Police shut down illegal dental office in Granite City operated by
immigrants
[March 27, 2026]
By Beth Hundsdorfer
GRANITE CITY — In a small, two-story brick house on a one-way
residential street a couple of blocks from the police station, a bootleg
dental practice operated, marketed through an encrypted app to the
Hispanic community, authorities said.
Clients seeking dental care were led up the back stairs of a house in
the 2500 block of Iowa Street and into a darkened room where there were
dental chairs, suction hoses, dental surgical tools, orthodontics
equipment and an X-ray machine. Cash was the expected payment for
services.
It isn’t clear how long this went on. Residents in the working-class
neighborhood didn’t notice anything unusual, they said, except for a few
more cars parked on the street.
“This is a pretty quiet street. We don’t have any problems here,” said a
woman who lives nearby and didn’t want to be identified.
For at least a year and half, the house operated as an underground
dental practice upstairs until it was shut down last fall, according to
a police report.
After a four-month investigation by Granite City police, prosecutors
charged Idania J. Moreno-Paal, 41, and Rodolfo Figuera, 59, with felony
practicing medicine without a license.
Moreno-Paal, of Granite City, and Figuera, of Rolling Meadows, near
Chicago, both practiced as dentists in Venezuela before emigrating to
Mexico, then to the United States.
Moreno-Paal, her husband Salvador Francisco Tabacco-Campos and their
four children lived in the house, while upstairs she performed
everything from cleanings to extractions and even braces, police said,
in exchange for cash.
Figuera, who patients knew as “The doctor” would come to the Metro East
to treat patients and paid Moreno-Paal to use her home for his
appointments, according to a police report. He did not live in Granite
City, and his whereabouts are unknown.
According to police, Moreno-Paal and her husband fled Venezuela into
Mexico. In 2022, both had been granted temporary protected status work
visas to enter the U.S. Tabacco-Campos “possibly owned and operated a
pharmacy in Venezuela, according to the police report.
The illegal dentist office has since been shut down, and the whereabouts
of Moreno-Paal and her family are unknown. Neither Moreno-Paal nor
Figuera had been booked into the Madison County Jail or made a court
appearance.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request
seeking information about the family and Figuera immigration status,
including whether they’ve been deported.
A root canal gone bad
The operation came to police attention in mid-October after a
33-year-old woman reported that she experienced an infection that spread
and caused fluid to leach from her ears after a root canal went awry.
The woman spoke to police through a translator and told them she was
suffering from a toothache in her rear molar and didn’t have dental
insurance. Several of the woman’s co-workers referred her to Moreno-Paal,
who she learned was a dentist in her home country of Venezuela.
The woman told police she contacted Moreno-Paal through the encrypted
phone app “What’s App” in Spanish.
When the woman arrived at around 7:30 p.m. on a Saturday night, Moreno-Paal
let her up the stairs and put her in a chair. The woman told police that
Moreno-Paal gave her a pill and she lost consciousness and awoke after
receiving a root canal. She left after Moreno-Paal gave her a pack of
pills and told her to take one every eight hours. The woman told police
she paid $850 in cash and left.
Two days later, she returned to the Granite City house suffering from
pain and swelling.
Moreno-Paal and a man, later identified as Figuera, proceeded to
surgically extract the infected tooth.
The infection did not abate. The woman was treated in two local
emergency rooms. Eventually, the infection relented, but then the
hospital bills came.
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The house in the 2500 block of Iowa Street in Granite City where an
illegal dental office operated. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Beth
Hundsdorfer)
The woman went to Hoyleton Youth and Family Services seeking financial
assistance with the medical bills, according to police reports.
A Hoyleton worker contacted Granite City police. Two days later, Granite
City police executed a search warrant on the house.
According to a police report documenting the search, they found a
container with human teeth inside, dental equipment, narcotics, six cell
phones, notes and ledgers, bank statements and $1,254 in cash.
A violation of the TRUST Act?
In their report, Granite City police noted that they conducted a records
check through the Department of Homeland Security regarding Moreno-Paal,
Tabacco-Campos and their four children.
The Illinois TRUST Act, signed into law in 2017, regulates local law
enforcement interactions with federal immigration agents. It prohibits
them from holding individuals solely on immigration detainers, stopping
people based on perceived status, or sharing nonpublic information
without a judicial warrant.
At the time, the TRUST Act was one of nation’s strongest state-level
due-process protections for immigrants, designed to shield them from
being deported while interacting with local police.
Granite City police did not respond to requests for comment about the
case or whether they assisted Immigration and Custom Enforcements
agents. The Illinois attorney general’s office also did not respond.
In a May 2022 interview with a Mexican newspaper, Excelsior, Moreno-Paal
told a reporter she did not want to go to the United States initially
because she could not practice dentistry without going back to school.
Something changed after that. Moreno-Paal and her husband, Tabacco-Campos,
both were issued temporary visitor drivers licenses in February 2023 —
six months before they filled out paperwork applying for an occupancy
permit for the house on the Iowa Street.
A man who spoke only in Spanish answered the door at the house earlier
this month and said he now resided at the home and the dentist’s family
no longer lived there. He didn’t know their current whereabouts and
pointed to a mailbox stuffed with mail addressed to the couple.
After the search warrants were executed in October, Granite City
detectives Noe Marquez and Brandon Shellenberg brought Moreno-Paal in
for an interview. She denied the amount of income that she derived from
the practice, according to a police report documenting the interview.
When detectives confronted her with bank statements and wire transfers,
she told them what she was doing with the money.
“She explained the money was for a home she purchased back in
Venezuela,” according to the report.
Moreno-Paal told the detectives she purchased the medications found in
the home from local Mexican grocery stores, the report stated.
The neighbor who lived down the street told a reporter that she didn’t
know the couple’s whereabouts either but noted there have been other
people living at the house since the search warrant was executed in
October.
“It should be noted the above incident was not reported to the Illinois
Department of Professional Regulation at the completion of this report
in order for further criminal investigation to be completed,” the police
report stated.
The department has no reports on file regarding Moreno-Paal and Figuera,
according to the agency’s spokesperson.
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