Episode length: 33m | Published: 2021-05-10
What goes through the mind of someone who steals from their employer — and what brings them to genuine remorse? In this rare and candid interview, Prosperident's David Harris sits down with a convicted dental embezzler who agreed to speak openly on the condition of anonymity. She embezzled more than $250,000 from her dentist employer and served time in state prison.
Topics covered in the interview include:
This interview is a companion piece to the serial embezzler interview in Episode 18. Together they offer two very different perspectives from two very different kinds of offenders.
To protect your practice from embezzlement, visit www.prosperident.com or schedule a consultation at www.prosperident.com/meetwithdavid.
You are listening to the Dental Practice Owners 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 Owners 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
to talk about the issues that matter to you.
Hi, this is David Harris. In today's podcast episode, we're going to do something a little bit different. I'm going to share with you an interview I did a little while ago with a convicted embezzler. This woman stole over $250,000 from the dentist for whom she worked. She served prison time for it. She's since been released and left dentistry.
There are a lot of interesting things about this interview. One of the things that I found most intriguing was listening to her rationalization about how she justified stealing from her doctor and just a reminder that thieves really need three things in order to embezzle successfully. First of all, they need pressure and that could be financial or it could be emotional. Secondly, they need the opportunity and the unfortunate reality is that most people
working at a front desk have the opportunity to steal. The third thing they need is the ability to suspend reality for a little while and say to themselves, I know that in general stealing is wrong, but it's okay here. Oh yeah, I get it. I know you're just trying to help, but this doesn't happen to somebody else. I understand that and I'm in support of that.
Like I said, I take full responsibility for everything I've done. I'm just trying to understand that if you did something wrong in your past and you put it behind and you made it right and then it comes back up and bites in the ass again, you just get tired of it and it's like, oh, what more do I have to do? Like I told you, this is a real dark point in my life and it was really horrible. But I've come to terms that it is what I'm doing and I've learned a lot myself
on why it happened, how it happened, like it was just yesterday. So I still pretty much remember everything as much as I'd like to block it out and that's what I did for quite a few years, but you kind of come full circle and you can kind of just understand exactly why it happened, what pushed you. I had to go to prison and I live in a small community. I just had to backstep a little bit.
So this unfortunately was in a very small town, it's like 5,000 people. So when something happened to a local person, it blasted all over the radio, it's in every newspaper and because I'm such a small community, everybody knows who you are. So I need to say it was extremely embarrassing. At the prison, when I was sentenced to prison, the judge actually put in an order for
me to go to a, they first call it a restitution center. I had court fines. Before I went to court, I had already paid the victim back, so he sued me civilly first.
I didn't get caught, I went to him and told him what was happening. I gave him $100,000 and he agreed that he would not go any further, he wouldn't send me to jail, he wouldn't take me to court, so obviously that didn't happen. I'm going all over, so anyway, so 2017, when I was supposed to go to a restitution center,
once I got to California, has a state penitentiary in the center of California, two of them, Valley State Prison and the other one is called California State Women's Prison, something like that, and they send you there to be classified, so they say, okay, well you've got a gun in your crime, you can only stay in a maximum security prison, you're a white collar crime, you're going to go to a minimum security, okay, so then they just kind of classify you out, you have to go through a bunch of psychological tests, medical tests, so when
I was there, the judge sent an order, and that's in all of my court papers that I was supposed to go to a restitution center, which would basically mean I would go get a job during the day, and I would come back to the facility, I would check in, and they would basically lock you in all night long, so you're in prison but you're getting a chance to actually do something productive by paying back your, I had like $600 in court fines, so once I got to this prison, the counselor that was looking over my paperwork, and again,
those were exact words were, we don't care what the judge put in, you're our property now, we can do whatever we want with you, so it's just like, oh, I'm sorry, but once you're in that system, you really don't care, so if the state, the prison system, they want to be paid, they have a lot of expenses, they have guards, they have insurance, they have retirement fines, they have, so those counselors by sending you away is basically giving away business, so if they can find any loophole, anything, they're going to keep you
