Everything About Embezzlement in One Hour

[0:00] You are listening to the Dental Practice Owner's Podcast brought to you by Prosperident. From our unique perspective as dentistry's embezzlement experts, Prosperident's team can bring you the information that is important to practice owners. The Dental Practice Owner's Podcast brings you strategies, tools and tips that you can use and dentistry's thought leaders as guests. So sit back, relax and listen to Prosperident's Amber Weber, Wendy Askins and David Harris

[0:31] talk about the issues that matter to you. Well, hi everybody. Well hi everybody and welcome back to our webinar series. This is it, the last night. We've done 20 webinars, this is number 20 and we're wrapping up tonight. Why are we wrapping up?

[0:54] We are because live speaking is picking up again. Our speakers are hitting the road and it's getting increasingly tough to do the planning and the organization that has to happen to put these webinars together. So it's your chance to see one of us live. You've met our gang. Of course Wendy and Amber both live in Texas and I live in Halifax, Canada.

[1:18] This was taken last week in Texas. I was there to do some speaking and Wendy and Amber came with me and co-presented with me and we're all bikers so we got on our bikes and we went for a beautiful ride in Austin, Texas. So yes, we do actually get together and in case you're wondering, I'm the one with the hairy legs.

[1:38] A few milestones that we've reached in these webinars, this whole thing started in April of 2021 when Amber came to me and said, you know what, offices are closed. A lot of people are kind of shut in. We should do webinars. And my response was, nah, you know, that's not going to work. Anyway, Amber, to her tremendous credit, didn't give up quite so easily and persisted

[2:04] a little bit and we've had a pretty successful webinar series as a result of her idea and her persistence. And you can see a few statistics there. We've done 20 of these in total. We've had over 9,000 attendees. We've given away over $50,000 worth of our stuff.

[2:24] And when we started this, what we said right at the beginning was that our goal was not to take but to give and we've done that. And to me, one of the best parts is that we've launched a speaking career. And I'm just going to show you a quick little video of our very own Amber on stage in Texas last week. And I'm just admiring how well she does this.

[2:50] On a monthly basis, you don't just want to look at money in and does it match your bank. You also want to look at those other things that we've been talking about, the adjustments, deleted transactions, anything that was modified, maybe some services on some fillings. And the main thing is your AR report. That's where you'll really see a lot of back dating. So I have a fun story about deleted transactions.

[3:16] I recently did a case for a doctor that had an office manager and they had some deleted transactions. He would have never known this. He had never printed a report in his practice management for 11 years. He had never looked at these reports. So everything always matched.

[3:36] So when he never looked at day sheets or anything like that. So when we went through, if you came with cash, she would go delete that. Well, had he been looking at these transactions, he would have seen a lot of deleted or modified transactions. And when we went back to those patients, rather than those transactions being replaced with credit card payment, check payment, they were replaced with cash currency discount.

[4:04] So even though if you had been printing day in reports, everything would have matched. But it was another area of vulnerability that he could have caught monitoring that on a monthly, weekly, regular basis. And what's impressive about that is that that's Amber's first time talking to a live audience about embezzlement. She looked pretty polished.

[4:25] And where did those skills come from? I think a lot of it came from being on camera here. This article in Dentistry today, and you can see the authors in the middle, just came out and part of what a lot of the ideas in it came from the concepts that we developed from this webinar series. So this has also helped us in terms of delivering some products.

[4:50] I also want to mention that we have two attendance champs. We have actually two people who have attended all 20 of our webinars. And there's a little gift of appreciation on its way out to each of these people. I was just online with Emthea a minute before we came on here and she was having trouble joining. So I hope that she found a way.

[5:14] But we really want to thank our most devoted fans. So I want to introduce some special guests. And there are two of our examiners. I think we're going to have a client hopefully join us later as well, just depending on what time she finishes up. But the two people I'm going to introduce, and they've both been here before,

[5:34] that they really are interesting people and they know a lot about this field. First of all, Scott Clifford, one of our longest serving examiners and certainly a skilled guy. He's one of the people along with Wendy Askins who trains new investigators for us. And one of our very rising stars is named Christine Geary. She's a senior examiner, both Scott and Christine live in California. And they're going to be with us tonight and we're going to pick their brains a little bit.

[6:07] We're going to talk a little bit about how it feels to be embezzled in things. And we're also going to mine all of us for our top three tips, our top three ideas for you to protect yourself. So what we're going to do here is we're going to kind of go unplug, we're going to turn off the slideshow and just go back to the gang. We're going to talk about the world.

[6:31] And I see you're all muted. So we're going to have to fix that sooner or later. But who wants to start us off? Wendy, anything you want to ask Christine or Scott to get going? Are you kidding me? You're asking me if I want to talk first.

[6:49] Yeah, I guess it was. Wow, I can talk all night long. I guess I'm going to start off and ask. It still surprises me today, even how I will meet people at a meeting and they'll say, I've never heard of prosperity and what do you do? And that absolutely shocks me.

[7:14] So Christine and Scott, how did you guys hear about prosperity and how did you get involved with the team? I guess I'll go ahead and go first out, if you don't mind. The first time I heard about prosperity was actually at one of David's live speaking events in, I think, Scottsdale, Arizona that I attended in probably at least six, seven, eight, nine years ago.

[7:42] And I had very limited experience with even hearing about embezzlement stories before. So I was pretty shocked when I attended and heard everything that David had to say. And I was also just fascinated by what he does and never, never forgot. I guess for me, I was managing dental offices. I did that for years and years before I got started with this. And I had an oral surgeon buddy of mine in town that thought he might

[8:17] have been having a problem and called me into his office and I drove over there in the evening and we started poking around. And I'm like, yeah, this is this is unusual, this pattern that I'm seeing. And so he kind of hired me to do an investigation for him. And I did that for it took about three weeks, work with the DA and stuff. And then the prosecution took even longer than that.

[8:42] But and I kept working my day job. But in the meantime, I was like, I could do this for a living. And that's eventually how I ended up talking to Dave. And and that was eight years ago. And I've never looked back. This is my absolute that I love, love, love what I do.

[8:59] You know, what's interesting, I think about all of us, especially on the panel and a lot of our fellow associates at Prosperit and is that we've all been on the other side of being in an office that has been in Bezelfront. And it's it's interesting. And I think it makes us more passionate about our job and about the work we have to do. And it makes us have more compassion for our clients when they call us

[9:35] because we've actually been in their shoes. And Amber, I know that's exactly how you came to Prosperit. Right. Yeah, definitely. I I had never even thought about embezzlement existing in the dental industry. Just never even thought of it. And so I was a hygienist for 14 years and I managed an office

[9:54] and started to branch out into the consulting world and went into an office. And the production was that insurance isn't paying us. You know, insurance is the devil. They're not paying us anything. Went through refiled a lot of claims and discovered embezzlement not even looking for it.

