A woman who picked up dentistry skills in a beauty salon in Bugis performed dental operations on clients at her own beauty salon in Far East Plaza Center, as well as at her home in Bukit Merah.

Court documents reveal that Ding Zhiyan, a 37-year-old Chinese national, left her previous employment at Yuxuan Beauty Club in Bugis in Feb. 2022 to start her own business, Meiyan Rainbow Pte. Ltd., offering dental veneer services to customers.

This typically involves custom-made shells being applied to the front surface of teeth to improve their appearance.

Ding required customers to brush their teeth before receiving services.

She would then have the customer lie on a bed or sofa and use tools to apply the dental veneers on them. 

The rest of the service is familiar to those who have been to an actual dentist. She would suction the customer's mouth, file the front of the customer's teeth to remove plaque, and then apply a gel to stick on the dental veneers.

All the dental equipment for these operations was sourced at a bargain from Taobao, an e-commerce site, for about S$370.

The jig was up in Oct. 2022 when the Ministry of Health (MOH) received a tip-off about the illegal dental practice. They found WeChat correspondence between Ding, whose screen name was "Yvonne-688", and her customers.

Ding was fined S$5,000 on May 14, 2024.

She pleaded guilty to two charges of violating the Dental Registration Act, while four other similar charges were taken into consideration.

Ding was in Singapore on an S pass.

Things started falling apart

Things, and dental veneers, started falling apart for Ding and two of her customers shortly after her business began.

On May 13, 2022, a customer contacted Ding via WhatsApp to tell her that the dental veneers on her bottom right tooth and two bottom middle teeth had dropped off.

She then got an appointment with Ding on May 15 to fix the veneers, but she had to pay an extra S$100 for the recovery procedure.

Another customer, on Dec. 11, 2022, found that one of the dental veneers fixed the day before had fallen off.

Ding got the customer to come over to her house to fix the teeth on the same day and waived any fees for the recovery procedures.

In Oct. 2022, MOH caught wind of Ding's unlicensed dentistry practice.

Given a lower fine because of mother with cancer

Shin Min Daily News reported on May 15 that Ding pleaded for a lower fine as her mother had cancer and needed money for her medical expenses.

The judge noted that it was fortunate that no actual harm was caused and took her lack of a criminal record into account.

Top photo from Shin Min Daily News & Canva.