there, so I am a white collar crime in a maximum security prison, so that gave me a real bad
taste, and I was stuck there for a really long time, so anyway, that started it, so that whole experience when you're sleeping, 10 feet away from a woman that stabbed another woman and cut out her nine-month-old baby, and set the person on fire because, and kept that baby to be with her fiance, who's the father of that child, what does that do to your psyche? So I'm being said all this information, a scared little deer, you know, deer in the headlight, and so that screwed with me big time. When I got back from prison,
I didn't leave my house, I didn't go anywhere, I couldn't work because I'm a convicted heroine, I was too embarrassed to go and actually do anything, so for, I don't know, the first six months I pretty much did nothing but hide in a house, I had a lot of psychological problems, a lot of nightmares. I went and saw a doctor who put me on a huge amount of medication, which I'm still on today. I started cleaning houses for people because I could not find any more work, and then finally, I think the stress just got too much to
me, so the doctor told me I need to be on permanent disability, and I've got been since I think 2008, so I'm on a huge amount of medications, just trying to keep demons at bay, help me sleep and maintain, but to this day, the thought of going and applying for a job, even if I could, it all just comes back up again, so to me it's just easier for me to stay home, so overall, this whole experience is what I did, I did it to myself, but it's not like you can walk away from it, it has scarred me, and
again, it's all my fault, but that's just, unfortunately, I had a real problem dealing with it, so. Well, when I got out of prison, the parole officer, when I first got there, he, the same thing, he looked me up and down and was very suspicious, and just, you've never been in trouble before, and I'm like, no, he just kept saying, this just, so he actually, I had to meet with him like I think a week later, and he pulled my file, and he read everything, and his exact words were, I got a real raw deal, and he
said, I just cannot believe that they sent you to prison, and it's like, well, some, you know, the district attorney just wanted to make me, I'm on the steward, so, of Mendocino County, so it is what it is, but he was pretty cool, he could see that I was trying to do good, and I was trying to make amends, and so I was sentenced to three years probation, and he petitioned the court, and I got off after a year, so he had a lot of faith in me, and he saw that, you know, I'm really
not that bad of a person, so I was, went to school to be a registered dental assistant, I worked in another county for two other dentists for a million years, I worked as a chair side assistant in orthodontic practice. My husband and I moved in in 1993, I started working as, since, and his partner, it was called Purple at the time, and the job that they had was a receptionist. I did not have any background in the dental, general dental
field, just orthodontic, which is braces, but they liked my, you know, personality, I did have some front desk experience, so they hired me. The office manager was one of the dentists, so she did all the books and before, all I did was make appointment, enter foam, bill insurance, make an audit, it was nothing exciting, and I believe in 1998, 97 in my reminair, the one dentist, his name, he sold his practice to Dr. Town, and he became a sole proprietor, so Dr. Rice was no longer
the office manager, so Dr. Suckney to take over that job, so then another receptionist was hired and I became the office manager, so then all, all the responsibilities as far as banking, writing checks, everything was pushed on to me, so everything was fine, no problems, no concerns, I didn't know Dump that well because he only worked two days a week, Dr. worked two days a week, and then there was another partner that only worked one day, so you never really got to see or
talk with them very much, then when Dump took over Perkins Sheet down, he was there, I believe four to five days a week, then I got to know him a lot more, you know, you eat lunch every day together with the other staff, so what he shared to me was he'd been married three times, he was paying a crap load in alimony, and he was, you know, failed businesses, you can say shit to me more, yeah, I've heard the word, okay, so again, I'm just factual information, I try
not to put a spin on it, it's just, you know, so he, the woe with me story, he, you know, took her forward to do anything, he can't, you know, can't afford this, can he pay so much in taxes, and I get it, you know, but he was making a lot of money, but he didn't have any write-offs, he didn't have any retirement, he didn't have anything, you know, medical insurance, so I had some knowledge because the boss I worked for previously was really good in the
401Ks and medical insurance and how to set those all up, so I took that experience and explained it to Doug and said, well, this is how you do that, so he's very excited, we went ahead and put a whole retirement plan for the whole office, medical, you know, pretty much took care of the whole office that way, okay, okay, Doug explained to me the way that I took it is, you know, he could