[10:11] It took me a lot longer to uncover everything just because I didn't know how to do things as well, because I didn't even think about it. And then by word of mouth, I met Dave and told him you're stuck with me too bad. So I'm so sad. I'd love to see that video of you speaking, Amber. That was so amazing.

[10:32] Didn't she look good? Yeah, that was that was really good. And I just I just want to welcome by audio a special guest with us. Her name is Dr. Dr. Jennifer. I will I will call her and she's she's a practicing dentist who has has gotten to know us fairly well.

[10:51] I first met Jennifer. Oh, gosh, probably seven or eight years ago, I'm thinking. And we've we've stayed in contact since. How are you doing tonight, Jen? Yeah, pretty good. OK, good to good to hear you.

[11:07] And I'm so glad you could join us. And, you know, feel free to tell tonight as little or as much of your story as you want. I asked you on because I know you have fairly strong feelings about this topic and wanted to tell your story once, once, twice, and actually three times.

[11:31] You don't know about the first time even. Oh, wow. Yeah, all right. I was pretty minor. Yeah, I mean, tell us what went through your head when when you got the you know, when when you woke up one morning and you said, oh, my gosh, it's happening.

[11:50] Well, I didn't really that with the first one, it wasn't really like that. I had my mother-in-law working in the office and she had kind of set the person up because I was just listening to what the last person said about reversals of cash payments. There was a lot of that going on. Yeah. And not a lot.

[12:07] Like, you know, maybe 50, 60 bucks here and there, nothing that, you know, I wouldn't think about except that the time she did it to one of my friends and I was able to phone and say, did you actually give us some cash today? And so that was kind of dumb. And it was also being taken out of my wallet, which is really interesting because I had a little office in the back and it would only be like 10 bucks, 20 bucks.

[12:30] And I was thinking to myself, well, did I actually have that this morning? Do you know how you don't really use your cash all that much? Did I really have any? And then one time I knew for sure when I took her for coffee and she offered to pay that, OK, I knew there was coffee, there was money this morning because I used it at the Starbucks.

[12:46] But I mean, that was the first time and I didn't really do much other than confront her and then I had to fire her because she did confess. But I didn't go any further with that. I don't think there was a lot taken then. The second time, that's when I met you. So I just needed to know.

[13:04] So I wanted to do like the full forensic investigation just to see because I thought, OK, this is the second time like this is ridiculous. And then the third time, well, that was a whole other ballgame because that I still think the third one could have set up the second one in some way to be found because she needed to get rid of her. But yeah, just just a little backstory, if I if I could, on Jim's story.

[13:30] On number three, because I like to do that. All right, well, number three with her was somebody that we had investigated previously at a different practice and she ended up getting fired there for stealing. Dr. Pat Little is is is one of our investigators. Actually, I had I had invited Pat for tonight, but he's he's flying through a speaking engagement, so he couldn't be with us.

[13:54] But Dr. Pat Little was our investigator in this other client situation. Kim was the name of the thief just to make the conversation a little bit less awkward. And Kim stole from this other doctor and got fired and then got a job with with Jen, who's with us tonight. And Jen called me to tell me that she had concerns again and was describing the ambassador. And what did I do next, Jen?

[14:20] You said I think I must have mentioned her first name. Am I allowed to tell that story? Oh, you sure are. OK, so because I don't think you were supposed to say this. Soon as I said the first name, you said the last name and said, please tell me that that's not who's working for you.

[14:36] And my heart like skipped a beat and it's like, why do you know her name? And you said, well, you probably shouldn't say this, but we've investigated her before you need to get rid of her right away. Well, she was like my saving grace. She did everything for me. She was like, I thought, how did I get so lucky to have an employee like this?

[14:54] And I'm like, are you kidding me? I can't get rid of her today because I'm leaving for Vegas tomorrow. And I feel like from what you've told me, I don't want to leave her. She's going to be more damaged, but I don't really want to, you know, arouse any suspicions right now, either. So that was difficult, but and that's only because we're up in Canada.

[15:15] Here are wheels of justice turned very slowly. So they think she only just got charged with the what happened at the last office in December, and that was probably five years before I hired her. Thanks a lot. And, you know, that's a that's a Canadian phenomenon, but it happens in the US as well. I mean, Wendy Askins did a case where it actually, believe it or not, took 10 years,

[15:41] maybe even a little more, almost 11 years, I'm thinking, Wendy, for justice to catch up with this person. It did eventually, but it took a heck of a long time. I should stop talking, though, and see if anybody else has has any anything they want to ask.

[15:58] Dr. Jen, I'd like to ask you at any time when embezzlement happened in your practice, what was it like to confront the suspect? And what ammunition, if you will, did you take with you to that meeting to prove that she had been stealing from you? Well, the first time I just told her about like, I mean, I had the things

[16:28] where she had reversed like a deposit reversal. And so I already knew that, you know, it was a friend of mine, bad mistake. And she'd burst into tears and confessed right there. I'm sorry, you know, I did it. And I say, you know, I had no choice but to fire you. But I think it was pretty petty on her point.

[16:46] She like just petty theft. She had a bit of a habit with smoking. She would eat a lot all day, too. Like just I think she had a stomach staple. So it was always like a bag of chips or something going. So it was maybe a $20 a day habit.

[16:59] But then I, you know, her husband also had a drug habit. So it probably started to escalate a bit. I don't think she had really taken all that much. So that was the first time. The second time was just though I had the same sort of thing. I think it was a $2,000 cash payment that one of my staff's sisters had made.

[17:17] And that just went missing. And it was reversed on the books, but then it would, what she was doing, the second one was actually just buying time and paying back loans. So she would take maybe 2000. She also had a bad husband that had a drug habit or something. She would take 2000.

[17:34] Usually she'd put it back for the second time, one of the times she didn't. She just kept that going for several months. And the new girl was number three, was actually the one that caught it. And then she said she has to go. She's been taking bank deposits home, so I confronted her. And even the number three, she had all of that down.

[17:54] You then need to go in there with me. You need to have a witness. She knew like all the stuff that had to happen, which is interesting. Because she guided me through to the second one. And hindsight is probably because it happened to her, but. She was a really good office manager.

[18:12] I'm thinking, OK, you're right, we need a witness. I can't just confront her alone. And she broke into tears too and said, well, I'm not a thief. And she always contended she's not a thief. I still think that she planned to give it back. She was just kind of borrowing without asking,

[18:28] and which is really sad because I would actually give in her loans before that she could pay back. But that's how that would happen. Number three, I never did confront her about what she did. I told her it was more the what was going on with the staff at the time. It was my staff who actually found her out

[18:48] because they were finding so many lies. She was a chronic liar, pathological, actually. And none of her personal stories made any sense. So my staff were all suspicious of her. And that's when I kind of got ahold of David again. And he knew the name.

[19:05] So I didn't actually notice any cash. Well, there was cash missing, actually. She actually came to me and said the bank deposit was four thousand dollars short or something like that. And since it was her responsibility to govern over the rest of the girls, she would just pay it back.

