Lionel Guedj remains in prison. The dentist from the northern districts of Marseille accused of dental mutilation on more than 300 patients and of Social Security fraud was sentenced by the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal to eight years in prison, the same sentence than that pronounced at first instance.
However, contrary to the decision at first instance, the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal also ordered the confiscation of Lionel Guedj’s house as well as the tobacco shop opened on Cours Mirabeau in Aix-en-Provence. Provence and held by his wife, following on this point the requisitions of the attorney general. Patrice Ollivier-Maurel had requested the maximum sentence for the former richest dentist in France, i.e. ten years in prison, with continued detention.
Jean-Claude Guedj returns to prison
Lionel Guedj preferred not to physically go to court and therefore attended this deliberation by videoconference, from the prison in which he has been detained since his conviction at first instance in September 2022. Projected on a large screen which faced the room hearing, the former practitioner appeared nervous at the start of the hearing, fiddling with a thread, a notebook and a pen placed on the table behind which he was seated. Between luxury cars, works of art and a yacht, Lionel Guedj was at the time of his arrest at the head of an estate of nearly 13 million euros, chaining patients together, up to 70 per day, and posing 28 times more crowns than the average of his colleagues. More than 300 people have filed civil suits in this case, victims of dental complications after devitalization of healthy teeth and the installation of unsuitable prostheses, but very profitable for the dentist.
Lionel Guedj worked in the northern districts of Marseille alongside his father Jean-Claude, also indicted and sentenced at first instance in this case to prison before being released last March while awaiting the appeal trial. Concerning the latter, the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal confirmed his sentence to five years in prison, with immediate placement under a committal warrant. “Father and son, it’s a pair united in the same pact,” accused the attorney general. The court of appeal acquitted the former dentists in around fifteen cases. They are both banned from practicing. Also accused of Social Security fraud, the dentists were ordered to pay a fine of nearly 1.5 million euros to the Primary Health Insurance Fund.