Victim of the dentist arrested in Malaga: 'He left me without teeth and the face of an old woman'

For Maria it was a question of aesthetics. She had front incisors that were deviated outwards and she was "very self-conscious". All her life she dreamed of correcting them and achieving "perfect teeth". But she was never able to take the plunge because the treatment was too expensive. Until, a few months ago, she found a bargain that, unfortunately, had a catch. "It has left me with no teeth, I have the mouth of an old woman," said the 50-year-old, who is one of 11 people affected by the scam allegedly perpetrated by dentist Alejandro Krakhmaloff and his partner.

Maria confesses to having shed "a lot of tears" over the situation. "It makes you feel very bad. For once I've decided to get beautiful teeth.... When they take your teeth out, you look like a 90-year-old woman, and on top of that he goes and leaves me like this". Maria is not her real name. Although she really has nothing to hide, she asks for anonymity because neither her family nor her friends know anything. Only her partner and a good friend. "My children haven't seen me without teeth, I try not to be noticed".

It all started and ended with that complex. Maria consulted her regular dentist, who fitted her with an appliance and warned her that, as she had a lot of movement between her teeth, there was a risk of them falling out if she moved them to correct the position of the pallets. The other, more aggressive option was to remove her teeth and have implants in both the upper and lower parts. "My clinic gave me an estimate and it would cost me 20,000 euros," she explained.

Someone told her about Dr. Krakhmaloff's clinic in Calle San José, in the historic centre of Malaga. The website was modern and very well done. "A friend of mine had implants done there for 9,900 euros, so I decided to go and ask for a quote," she said. The dentist - now under investigation - took an X-ray and told her there was no bone problem. The cost: 12,000 euros.

Although the difference was considerable, Maria said she would think about it. A few days later, the clinic's secretary called her: if you pay for the whole treatment and have it done before August, she would reduce it to 11,000 euros. She decided to go over to negotiate in person. She explained that she was not going to finance and that she could pay in cash because she was using her savings. "I thought he could get it down to 10,000 euros. Then he said to me: 'If it's cash, I'll let you have it for 9,000.

She accepted, although she asked him to start after the summer because she works facing the public. She gave him 7,000 euros - the amount he allegedly swindled her out of - and the rest would be paid at the end, when he fitted the fixed implants, which never happened. The standard procedure consists of removing the natural teeth, placing some screws and implanting a provisional prosthesis; a few months later -five, according to what the dentist told her-, the definitive solution is fitted.

In September Maria was scheduled for the extraction. "He removed all my teeth and I went home with nothing, with a mask. He [the dentist] agreed that I would leave with the screws in place, but he didn't put them in", protested María, who went the next day and asked him why: "He told me that he had done bone regeneration - which doesn't exist, according to the professionals she went to afterwards - and delayed the operation".

She went day after day in search of a solution, but the dentist kept giving her the runaround, she said. "He pretended he was going to remodel it, he told me that in a fortnight... ". Until one afternoon she found the clinic "temporarily closed". Days later, when she looked on Google, she saw that the closure was definitive and decided to go to the police station to report it. There she was told that she was not the only one and that the dentist was being investigated for alleged fraud. "I had the feeling that he was going to leave me stranded...".

Instead of the screws, as promised, he only gave her a temporary prosthesis - which, on top of that, ages her - before closing the surgery. To make matters worse, she tolerated the one in the upper jaw, but not the one in the lower jaw, which hurts like hell and causes sores and bleeding gums, so she has had to stop wearing them: "Now I have no bottom teeth and my top teeth look like those of an old woman".

And so it has been a three-month ordeal for her. "As the dentures are not fixed, when I sneeze the prosthesis comes out. I can't eat anything because I have no teeth underneath and my jaw doesn't close properly. I'm crazy to eat a steak and a chicken 'campero'", joked the sufferer, who feeds herself on mashed potatoes and fruit smoothies: "I have to grind the meat to be able to eat it, but I'm starting to get scared that it will affect my stomach".

Now, her hope is to raise the money and have a dentist fit the prosthesis to wake up from this nightmare. "I'm going to another clinic to see if I can at least get the bottom ones fitted, because I've run out of money," she said.