really use my help and what that all entailed was when it came to his, we
had a program called QuickBooks and he showed me how you could take deposits, so let's say you tally everything for the whole year and then you turn over that information to the accountant who does his taxes, right, if you didn't show as many deposits then didn't have to pay as much taxes, so he showed me how right before we would tally the month for the accountant to take out some of those deposits and put them in a different month and then print out that month, so I
would show, I'm just gonna say, instead of $50,000 it would show $40,000 deposit, so he put it back and then put it back after you print out the paper, okay, so that saved him $100,000 in deposits, any cash that came into the office, he wanted it, he didn't want it run through the books, so, you know, I helped him out a lot, but in turn, and this is where it all went wrong, is he said, if you help me out, I'll give you some money, so it was, you know, I should have just said no,
but I didn't because I was angry and he paid to have my house landscape because I had just moved into this house a few years ago and we were going to be selling it in a year or so, so he would give me, let's just say, movie tickets or pay for a weekend for my husband and I to go to Lake Tahoe or just, you know, every month it was something, sometimes he just gave me cash because in the bigger picture it was saving him a lot of money, so probably this happened for about a year and I think my conscious just was really bothering me
and I had saw a program on, like, DateLine and it was the same situation that was happening and the doctor got caught by the IRS and not only did he get in trouble, but his office manager, even though she didn't benefit from the hundreds of thousands they busted her and she went to prison, so of course that whole experience scared the snot out of me and I went to him and said, I can't do this anymore, this is what happened, I can't, oh I sure you this will never happen and I just was like, it's not waffling but just extremely
uncomfortable and when he saw, when he said, well I'll just take this and I don't want anything to do with this anymore, so I was trying to back away from doing this, I was still doing it for him, so I just, at least for me, felt a little bit better that I wasn't benefiting, but I still knew that I was in trouble if I kept this up, so in the meantime, we had an office pager that every registered dental assistant would take over the weekend and if a call would come in, they would handle it, so because I was a registered dental assistant,
there were certain jobs that by law I could perform without a dentist being in the office, so if an emergency came up and I felt like I could handle it, then I would just take care of it and then I would let the doctor know, so it was Christmas morning and I ended up with the pager over the long Christmas holiday and a person called me and she happened to be a patient that she was also not really a co-friend, but just a friend, I knew her outside of the office, she showed up on my doorstep in pain and she did a root canal or they called up a lot of me, which is just
basically it's a huge access and you need to have the abs that go back and drain and just like a temporary put on and then a root canal later, that's not something that a registered dental assistant can do, I'm sure you have a root canal, do you remember how painful it is? I've spent my whole life in it, you don't need it, fill me in on how I know work. Okay, so anyway this lady came in, I could tell that she needs something I couldn't help her with, so I called John at home and his man answered the phone and said, well they were out of,
they were like, you know, somewhere else visiting, you know, because it's Christmas and I called the person's in an extremely large amount of pain, you need to get hold of him on his cell phone, so she tried to call him and he wouldn't answer, so I mean, I'm having to deal with this woman, you know, for hours, there's nothing I can do for her, so I find I just can't pass her in a manner, you know, this is an emergency, this lady, you have to find her, where is he? So he finally called me back and he was extremely happy that I was bothering him
on his person's holiday and that I'm an RDA and I should be able to handle it and I remember John, this person needs a rickshaw, you know, it's like there's nothing I can do. This is Christmas Day, I remember having a conversation, my kids were like two and three years old, my husband was like staring at me, going, are you kidding me? Why, you know, it's like, so the next so he ended up having to go down to the office and apparently somehow this was my fault, so I remember the next day in an in-in room,
my husband and I were looking to buy another house, we put an offer on another house we were selling the one we were in and he knew about all this because I told him, look, they're going to be the loan company standing calling you for a reference, making sure that I work there, work here, so I remember either the day after Christmas or the following day, he was calling me and just in a nutshell, explaining that he was extremely disappointed with me over this whole thing.