[19:23] And it was almost like, OK, well, if you didn't take it, why would you offer to give it back? And that was actually my bookkeeper, I think, that found it. But she knew they were onto her. So I never did really confront her about that. I said it was just more that I couldn't have her in a position

[19:38] where the rest of the staff didn't feel they could trust her and she couldn't be the office manager anymore. So because I was actually a little bit afraid of her, to be quite honest. David told me not to confront her alone. And I'm thinking, what, what, what's she going to do to me? That's interesting, because that's exactly why I asked that question.

[19:59] Because whenever I have a case where I have confirmed embezzlement, one of the hardest things I find for my clients to do is to go through that confronting and separating process with that. And they're literally petrified to do it. That's one thing I like to do with my clients is, you know, we give them a packet, I give them a packet of a script,

[20:26] give them a packet of about 10 examples that can't be refuted about what happened. And there's no satisfactory answer that can come from it. And then I give them a script and then we practice a little bit because they're so scared. So I admire you for for doing that on your own

[20:50] and just going in there and getting it done. Well, I knew it had to get done. And again, it was a convoluted story. I just come back from another conference as well. And I asked her to meet me there and I plan to be there before her, but she was already there.

[21:05] And I did have another staff member just in case something bad had happened. But she was way hiding in the back. But yeah, it was hard because I still I still at that point would like to think that, OK, she's pathological. And I always thought, even though I knew she was accused of that in the last office, that people can change

[21:22] because she actually interestingly enough came clean about that when I confronted her because I said I heard that something went on with this office. And she is the best like storyteller or liar I've come across. I totally believe it. I thought that, you know, she had been unjustly accused and everybody deserves a second chance until I talked to David and he knew her, right?

[21:43] Like it was yeah. So it was it was hard because she did the same thing burst into tears. What are the girls going to think? And I felt really bad. And she was so I, you know, you're really going to let me go. Yeah, I am. But I still never brought up the theft part.

[21:57] I didn't do what I said. I used all the other things as a reason to let her go. Yeah. And since Jen let her go, we've been hearing about her in, I think, at current count, Jen, two other offices in your city. This is the interesting part of the since she was actually convicted

[22:18] in December, two other offices that I know about have called me because she's working for them or and they heard through either, you know, dental supply rap or another one was a dental lab tech that they should give me a call or find out like what went on because there's something about her and she shouldn't be working there. So she's got let go from both of those.

[22:40] But to my knowledge, she keeps trying. The sad thing is I feel that there is such a lack of dental staff and she is like the dream employee. She knows every part of the office. She could she can help you with implants. She can help you with the front end.

[22:57] She can actually assist. She's an excellent chair side. She takes great X-rays. She can multitask, handle your whole life. She can do it. She's like the dream. So everybody thinks, oh, my God, I've hit the jackpot.

[23:09] And that's what the last two offices have told me. They were like, are you kidding? We can't let her go. She's she's saving our practice. I'm like, yeah, OK, but you needed phone and talk to David. And I think I know both of them have called you. Didn't they? Yeah. Yeah.

[23:22] And I, you know, I gave them pretty clear warning. And, you know, if if if they don't heed those warnings, you know, like at some point, you just have to step back and let Darwin do his work. Yes. You know, these these two, yeah. You know, they were they were both you're right.

[23:43] They were both kind of under Kim's spell of it. Yes, you know, it's something that I'm hearing consistently now. In both the US and Canada is, you know, there's a real shortage of people for dental practices. And Wendy, I know you had a case recently where eventually the ambassador got fired, but two of them.

[24:05] OK, but with some reluctance, right? And I think I think part of it was, you know, if I fire this, you know, if this person is stealing three thousand dollars a month from me, I might still be better off than if I fire them and can't replace them. That was kind of the logic, right? Oh, sorry to laugh about that one.

[24:22] But that's I can see them going through that. But really, yeah, I can honestly tell you the first time it happened, I felt like totally betrayed. But it's like really, because I think I let these people to be too close to me. I don't know if it's like being a girl dentist or what,

[24:38] but it's almost like, you know, you feel like they're a friend. And it's kind of like what? You were taking money out of like the first one out of my wallet. I mean, that was just like a stab in the back, like a knife kind of twisted in your back. Think now I'm smarter, just hardened to it.

[24:54] But it's yeah, I couldn't I wouldn't want to think that way. I'd still be farther ahead by letting them steal three thousand a month. But yeah, well, I mean, Wendy, you know, pick pick one of those cases and tell us the back story because it astounds me and just a reminder to the audience, if you have any questions for anybody on the panel,

[25:15] including Dr. Jen, just go into the Q&A button on the on the Zoom panel and ask away. And we love to take your question. But Wendy, tell us about the those that those who won't quit. It was actually, I think I mentioned it a couple of webinars ago on here. This is the one where.

[25:41] The doctor had video cameras in his office and she was she would take the cash from the patient. You could see it coming over the counter and then she would take it and put it behind her computer desk and then she'd do some stuff and then she'd pick it up and go into the bathroom. And when she came out, she didn't have it with her.

[26:03] So that that was like the first time I ever got to watch a theft, like literally probably two minutes after it had happened. It was like watching it live. It was fascinating. Anyway, she ended up stealing a little over $30,000. And she had been there for, I think, 28 years

[26:27] and the doctor was getting to retire in three to four years, getting ready to retire in three to four years. And that's literally what he said. He said, I I can't pull out of this if she does everything in my office. If I fire her, I can't pull out of it and keep my revenue up because she does everything.

[26:50] But luckily he was working with her attorney and I'm sorry, he was working with his attorney and they confronted her together and she just quit. And what's the best thing about that is that he took an assistant from the clinic and who had been an office manager at another office

[27:15] and he moved her up to the front to just handle the front desk administration. And I got an email from him last week and he said things are going way better than they had in years. And it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Well, that's so that's a good ending. And I mean, I have another one I'm really struggling with right now.

[27:39] She stole about fifty six hundred dollars. But the way she did it was very deliberate. And Dr. Jen, there was no let's steal it and let's pay it back. I mean, it's very deliberate, very cunning and deceitful. But again, the doctor said, this five fells in the box.

[27:58] All right. Who else am I going to get to do the job? So I understand the first guy you were talking about that I could see that. But I mean, life does go on. She did everything for me, too. But yeah, other people stepped up to the plate. And ironically, I would never have been on to her.

[28:17] Had she not pissed off all the rest of the staff, she tried her also method was to try to alienate anyone. She thinks is close to me and get rid of those staff. She got rid of maybe two or three people that way. And then she alienated all the rest of them. So if it wasn't for them, I probably wouldn't have been on to her.

[28:33] That is so amazing. You're like it's describing every single behavior that is typical of a nemesis. And I never would have thought it because I just thought like she did everything for me. Even my personal stuff, she found me, my dog.

