Not necessarily.
- Most practices have some amount of insurance coverage for employee dishonesty. The most common coverage amount we see is $25,000. Accessing this insurance requires you to determine the amount you lost. And the insurance companies want this determination made by an outside expert, not the practice owner. This financial recovery is fairly easy to get if you follow the right steps.
- Whatever weaknesses in your systems were exploited by the embezzler still exist, and are available to the next thief. By not having an investigation, you lose the chance to learn and protect yourself in the future.
- It is always possible that you were right about being embezzled, but had misidentified the perpetrator. In this case, you still have a thief in your office, but believe that the problem has solved itself. Complacency is the IDEAL climate for embezzlement.
- There are two ways for an embezzler to steal — many embezzlers steal from you; others use your practice to steal from insurance companies. Not identifying money stolen from insurance companies (using your name) tends to migrate you in the eyes of the insurance companies from co-victim to perpetrator. And I probably don’t need to explain why having a large company with deep pockets and little tolerance for fraud mad at you is a bad idea.