He was still irate and I told him that I just kept saying, John, what was I supposed to do? Well, you should have handled it. This part was a little funny because I really don't remember why he thought I could handle it, I just, for the life of me, I don't remember that part. But then the subject changed you, I should just fire you and it's like, John, I'm getting a house now, it's like, no, I'm putting an offer, oh, wouldn't that just be really shitty if you lost this house over this whole thing? Well, maybe you should just
keep doing my, you shouldn't complain anymore about doctoring my books for him, he didn't use those words, but you wouldn't want to lose your job over this, wouldn't it, would you? And I just remember thinking you're threatening me and on my mouth, I'm just thinking it, but it didn't come out my mouth and I just, I'm thinking, oh, God, if I had my job, I'm going to lose this house and this is something my husband and I have been waiting for a long time. So, you know, if you keep doing this or you're
not going to have a job and then there was a house, so that's how I just kept doing it. But then I was angry and in my mind I started thinking, you know, he owes me for this
and it kind of went downhill from there, that was my realization and that's the truth. I felt like he ruined my holiday, there was nothing I could do, I'd been doing all of this stuff for him four months without getting anything back and now he's threatening me. So, you know what, I'm going to go ahead and take some of his money and that sounds really bad, but that was my thought process, that he owed me. So, how it started was simply someone paid cash for something, so I told him they paid,
let's say, I'm just, you know, $500 and they paid $300. So then I doctored the books and showed that the bill was paid in full, $300 was in cash and the other was credit adjustment off, but in fact I kept that money. So, that's how it started. I'm not going to blame
Dr. John Cole, he's the one that showed me how to do it. Yeah, I did, but he gave me the right to go and do what I did not at all, but that's how I learned how to do it. I might have come up with it like, oh, you know what I mean, you know, especially if I'm doing a lot of terrible things to people, but as much as I can tell you today, he's the one that showed me how to do it, and so I just unfortunately did the wrong thing. So, it started with cash, just here and there. Of course, he never noticed it because he trusted
me and he still got his money. I kept doctoring his books for, you know, he was able to go and take nice trips. He was really big into cars. He could afford the business with paying his car payments. It was, you know, it was really great for him. His retirement plan was getting funded, everything was doing really well, and I felt a lot better. He didn't know I was taking his money.
I felt like, okay, good. He's paying me. He's paying me for doing his dirty work. I know David, I wish I could give you a better excuse, but that was my thought process. It was probably because he never, so I was getting paid, you know, X amount of dollars, and then because I started doctoring his books, he was paying me more money, you know, more money. He was like, if someone gives you, you know, redone, you know, does your landscaping, then that's money. I don't have to pay out. You're
paying for dinners, vacations, whatever. A lot of it was just, you know, he would pay my credit card bill. He would just, stuff like that. So when you get used to that, and then I chose to stop, now all of a sudden you don't have as much money. At my, you know what I mean? I told him I didn't want to do it anymore, and that's when I, this is just my opinion. So I can't tell you what was in his head, but so John was getting what he wanted,
but he had to pay me to do that. Right. Okay. So then when I said I don't want to do this anymore, he got mad at me, obviously, and then this whole patient came up, and now he's threatening my job, which at the time I didn't think about, well, then he's going to have to go find someone else. It's like, which I'm sure anybody would do the same thing, you know, if someone's dangling that carrot. But in my mind, I'm going, oh God, I'm going to lose my job. I'll lose my house. Okay. I have to keep doing what he's doing. And John, I'm assuming he's going,
great, now I don't have to pay her. She's going to keep, you know, she's going to keep doctoring my book because I'm going to threaten her job. Right. So this is when thinking he got so mad because I kept thinking, wow, there was nothing I could do. I'm not a dentist. I can't throw in somebody's mouth. So he just kept, well, this is your fault. You ruined my holiday. Well, you're not making mine much better. You know, you're my family coming to my house for goodness. I got two little kids and I'm spending an hour on the phone trying to calm you down.
He's a very volatile man. He was a big personality. And a lot of people really liked him or they didn't really like him. But he was like a very demonstrative, very, he's like six foot five and just a very big man, big, big voice. When he was mad, everyone knew about him in the office. But anyway, he would scare me sometimes. And over the phone, he scared me because he threatened my job. And so anyway, I used a certain amount of money. Now it's gone, but I'm still having to do the very worst. That's the first thing he said was,
if you have a credit, you have a criminal record. And I said, no. He said, are you sure? Because I'm going to check. I said, no, I don't, I've had a fee ticket. And that's it. So he checked and he was like, and then the next question, why are you sleeping with him? Did he threaten you or did he tell you, you know, it's like, no. A lot of people, honestly, and again, I didn't see it. A lot of people thought that we were husband and wife. Okay. Not so much just because we did get along really well.
My stepfather and his personality were near images of each other. So even though it was a toxic type of environment, it was something I'd grown up with. So it wasn't, it wasn't uncomfortable for me to handle. If that makes sense at all. I just knew how to work with him.