[28:50] She found like all kinds of stuff. And I thought, how am I ever going to replace somebody? There's no way she could be that person. That's why when David said her name, I'm like, oh, my God, are you kidding because I've let her in so close? She knows a lot of stuff.

[29:03] Thank God, nothing on me personally. She wanted her brother to do all of my personal like, you know, corporate investment portfolio. Thank God, I never gave it to him. Like I thought, no, I'm not going to put anything ever personal that give her access to it.

[29:19] So, yeah. Now, you know, and, and Jen, I'm glad to hear what you just said about, you know, other staff stepping up. And Wendy, you said the same thing. I think sometimes one of the problems that people have is the myth of indispensability.

[29:34] In other words, you know, that I couldn't possibly function without this person. And yet, you know, a lot of times we hear, and we just heard it twice, we hear what, what, what Jen and Wendy both said, you know, that things worked OK after. Scott, I'm just thinking back to a case you did fairly

[29:53] recently, and I'm not going to give the name, but it was a brand new dentist who had just bought a practice and kind of took over an investment problem. And she was just a doll. And you were the investigator and we did what Wendy said. We kind of scripted the termination for her

[30:14] and she fired the staff member and it went super smoothly. And she got a confession. I mean, it was just a textbook almost. And, you know, anything anything about that case that kind of stuck in your mind? Yeah, the way that that we run our terminations is actually

[30:31] really unique and it's been developed over a number of years. The the idea is like like Wendy said, the the examples that we bring up are always the the clearest and most concise examples where we're really painting the suspect into a corner. Right. And and we don't, you know, I mean, we we can just terminate

[30:53] straight away, but a lot of times what we'll do is the approach of suspend pending explanation. But everybody already knows the only explanation is that you stole it. And what that approach does is is you suspended them. And when they fail to come up with an explanation,

[31:11] they in effect, terminate their own employment, which in most states and in most cases avoids you having to pay unemployment even for a short period of time to somebody that's also been stealing. And so the technique that we use is is is a is a pretty iron clad technique and it works really well.

[31:30] And and I can't think of any any any drawbacks. I mean, we've we've added a little bit to it. But when we use these examples, we use very, very clear ones for for the termination part. Yeah, absolutely. And kind of put the person off balance. Christine, we got a question from an audience member that I'd

[31:50] love to put to you. And he says, how does the process of investigation work? Where do you start? Thanks.

[32:01] Christine, among the five of us here is is the newest. And having said that, she's been with us for several years. And she's a she's a very accomplished investigator. But just just being the newest in the in the group kind of in my mind qualifies you to answer that. So what would you what would you say there?

[32:18] Fantastic. And you know, tomorrow is my two year anniversary. Oh, my goodness. No, I didn't know that. Well, when I started investigation, the very first thing I do is review the pre exam, pre examination questionnaire that we ask our clients to complete for us.

[32:35] And it really gives me a good even before that. I mean, how do we get what do we do to get you ready for that? To get me ready for that. Like, let's start at the beginning. Start at the beginning. Well, after our client has reached out to to our to David

[32:52] or someone on our team. The next thing that happens is Kathy, our our chief operating officer and Haley, our senior analyst and Jake, our, our IT whiz are going to jump on to jump on the bandwagon and help us get everything the examiners need

[33:11] in order to move forward. So Haley is is fantastic. She gathers all of the documents that we request and they are plentiful and she keeps them very well organized and exactly the way the examiners need them. She converts documents for us from one format to another

[33:30] so that we can run our examination and Jake gets access to your to your data. There's a few different ways that we do that. But one of our preferred methods is to have a forensic copy of your data that we bring in house to our laboratory.

[33:47] That allows the examiners to work within your data without your staff seeing anything that we're doing. We also have a static copy of your data. So that way if employees are making changes in the database that it's not affecting your investigation that you can you can kind of see ahead of time

[34:06] what might be going on. So what you're saying is that we can do this in secret. Yes, exactly what I'm saying. That's a much faster way of saying it. We can do it with a data set that's not wiggling underneath us while we're trying to look at it.

[34:21] Exactly. How long does an investigation normally take? Well, it takes about six to six weeks or so, maybe a little longer, maybe a little shorter. Some of it depends on the software that we're working with. Some of it depends on how cooperative the client has been,

[34:42] to be honest, and getting us the documents that we need or when the investigators have questions that maybe we need an answer to before we can figure out how to move forward. But in a good world, in a perfect world, we're done in about six weeks or so.

[34:58] And to give my part of the answer to the question, we look at two things typically in an investigation. And what these do is they mirror the way that thieves think. And if a thief is looking at your practice, the first question they ask is, does my doctor know how much money should be in the bank deposit today?

[35:20] And do they look at that? And there are two groups of dentists. There are those who look at that stuff pretty closely. And then there's the other 80%. And if you're in that 80%, then the thief can steal from you without really needing

[35:35] to do anything to hide what they're doing. They just take your money. And Jen, I'm guessing that in the days when you had Kim and she was this go-getter, you probably felt pretty comfortable relaxing a little bit about the finances and confident

[35:51] that she was looking after you. Oh, sure. I was definitely that 80% that wasn't checking. Probably was the last two, to be honest. If you're in the 80%, stealing's pretty easy. All I have to do is just kind of partition the deposit

[36:06] between your part and my part. So the first thing we do is we see if that's happening. And that involves comparing your financial accounts, which are like your bank account and your merchant account, which is from the credit card machine in your practice against what your software says.

[36:24] Now, on the other hand, if I'm a thief and I think that just shorting the deposit is going to get me caught because I think somebody somewhere is looking at it, now what I need to do is I need to make your software lie to me. And there are lots of ways to do it.

[36:37] And just for security reasons, we're not going to get in a whole lot of detail here. But what I want to do if I can't just set aside some of the deposit is I want to make your software understate how much money came in today. And I know that every one of the examiners in front of me

[36:57] has seen this many, many times. And they've all seen stuff that just makes us want to say, wow, that was a really impressive theft. I mean, some stealing is very crude. And Jen, you mentioned going into your person stealing money. I mean, that's really at the very baseline of sophistication.

[37:22] And then we see some stuff that is just so darn impressive. And about probably once a month, I get a call from one of these guys or one of our other examiners. And they're going to say, you're not going to believe this one. And it's some new wrinkle that they've come across.

[37:42] So thieves are on the gamut. The one thing I've learned, and we're going to turn the conversation in a second to what all of us have learned in our time in this field. And Jen, we're kind of counting you as one of us here, because you've had a lot of experience as well.

[37:58] Job. I should come and work for you, I think, now. I'll just retire and investigate. Yeah, that thought's run through my mind. Pat Little has come some competition. Yeah.

[38:13] What's that? Wasn't he was a dentist, was he? Who's Scott? Sorry, Pat Little. Yes, he was a dentist. He practiced for around three years,

[38:25] and eventually neck issues kind of got to him. And he really couldn't comfortably practice clinical dentistry anymore, but very good mind. And he went back to college and studied accounting and then came to work for us. So he's been ideal.

