By ALEX GINSBERG
June 17, 2008
A phony dentist whose patient died after a routine procedure will serve just five years' probation after the city medical examiner determined the woman died of natural causes.
Alexander Poperetchny, 48, left Brooklyn Supreme Court without a word after his sentencing on the single charge of practicing without a license.
"What can you say?" said his lawyer Robert Race. "The guy was upset through the whole thing."
Poperetchny, who had been working as a dentist since coming to the US in 1991, was replacing tooth caps for Colette Villemin, 71, at his Coney Island office in October when she began to have trouble breathing.
The bogus doc ran to a nearby pharmacy to get an inhaler, Race said. But Villemin collapsed and died almost two weeks later Coney Island Hospital.
An autopsy revealed she died of heart problems and pneumonia that likely would have killed her whether she visited the dentist that day or not, sources said.
"The complainant's death was wholly unrelated to the conduct of the defendant," wrote Justice Joseph McKay.
