Consumers who were affected by deceptive business practices at several abandoned dental clinics in Southern Massachusetts may be entitled to some relief under agreements announced earlier this month by the Attorney General’s Office with JP Morgan Chase and Capital One. Both lenders have voluntarily agreed to implement dispute resolution processes for victims of Weymouth-based operation Sierra Dental and Fall River-based operations Spectrum Dental and Coast Dental. The advertising and financing practices at these three operations are the subject of pending litigation by the Attorney General’s Office.
Victims who financed dental treatment at Sierra Dental, Spectrum Dental or Coast Dental using lines of credit from Unicorn Financial Services, Inc. (now owned by JP Morgan Chase) and Capital One, may be eligible to receive refunds of disputed amounts they paid (including fees and charges that they paid), to have disputed balances waived and to have disputed information corrected or deleted from their credit reports.
The agreements stem from a related September 2008 case filed by the Attorney General’s Office against Gary Anusavice, a dentist whose license to practice was revoked by the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Dentistry in 2005, and 14 other individuals and entities. JP Morgan Chase and Capital One are not parties to the pending litigation. The complaint in that related matter alleges that the defendants lured patients to Coast Dental, Spectrum Dental and Sierra Dental with deceptive marketing, defrauded them by providing shoddy or incomplete treatment, signed them up for financing to pay for that treatment, the terms of which were not properly disclosed, if at all, and then, once patient complaints escalated, abandoned the practices only to start the scheme anew elsewhere or under a different practice name. Hundreds of patients were left in substantial debt with finance companies and with costly and complex dental procedures unfinished or mismanaged.
Consumers can contact the AG’s Health Care Hotline at 1-888-830-6277 to learn more about the agreement or to file a complaint against Sierra, Coast, or Spectrum Dental.
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