[38:41] But I also should mention, too, that really that badly, the 80%, I do have a bookkeeper who used to be my nanny. I trusted with my life. And she came to me both times with the last two and said, there's money missing. And I'm afraid, well, of Kim.

[38:56] I'm afraid of Kim, but there's $4,000 missing. That's why I think she copped to it. It was under my watch, so I'll just pay it back. And that, actually, I think, well, then you took it. Like, who does that? If you didn't take it, you're

[39:09] going to try to find out where it is. Yeah, it's kind of like O.J. Simpson looking for his wife's killer, right? How did that go, exactly? Yeah. He's had a lot of time and he hasn't come up with one.

[39:23] Anyway, we'll canvas each of our team. It looks like Amber's got something. And what I want to hear from each of you is if you can tell a dentist two things or three things that will protect them, what would they be? And Amber, you were just getting ready to go when I jumped in.

[39:42] So you have the floor. I had a quick question for Dr. Matthews on part of sharing her story is what changed how you practice then versus now? Like, what's the biggest thing that you'd like to share with everybody about what

[39:58] changed how you look at things or how you practice, run your practice? I think I look at more things now. Like, I just, I don't have, actually, I don't have an office manager per se. I am the office manager, so everything

[40:12] gets kind of run through me. Um, so, I mean, maybe that's about it. I mean, I don't really, I won't say that I don't trust people because I do, but I'm just that kind of person. I probably would have given her a second chance, but not after all that, but I'm not that nice of a person

[40:31] or that trusting, but I still trust people, but I do stay way more on top of things. Just making sure bank deposits, I take my own bank deposits in, everybody gives cash to me. If there's cash in the deposit, it comes to me. Nobody wants to handle it now with everything that went on.

[40:48] I think they're afraid because they were all here, when it all went down to, so. Because I still get patients that pay in cash, oddly enough. I think some of them are drug dealers, but that's a whole other story. Sometimes you get 2,000, 3,000 in cash,

[41:03] and the banks don't even want it now with COVID. It's kind of funny. Yeah, that's true. The other thing from speaking with you that I suspect is going to happen differently is when you do go back to having an office manager

[41:18] and you look at hiring somebody, I suspect they're going to get a lot more scrutiny than they have in the past. I don't think I'll ever have one. I feel like I've been now. Even better.

[41:30] Because I've been practicing for 33 years myself, I feel like I'm trying to downsize things a little bit so I do that. I mean, sometimes I'm here a lot longer than I want, but I like it better that way. I had more freedom when she was here,

[41:45] but it wasn't really worth it. And the staff are happier because they don't really, I feel like if you have that person in a manager position, that it puts them ahead of everybody else. So even in terms of a leadership sort of a thing,

[41:59] it's best that they're all kind of on an equal playing field. Because she used to use a lot of intimidation on the employees is what I find out too. And they didn't like that. So if any of these doctors actually

[42:10] that were wondering about her, they phone looking for me and get anybody at the front, they'll give them a mouthful before they even get to me. You have who working for you? Yeah. So I think everybody's on the same,

[42:26] you put them on the same level and nobody, they seem to get along better that way. Yeah, I'm tempted to call your office and ask for a reference on her just to see what they say. You should. If you ask a couple of them,

[42:39] if I can think of two that would give you like the, well, they actually did get her. Though the first place that you talked to did get my girl that answers most of the calls and she probably went to the back office and gave them everything they needed to know.

[42:52] And they hired Kim anyway. They hired her anyway. Yeah, well, all right. So. No, they didn't hire her. They already had her there.

[43:05] That's right. Because the patent that you better phone that office, that's all. Yeah. And, you know, that is one of the things that I've seen a lot of Dennis mess up

[43:16] is not rigidly without fail calling former employers. You know, cause if in the case of Kim, certainly if you had phoned the Dennis she stole from before, you probably at the time of hiring, you probably would have had a little different picture

[43:34] of Kim than what you do. Well, if it was a little bit different though, that's the interesting thing. She doesn't put any of that on there. She only put that she worked for like very vague in oral surgery office.

[43:45] She didn't say who it was. And I'm not sure if you remember, but the reason I didn't phone is because it was another one of my very, very good receptionist who was moving away from the office had worked with her and she was, it was her recommendation.

[44:01] This is a very good reception for someone else who'll scoop her up first if you don't hire her. So I took her word on that. She felt awful when all this went down. Yeah, of course she would. Yeah.

[44:13] So, Wendy, if you're gonna give our audience members your best pearls, what would they be? Wow, thanks for letting me go first. I appreciate it. Number one, because someone actually had asked a question and it said, what are the ways dentists suspect

[44:37] or find embezzlement in their offices? And then also the question, what are some reports we can look at to make sure everything is okay? Number one, unequivocably without a doubt the deleted transactions report. I've talked about that so much in this webinar,

[44:56] but I cannot tell you how powerful that report is. You may have to get deleted transactions through the audit log or there are some softwares who actually have a report called deleted transactions report. I would say in 99% of my confirmed embezzlement cases

[45:18] something showed up in the audit log. And when I look at an audit log, what I'm looking at, the very first thing I look at is deleted cash payments because as Dr. Jen was saying cash, patients still pay cash even in a post-COVID world and cash is the first thing to go, right?

[45:40] It's the first thing to be stolen. And it breaks my heart. I had a client who had a theft happening for 13 years and I found it in like three minutes. Once I looked at the deleted transaction report and I just saw all the cash transactions

[45:57] that had been deleted. It's such a wonderful and very clear way to find out if somebody's stealing from you. My second recommendation would be to do a very thorough reconciliation between the practice management software

[46:13] and your bank account. Again, a lot of times I'll see credit cards that are posted in the practice management system. They're never deposited in the bank through the merchant service company. And that's because they can slip those electronic payments

[46:34] in there because they're kind of out of sight until the end of the month, until you look on your merchant service statement. So it is a way to hide it. So make sure you're comparing what is in your computer with what actually goes into your bank.

[46:48] And my third recommendation would be to look at adjustments. If someone's embezzling from you, there has to be a form of balancing on the account. And I'm not gonna go into how that can be done, but I specifically done, but look at your adjustments and here's one more little tip if I can give it.

[47:11] Instead of having what will make it easier for you to look at your adjustments and tell if they're legitimate or not, is if you have a standard fee for a type of adjustment instead of a percentage. Now, what I mean by that is let's say you have a second family member discount.

[47:30] Instead of making your second family member discount, 10% of your treatment fee, how about make it, it can be say 10% up to $200. And then that way when you're going through and you're looking at that mass amount, you look at that particular category called family discount

[47:51] and nothing should be under, or nothing should be over $200. And if it is, you may have somebody who's trying to hide a theft in that particular adjustment category. Wow, great answers.

