appointment and paid a S$20 deposit to see Ubaidah before asking for her address.
Ubaidah did not give her full address initially but told customers to call her once they arrived at the void deck of the Housing and Development Board block where she lived. She would then give them her unit number.
She had also used two different contact numbers for her home-based business. One was for communication with customers and the other was used to collect payment through PayNow.
Once customers arrived at her unit, they were taken to one of the bedrooms with a mattress or treatment bed. She then asked customers to lie on the mattress for her to begin the cleaning and maintenance process.
This process included Ubaidah removing the ligature ties, rubber bands and archwires from customers' braces, asking them to go to the bathroom to brush their teeth, and using dental instruments to clean their teeth and braces.
She would then finish up by inserting new ligature ties, rubber bands and archwires to their braces.
The process lasted for about 45 minutes to an hour.
In addition to the cleaning and maintenance of dental braces, Ubaidah also performed a teeth whitening procedure on one of the customers for S$25.
To do this, Ubaidah applied etching solution onto her customer's teeth before using cotton buds to clean them.
In a plea for mitigation, Ubaidah asked District Judge Ow Yong Tuck Leong for leniency, saying that she was unemployed and going through divorce proceedings.
However, Ms Zhou stated that this is "not a good reason" to depart from what the sentence would otherwise have been.
In delivering his sentence, the judge noted that Ubaidah was not able to pay her S$10,000 fine and instead proceeded to impose a default jail term.
For operating a home-based dentistry without any registration or licence, Ubaidah could have been fined up to S$25,000.
