Could your next visit to a dentist in Texas turn into a nightmare? 

An 11 News Defenders investigation reveals you’re not as safe as you should be in Texas -- all because of policies with a state agency some say has lost its mission.

The problem? The agency that’s supposed to police the dental industry allows its people to make money on the side from the very dentists they’re supposed to regulate. It’s a policy that consumer advocates say leaves Texans out in the cold- with nowhere to turn for help. 

Beautician Brenda McCloud ran into the problem personally.

“Teeth are a big deal because I’m smiling,” she said. “I smile all the time.”

One day, she said, “I noticed my teeth were kind of yellow-looking.”

So she decided to visit a cosmetic dentist.

“I wanted that white teeth,” McCloud said.

But she said a simple wish soon turned into a complicated nightmare.

“After she did my X-ray she came back and said, ‘your teeth are full of decay,’” McCloud remembers.

That dentist’s solution? Crowns. Not one, not two, but 16 crowns to be added to her teeth.  

“I was petrified,” she said. But McCloud agreed to the work.

“She started chopping away,” McCloud said. “You smell like a burning.”

Months later, McCloud says problems developed.

“I mean there was a lot of pain,” she said. “I never could chew down on anything without pain.”

So she saw another dentist.

“He said, ‘well I see some really bad work over here,’” McCloud recalled. “All the crowns that she had put in do not fit.”

And what’s worse? In his opinion, most of that dental work was never needed because, “I only had two cavities,” McCloud said. “Two cavities — that’s all.”

Now McCloud’s left with anger and what she says is constant pain.

“I can never have my own teeth back again; they’re gone,” McCloud said. “I live on soup most of the time.”

So McCloud sued her first dentist in civil court, but then she got one more surprise in the courtroom:  Dr. Jonathan Penchas, who consults for the State’s watchdog agency, the Texas Dental Board. The problem?

“He is on their side,” McCloud said.

You see, the dentist she was suing had hired Dr. Penchas to testify as an expert on the dentist’s behalf.

“That’s not fair,” McCloud said. “He should be working for the people.”

The problem? It has to do with the Texas Dental Board: Its members are supposed to protect you, the public, by hearing consumer complaints on dentists and taking action. But the 11 News Defenders have discovered there’s a problem. That’s because the board and its consultants, who are supposed to police problem dentists, have made money on the side by defending those very same dentists.

“The consumer is not only being abandoned, they’re getting shafted,” Houston Better Business Bureau executive director Dan Parsons said.

Parson’s says the Board’s actions create “A horrific conflict of interest, an eradication of trust for the consumer in the state agency that is there to protect them.”

In fact, Parsons said consumers have complained to the BBB for years not only about dentists, but the dental board itself.

“There was collusion, there were allegations that Board members curried favor,” Parsons said.

Take the case of Lucille Zalud.

“What I wanted was less of an overbite, a better smile,” she said.

She sued dentist Dr. John Christian Schiro because she said, “I had an abscess on a tooth he crowned.”

And she claims Dr. Schiro damaged two other healthy teeth.

“What he did was he drilled them down to a nub,” Zalud said.

But when it came time for trial? Dr. Schiro had a powerful paid witness on his side.

“I’ve spent six years, seven months on the State Board, Texas State Board of Dental Examiners,” Dr. Nathaniel Tippit said in a deposition. At the time Schiro’s attorneys hired Tippit as an expert, Tippit was still a sitting member of the State Board.

Zalud couldn’t believe it.

“I’m very frustrated,” she said. “Instead of standing up for the public, which would be me, he is on the other side against me.”

And there was also one other paid witness: once again Dr. Jonathan Penchas, the state consultant.

“You know, I serve as an expert witness on many roles,” he said in a videotaped deposition.

So what about his role for the state?

Well when you file a complaint against a dentist, the dental board often passes it on to one of 16 hand-picked consultants for their opinion.

But like Dr. Penchas, the Board allows any of them to also testify for dentists in trouble.

“There is no reason to have this type of conflict,” Dr. John Dodes said. He’s a nationally renowned expert in medical ethics, and he’s also a dentist.

And he said even if Dr. Penchas never reviewed Zalud or McCloud’s case as part of his work for the State, he believes people who formally consult for the state should recuse themselves from testifying as experts for anyone else.

“You have to be beyond reproach,” he said. “We shouldn’t have people who are judging, getting paid by the people they’re supposed to be judging.”

So what about Zalud? In the end, she lost her lawsuit.

“It seems like they’re all working together,” Zalud said.

And the BBB? Parsons said they’ve stopped passing on consumer complaints about dentists to the Board. In fact, Parsons says it’s the sole state agency the BBB won’t pass complaints to. His reason? He believes the Dental Board has shown a long pattern of not handling complaints fairly.

11 News: “You’ve lost faith in the state dental board?”

DP: “Never had it, never had it.”

And even the State of Texas concluded in a scathing 2005 audit that the Dental Board, “…does not enforce sanctions against [dentists] who have violated professional standards,” which, “weaken(s) the Agency’s ability to ensure that only qualified practitioners hold licenses.”

So what does the board have to say? After various members declined our repeated requests to talk on camera, the Defenders tracked down Board President Dr. Gary McDonald. He drove off as we tried to ask him about the conflicts. So we tried to catch up with him one more time when he came back.

“Mr. Greenblatt it’s 5:45 in the morning. I’ve referred you to our general counsel,” he said, closing the door to his office.

State Rep. Fred Brown chairs the House Regulatory Committee on Appropriations. 

“Maybe it’s time for new leadership,” he said.

Why? Brown said he’s heard too many complaints about the board from consumers and even dentists in Texas.

“They are telling me our agency is not taking complaints,” Rep. Brown said. “That they are very lackadaisical about going after bad players.”

And as for the board’s and its consultants’ side jobs?

“I think we need to go in there next session and tighten up that law,” Rep. Brown said.

Doctors Schiro, Penchas and Tippit all declined on camera interviews for this story. Still, Schiro’s attorney told us the experts he and his client hired didn’t have an impact on the jury’s decision to clear Schiro.

As for the state? They say they’ve got their problems licked. First, with a new law Representative Brown pushed for- banning Board members from being paid experts.  The Board is complying now, but only after dental board general counsel Fread Houston wrote a legal memo defending the decision to allow Board members to become hired experts. 

But it turns out even the updated rule has a loophole: Board members can actually vote to ignore the rule, and still allow one of their own to do business as usual.

And what about the consultants? The board says they don’t see a conflict there, and thus don’t see a problem.