[48:02] Christine, anything you wanna add to what Wendy said? What are your ideas about protecting? Yeah, all of Wendy's ideas were fantastic. One of the ideas that I think we're gonna talk about one of the ideas that I have is to when you are doing that reconciliation,

[48:22] ask questions of your staff. It gives them the perception at least that you're paying attention. And just a little brief story that I will give maybe instead of another tip would be I'm finishing an investigation right now

[48:40] where the doctor's wife got involved with the practice to help with some administration of the business side. And she started asking questions to the front office person and about all kinds of what happened with this insurance payment, why was that deleted?

[49:00] What's going on with this? And what I noticed when I went to quantify the theft and see what the patterns were, the theft dropped precipitously when they were being asked questions from the spouse. Yeah, that's really powerful.

[49:19] Amber, any thoughts? Okay, so my biggest thing is password protect your software so that you know who is doing what. I've done a few investigations where there's no passwords at all on the software. So kind of hearsay on who has done what

[49:38] so that you can protect that way. Also separation of responsibilities so that that one person who's your office manager like Dr. Matthews was explaining does not hold the keys to everything. She has to separate what she's doing

[49:54] between other team members. And the third thing that comes with that is transparency. When things are separated and you as a doctor can do random audits and ask questions, it creates that transparency with who's changing my software?

[50:10] Who's in there completing tasks? Who's allowed to do things that other people are not? And if I ask you a question, I expect the daily documentation to back up what happened. Yeah, and Jen described Kim as a very kind of take charge somebody who sought responsibility

[50:32] instead of trying to duck it kind of person. And Jen, in that way, Kim is like a whole lot of embezzlers. I mean, they tend to be this person who fills the vacuum that I hate to say it but I think a lot of dentists leave in their own management.

[50:51] Well, absolutely. You don't need to hate to say that. Most of us do do that. And I just don't think of a password just to let you know that the first time so the one prior to Kim took the money

[51:04] and kept replacing it. She actually the one that was the trigger for the 2000 or 2200, she was using, they all had their own password but she actually knew this other person's password who wasn't even in that day.

[51:16] So she used somebody else's to take the money and to do the reversal that time. It wasn't actually, it couldn't have been the other employee because they weren't there. So they knew each other's obviously password. Yeah, thank you.

[51:33] I think the point Amber was making was in practices that really where there's the sort of unicode the one password that everybody uses. Among other things, it makes our job of pinning who did it tougher. And typically we have a pretty strong idea of who did it

[51:51] but we need to get to a sort of beyond a reasonable doubt kind of judicial system level of proof. And that is really complicated when there's that unicode in the practice. So, Amber gave some good advice but as you say, Jen, the next thing that happens

[52:09] is it occurs to people that wouldn't this be better if I did somebody else's password. And one of the tips that will come from that is that in most software, in most practice management software, you can set passwords to expire like every 90 days or something.

[52:27] And if your software will support that and not all of it does, but if it will that's a great idea. Your staff will grumble because every 90 days they have to change their password and learn a new one. But one of the ways that you can minimize damage

[52:40] of person A logging in as person B is if person B's password has a best before date built right into it. So that to me is another takeaway and it really comes directly from that point that you raised.

[52:57] Scott, I know you've got a good one here. What's your best tip for the audience? Number one, and thank you for all the input from the others but it's funny because I've been doing this for so long. Every time somebody comes up with a tip I think how I would get around that if I were the thief.

[53:17] And that probably the best part of my job is that I get to think like a criminal. And I'm just gonna tell the audience that there are a few on the planet who are better at that than Scott Clifford. I mean, just right now, thank you, Dave.

[53:30] I appreciate that. And that makes me wholly unemployable by the way in all your offices. It's kind of a backhand compliment, but yeah, I know. But just when you're talking about expiring passwords I'm like, okay, great.

[53:42] I'll just walk over to the hygienist machine when they're out to lunch and do my deeds there. I'll just walk to somebody's open computer and do it if you make my password expire. But at any rate, my biggest one is just daily, daily, daily.

[53:55] I mean, I know that monthly is important and annual is important. For me, if you're open Monday through Thursday and you can't make it to the bank during the week, when you go to the bank on Friday, make four unique individual deposits,

[54:09] one that corresponds to Monday, one that corresponds to Tuesday so that at any time I can pull up a day sheet from March 13th, 2018 and pull up my deposit slip and see what should have been there. And I can go back in my bank

[54:22] and I can see that exact matching number, not off by a dollar, not off by 10, it's the exact matching number. For us, it's about detection. And when we can go through and start finding things that did go,

[54:37] it is so much easier for us to find things that didn't. Rather than, I'm doing one case right now where I kid you not in 250 business days in the one year that we're looking at, they made 24 deposits. And they made no deposits at all in August of 2020.

[54:54] Are you kidding me? How do you do that? And then one deposit in November and then four deposits in December and some of this money had been sitting around for weeks and they're deposits of 20 and 30 grand at a time

[55:06] that are just accumulated from weeks of business days. And it just, do it daily. That is my biggest one is daily. Cause if, and monthly is important too, but guess what? If you're, if you don't do it daily,

[55:19] your monthly doesn't stand a chance. Yeah. Yeah, great tip. Two things that I want to build on from what Scott said. The first thing is this, in bank deposits, never let the person preparing the deposit

[55:34] put down a total number for checks. It's a pain in the ass for them to do, but make them list on the deposit slip every single check. Because it's exactly along the lines of what Scott said. If you, if the more that deposit stuff gets aggregated, the harder it is to figure out what really happens later.

[55:54] So if you're wondering if a certain insurance company paid you or not for a, for a certain patient, as long as each individual check is itemized, you can see whether that check was or was not deposited. When somebody just puts on a deposit slip, you know, 17 checks and a total dollar amount,

[56:12] you have no idea what those 17 checks were. Yeah, we end up having to go back to bank deposited images that are scanned in a lot of times. And if you ask how long an investigation takes, that is one of the things that can make it take a lot longer is if we have to look at deposited check images

[56:28] to reverse engineer these bulk deposits that are being made. I did one case several years ago, I could not figure out how to reverse engineer all these deposits, because they were all just seemed so random.

[56:40] They weren't day for day at all. They were very random. Some dentists also do all personal checks in one deposit, all insurance checks in another. I don't know why, but they do it. This one I could not figure out.

[56:50] And then I started looking at the deposit slips and I figured out he was depositing 17 checks per deposit. No. Every single deposit was 17 checks. So he just waited until he had 17, then he went to the bank. That's how many lines were on the dang deposit slip.

[57:04] Don't do things like that. I'm begging you. Another, yeah, that was great. Another one of my biggest tips right now, and I don't know how much detail I can go into as to why,

[57:16] but virtual credit cards that you're getting paid from insurance companies nowadays are the devil. They have really raised a lot of problems for a lot of dentists, especially recently. This is a growing trend in embezzlement abuse of these virtual credit cards.