I knew how to make him calm. You know, it's just a lot of people didn't understand. And I just, I think he was just a whole, he shared a lot of his life stories with me and people always have told me I'm a really good listener. And maybe in his life a lot of people didn't listen to him. He was in Oklahoma and he was an only child. So he was kind of spoiled and got his way, but he was very much overachiever. But he didn't have a lot of patience for people. That's why he'd been married three different times. He was on his fourth wife during this
period. He was not in an affair with one of the other dental assistants that worked there. So he was just a whole big custody fight. He was always on edge. He was always, people used his nickname was Johnny Nitro, you know, like Nitroglycerin. He would go into a rage. And that was just the way he was. But I think he trusted me.
I don't want to say he took advantage of me being naive or I felt sorry for him.
I don't want to make me look like, oh, poor, poor Maury. This is not. That's not. I knew exactly what I was doing. I should never have said yes to the first amount of money. Because I knew it was wrong, but I was just being greedy. So it was, if I wouldn't have done it the first time, I think it was more like a, hey, if you do this, you know, I can give you some money. So I mean, in the beginning, it was kind of like, he made me feel like, well, everybody does it. From what he told me, his other office manager did the same thing for him. He had another
practice in the city. And she did the same thing. So I don't know where he learned about the critical things. I don't know if it was from her. I don't know if he, he was a very, very smart man. But again, I don't, it was just, and you take care of it. Can you get my dog to the cleaner or the groomer? Can you pick up my clinking? It's like, I was the wife. I was the one that took care of everything. And it made me feel good. It made me feel important. And if he needed to vent, I was the person. So I mean, you know, it was
good for my ego. It was helping him out. And I think it's just because his personal life was always so explosive and so dramatic. And when he would come to work, it would be calm. He just took care of everything. So I think... You created his oasis, sure. Yes, yes. So, and, you know, in June, it's like he made me feel needed. He made me feel important. He made me feel, you know, yes. So I mean, it was, it both fed our egos, I'm sure.
But like I said, I don't know if it was just that he didn't, he needed it to be done. If he played the woe with me story for a really long time, like six months, you know, I never had money. It's, you know, the trick of government. I have to pay, you know, taxes to the city because I'm a business owner. They tax me on a type of... Like, I just remember him saying, you know, this is that, you know, he's got typewriters who this is in the 90s. You remember that typewriter that I had to buy? Yep. So I had to pay
sales tax on that. And then I have to pay the government taxes. I, you know, and I'm just like, really? And he's like, yeah. I'm like, well, that doesn't make any sense. You have to pay taxes on it twice. Yep. So you're a business owner. I mean, this is the stuff he's telling me. And I just want, well, it's not right. That's not fair. So it's, this is me standing back and looking at it. Again, no excuses, David. I'm just telling you that I started feeling sorry for him. He's been married three times. He had child support. His ex-wives were all obnoxious.
He had to pay them all out when he never had any money. He was a really bad money manager. Like I said, he spent way beyond his needs all the time. So I think it was the same thing. It's like, John, instead of taking a draw from your salary, let's actually put you, or, yeah, instead of just taking a draw, let's actually put you on a check that you get every two weeks and you'll get taxes taken out of it. And it would be so much smarter. You know, you don't have to worry about, you know, paying the government a huge amount of money because you're
not paying, you know, every quarter or something your taxes. So he liked all that idea. He could get benefits. And his retirement, he treated like, you know, putting you in a corporation. It's like, this is all stuff that I help him do. So I think it was just, he felt that he needed me, or he felt really close to me because I took care of everything. So I think in the court papers, he said that it wasn't the money. He was, it was more about the,
I guess, lost the word. I think he just felt, gosh darn it, it was that I lied to him, that he
totally trusted me and I took advantage of him. He just was so blown away by that. Retrail, yeah. Retrail, sorry, yep, that's exactly that. He was more upset about that than the money is what he told, he was in court and he said that. So I remember I read that in the transcript. I was there, but I was pretty numb to everything. He was very, you know, he was really good about gifts. He was always very generous. When he would go to, so I mean, when you said,
he probably has the first nickel, honestly, he wasn't. That was his problem. He was so nice to everyone. He would, he liked to spend money. He really did. He'd buy like, I remember him coming back from vacation and buying these like $500 sunglasses. And I'm just like, John, why would you do, or some real main brand, he went to Hawaii, some main brand, Johnny Bahama, or something like that shirt. And it was like a tropical Hawaiian shirt. It was like $150 for this shirt. It's like you could probably buy somewhere else for $25, but he always had