[57:34] And for those that don't know, you used to get an EOB with a check in the mail and or you would sign up with an EFT and they would just be direct deposited to your account and you'd get an EOB in the mail. Nowadays, a lot of insurance companies

[57:47] are starting to send you the EOB and then at the bottom is a 16 digit credit card number and it's funded for the amount that would have been a check before. Opt out of as many of these as you possibly can. There are three huge pitfalls to these

[58:01] that I can't enumerate here, but if you see that your office is taking virtual credit cards, do everything you can to opt out of those systems. Yeah, and in most states, the law can, it is such that insurance companies

[58:14] cannot force you to use these. Yeah, they may not be able, they may not force checks on you, sorry Dave, but you can opt into their EFT program. Yeah, they can not generally force you to be paid by credit card.

[58:28] I mean, aside from the fact that there's lots of fraud potential and as Scott says, we're seeing it very clearly right now. Even forgetting about that, I mean, every time you process one of these credit card payments,

[58:42] you lose whatever your credit card company charges you, a percent and a half or a percent and three quarters. Typically, these are PPO insurance companies that are paying, so you've already taken a discount before this, and to me, this is just making a bad situation with PPO is even worse.

[58:59] So to quote Nancy Reagan, just say no. You know, the virtual credit cards are just a monumentally bad idea. Yeah, but be careful because they will opt you into these automatically, number one, and number two, once they do that,

[59:14] your front staff, if they don't know how to deal with those, even if you have a completely honest staff. Yeah. Which, I don't know, I've seen this too long, but anyway, even if you have completely, they don't know, there's no payment type in your software

[59:27] that says insurance credit card a lot of times. So they'll just put it in as an insurance check and now your daily can't match now because you've got check payments in the software that aren't actually checks. You know, you have to deal with all of these things

[59:42] and there's just too much, I don't know, just don't do them. Just say no. Yeah, just say no. We had a good audience question and the question was, how do you reconcile deposits versus production when you accept assignment of benefits

[59:55] because there's a lag between when you produce and when you deposit? That's not quite the reconciliation we're talking about. The reconciliation that we're talking about is what your practice management software says you collected versus what got deposited in your bank.

[1:00:09] So there are some elements of that that have little tiny timing differences, but we're not reconciling production, we're reconciling collections per practice management software against the bank. Here's a tip that I'll give

[1:00:21] and then we've got a few minutes left and we'll likely mine our audience for a few more pearls. Mine is this, don't ever fall into the trap of thinking that there are 20 days in a month. There are somewhere between 28 and 31.

[1:00:39] What a lot of dentists do is they look at the day and report from their software every day. And as long as it looks good, they go home happy, convinced that nothing bad has happened to them. And if you are that person,

[1:00:56] and again, you really go through the daily report with a fine tooth comb, one of the easy adaptations is I'll come in on a Saturday and I'll do some things you don't want it. I don't want you to see. So you all, as a dentist,

[1:01:11] you all learn about the concept of articulation in dental school in a different way. I mean, we're talking about articulation of the mouth here, but articulation of your reports is also important. And what I mean by that is that if you have 20 day end reports,

[1:01:28] they should add up to exactly the same as a monthly report that's printed for the same thing. So if you're looking at 20 production summary reports, your monthly summary should be exactly, dollar for dollar, the same amount. One of the things that we have,

[1:01:44] and if anybody wants it, just send us an email and we'll be happy to pass along, is we have a thing called a monthly monitoring spreadsheet. And what the spreadsheet does is allows you just to enter each day the figures from your day end report and just kind of cross adds them

[1:01:59] so you know what your monthly report should say. But, you know, two things you can do. One is do that addition. The other thing is, assuming you have an alarm system on your practice, get the alarm company each month to send you

[1:02:13] what they will call the access log or the entry log from the alarm system. And having that log will allow you to see if anybody is kind of sneaking into your practice at weird times. Because if somebody is doing kind of the Saturday,

[1:02:29] fix the books thing, that's a good way to find it. Jen, any thoughts on any of the points that people made or do you have any that you want to pass on to the audience? No, I thought that you had some really good points there that you just brought up. And I do have a question though.

[1:02:50] I don't think we have virtual credit cards in Canada. I'm hoping not, because I've not heard of this. Yeah, as far as I know, we don't yet. They're kind of a very big phenomenon in the US now. I guess if I had to guess, you're gonna see them in Canada

[1:03:05] within probably the next year or two. I mean, it's an extraordinarily convenient way from the perspective of the insurance company for them to pay. And what they like about it is that they don't have to physically handle a check.

[1:03:17] They don't have to set up a bank deposit. I mean, they just get a block of these credit card numbers from a credit card company and then they just kind of put money on them. So the card works, you can go into the grocery store and you can buy prepaid credit cards,

[1:03:31] like prepaid visas, they just work like that. No, and the other point that you made that I never would have thought of checking is like the extra of the days on the weekend, but I do have a alarm company that I do have a log. I know everybody that goes in and out, so.

[1:03:46] Yeah, and the other thing for the audience too is that a lot of alarm companies now, if you ask them to, will, for example, text you if somebody arms or disarms your alarm outside of a certain, you know, outside of a band around business hours.

[1:03:59] So if your practice is open from eight to five, you know, you can typically get your alarm company if somebody comes in after, let's say, 6 p.m. to text you. And from there, you know, you can decide, all right, is this something I know about? Like, is it, you know, is it the cleaners coming in

[1:04:15] to do their thing or is it unexpected? And maybe I'll drop by the practice and just see what's happening there. Well, since Kim's demise, and even when she was here, everybody had a unique code to the pad, so I know who it is and it takes a picture.

[1:04:31] Perfect, yeah, that's a great system. I like the picture, yeah, that's, you know, it. A bug's got when they disarm it. Yeah, perfect, that's terrific. Well, let's go around one more time and just see if anybody wants to add anything

[1:04:48] or toss in any more ideas for audience. I have some great suggestions here from everybody and thank you, Jen as well. Thank you, Audrey. Go, Scott. I'm sorry, I only gave two of my three recommendations.

[1:05:02] I had one in my pocket. Oh, I know this is gonna be good. Please learn how to run your own reports, but don't tell the staff to stop running them, okay? When they give you a report that shows the daily payments,

[1:05:16] run your own report that shows the daily payments and make sure it looks just like theirs. There are really good reasons for this and there are ways to conceal theft by tailoring the report to show only what you want them to show as the thief.

[1:05:32] So then the doctor goes to run their own report and it looks different and you can ask the question, why? Run your own reports. You gotta know how to run them. Yeah, we've said that before

[1:05:43] and it is such good advice. Unfortunately, there are a lot of dentists who seem to have gotten the idea that their practice management software is written in some language other than the ones they speak. And you know what?

[1:05:59] That software is as important to your financial wellbeing as your handpieces. And you all know that handpiece like it's your child, but when it comes to reports and software, it's like, ah, I don't know what to do here. The thing about software,

[1:06:18] and before Christine came to us, she spent a lot of years as a software trainer. In fact, she was reported to be one of the best trainers working for Henry Schein and she was awarded as such a few times. All of the software companies have trainers

[1:06:36] and they all welcome the chance when the doctor says to them, you know what? I wanna dig a little deeper into the software. Can you help me? So this is not something you have to try to do by watching a YouTube video,

[1:06:49] which is the way I learn to build bicycles, but that's a whole other story. You know, there are people out there who really would love the chance to show you that. Christine, any stories you have from your days as a trainer? You know, what do you think about this idea?

[1:07:06] Oh, absolutely. And you know, I was a trainer at the time when I first went to your in-person seminar. And after that, I did see a lot of, you know, red flag type behavior that we talk about a lot. But whenever I find that, and even not,

[1:07:26] I always encourage the doctors to learn their software, learn their daily reports. And I would almost always sit with them independently of the rest of the staff and discuss things like, here's what you're looking for on your report. And then we also have a private conversation

[1:07:43] about password rights to Amber's coin earlier. Trainers would love to show you how to use your software. Absolutely. Yeah, password rights too, that's a good point. So just, I assume that most people in the audience know this, but just in general, the way that practice management

[1:08:04] software is set up is kind of hierarchical. So at the top of the pile is something that's typically called an administrator. And an administrator can do almost anything in software so they can create new procedure codes so they can delete anything.

[1:08:19] They really have the keys to the kingdom as far as software goes. And from there, sometimes software does it by rules. Some, and I think of Dentrix, is one kind of has this big menu and you can pick from the menu

[1:08:32] what each person needs to do their job. But one principle you should buy into is that the privileges somebody has in your software should be consistent with what their job duties are. So if, for example, I am your recall coordinator, then I need to be able to book appointments.

[1:08:48] I need to be able to look in people's charts and see when they're due for their next hygiene visit. But I don't need to be able to adjust balances and I don't need to be able to delete treatment or create a new procedure code. And we see two things.

[1:09:04] One is that admin rights are pushed too far down the food chain. And I'm thinking in a small office in Jen, for example, in your practice, you probably should be the only person in the practice with admin rights in your software.

[1:09:19] You know, if you had a five doctor practice, Wendy used to run a very big orthodontic empire. And I suspect in that empire, Wendy, that you had admin rights and probably some people who reported to you may even have had admin rights as well.

[1:09:36] You know, because it was a multi-location practice so you would have had site managers and so on. In other words, I don't think there's an ironclad rule that it's doctor only because that just wouldn't work in a five doctor practice. But admin rights are something

[1:09:50] that need to be guarded very carefully. And certainly the other thing I'll say about admin rights is when you are logged into your computer and this goes back to something I think Scott said a while ago, if you're the doctor, you probably should have two logins.

[1:10:06] One that has admin rights and one that has more or less the privileges that your receptionist would have. And most of what you need to do in your daily work you can do with that lower level login. And that's the way you should stay logged in

[1:10:21] with your software. And then, you know, if you're called out of your private office because you have to do a hygiene check, what you're walking away from is a computer that's logged in with the same privileges

[1:10:30] that your staff have. And then what happens is if you need to do something that requires that admin power, which probably is pretty rare, you know, I'm thinking maybe three or four times a week you actually need your admin privileges,

[1:10:47] then you log out of your sort of user account and you log in your admin account and you do what has to be done. But that way you're not kind of walking away from your private office leaving a loaded pistol. So think about the two login IDs.

[1:11:03] And as I say, just keep the admin one for when you actually need it. And obviously they need different passwords. All right, well, we are right about at our time. First of all, Jen, I want to thank you very much for coming on with us.

[1:11:20] You know, your perspective was terrific and it was great to hear your story even though I knew most of it, but I think everybody in the audience can learn from Jen. And you know, I will say what I think

[1:11:34] I've said you before, you know, I admire your strength and you've shown lots of it over the past few years. And we have an internet in a couple of weeks and I look forward to that. And I really want to thank our guest examiners, Christine and Scott, you know, you guys never disappoint

[1:11:55] and you both have tremendous perspectives. And finally, I want to thank my on-camera co-hosts through the last 20 episodes, Amber and Wendy. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed working with both of you. So thank you all very much for tonight.

[1:12:19] We want to thank you too. You want to thank me. I want to thank you. And actually I know everyone at Pulse Barrett it wants to thank you. And through this webinar series,

[1:12:30] I have met so many amazing friends and I hear firsthand stories of how much people have learned and how we've helped them to become more educated about embezzlement and help their practice. And, you know, as a person connected with Pulse Barrett and I want to thank you for sharing your information

[1:12:49] with us freely and sharing your thoughts and your mind and your knowledge with us freely. You are a wonderful leader and a great CEO and Pulse Barrett is what it is because of you. So as just an example, I have to show you guys I got these flowers today.

[1:13:12] See how beautiful they are. So let me turn this. That's from the C-suite at Pulse Barrett. Yeah. Do you want to show me? Oh, Amber has hers too.

[1:13:24] Oh, okay. I mean, that's just, you know, the thoughtfulness and kindness that comes along with the work that we do. Well, you know, Scott described us once here as a family and that's certainly how I feel about all of you.

[1:13:44] So, you know, thank you, Wendy, for making me blush. That's already. And aside from investigation, Dave has taught me how to ride a bike correctly. So that was a highlight of being on Pulse Barrett team as well. Well, awesome.

[1:14:02] And of course, we wouldn't be anywhere without our loyal audience who have suffered through the occasional technical glitch and, you know, the links that we've sent out occasionally that didn't work and so on, but we really appreciate you guys.

[1:14:15] This does wrap up our webinar series, but we are not going away. And we plan to be in touch with you and to do more online content. But, you know, we just cannot at this point sustain the once a month kind of webinar.

[1:14:34] So we're going to do some targeted things. We're planning sessions specifically for orthodontists, for example. We will be doing some things for new dentists, but I fully expect that the group of us will be back together.

[1:14:52] Again, at some point, you know, Sheila O'Driscoll, who's our communications officer and who is kind of our off-camera person, and you know, if you're on the chat side, Sheila is really running that. She's got some ideas and we've got some plans

[1:15:07] and we will definitely be back, but it'll be on probably a little bit more of a relaxed schedule. So with that, thank you all very much. Audience, our very special guest, Jen, again, terrific to have you with us

[1:15:24] and of course our Prosperitant panelists and we would love to see you again in the future. Thank you. All right, bye-bye. Bye everybody. Well, hi everybody.

[1:15:38] Thanks for listening to the Dental Practice Owners Podcast brought to you by Prosperitant. You can contact Prosperitant through its website, www.prosperitant.com or by calling 888-398-2327. If you have questions about this podcast,

[1:15:56] if you would like to discuss your practice or there is a topic you would like to see in a future podcast, we would love to hear from you. Amber, Wendy and David will be back soon with another episode.