to have the best. But by doing that, he'd spend so much money that he never had any. So when he just was generous, he was always very generous. But I don't really, with him,
I think it might have been both. Maybe it was the money because I knew that he didn't have, you know what I mean? He worked really hard for his money. He did. But he just didn't know how to save it. So anyway, I started getting, when all
this started, it was just here and there. It wasn't like a consistent thing. I wasn't writing checks to myself. I wasn't, all I would basically do was taking a chunk of the cash that came in because he had no way of knowing. So that's how it started. Then I want to say that my little
voice, if anything, would just, if he would be livid for whatever reason, mad, angry, yelling at the whole office, I would go into the, well, he owes me. And this little amount of money is not enough. So then I remembered him paying my credit card. So I thought, because I was authorized
to sign on the checks. So I would pay my credit card and I would sign it. And he'd never looked at any of the bank statements. He just would, like I would give him all the checks to sign. And he just would flip through them and go, okay, you just sign them. So I remember saying specifically, fine, but I'm not going to sign anybody's paycheck. That I always felt awkward doing. I don't know why. So he just didn't want to be bothered. There were other things that he could be doing than sitting there. Signing checks. Signing checks. Well, yeah, that's why I'm paying
you. You handle all this stuff. I just want to come here and work. And I want to get my check and that's it. I don't want to do anything else. So he trusted me. So that's how it started.
It just became easy. And I think at that point, it just kept getting worse.
To be quite honest, I think if you want to have like an angel on your shoulder and a devil on the other, the angel that was telling me, you really know better than this. You shouldn't be doing it. I didn't want to listen to that person because, man, I'm having a great time spending all this money. And it's just too easy. I think that's what the problem was. He never checked. He trusted me and I took advantage of that trust.
Or by calling 888-398-2327. If you have questions about this podcast, 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.
[00:02] You are listening to the dental practice owners podcast brought to you by Prosperident from our unique perspective as dentistry's embezzlement experts Prosperidents team can bring you the information that is important to practice owners The dental practice owners 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 Prosperidents Amber Webber Wendy Askins and David Harris talk about the issues that matter to you Hi, this is David Harris in today's podcast episode. We're going to do something a little bit different I'm going to share with you an interview. I did a little while ago with a convicted embezzler This woman stole over $250,000 from the dentist for whom she worked she served prison time for it. She's since been released and left dentistry
[01:02] There are a lot of interesting things about this interview one of the things that I found most intriguing Was listening to her rationalization about how she justified stealing from her doctor and Just a reminder that thieves really need three things in order to embezzle successfully First of all, they need pressure and that could be financial or it could be emotional secondly, they need the opportunity and the unfortunate reality is that most people working at a front desk Have the opportunity to steal and the third thing they need is the ability to suspend reality for a little while and say to Themselves, I know that in general stealing is wrong, but it's okay here. Oh, yeah, I get it I know you're just trying to help so this doesn't happen to somebody else and I I understand that and I'm in support of that and Like I said, I take full responsibility for everything I've done. I just Just trying to understand that, you know, if you do something along in your past, and you put it behind and you made it right, and you kind of backed
[02:04] up and biked in the ass again. You just get tired of it and it's like, oh, what more do I have to do? Like I told you, this is a real dark point in my life, and it was really horrible, but I've come to terms that it is what it is, and I've learned a lot myself on why it happened, how it happened, like it was just yesterday, so I still pretty much remember everything as much as I'd like to block it out, and that's what I did for quite a few years, but you kind of come full circle and you can kind of just understand exactly why, why it happened, what pushed you, you know. Okay. I had to go to prison, and I live in a small community. I just have to backstep a little bit, so this unfortunately was in a very small town, it's like 5,000 people. So when something happened to a local person, it blasted all over the radio. It's in every newspaper, and because I'm such a small community, everybody knows
[03:04] who you are. So, I need to say it was extremely embarrassing. I was in prison. When I was sentenced to prison, the judge actually put in an order for me to go to a, they first call it a restitution center. I had court fines. Before I went to court, I had already paid the victim back. Okay. So, he sued me civilly first. I didn't get caught. I went to him and told him what was happening. I gave him $100,000, and he agreed that he would not go any further. He wouldn't send me to jail. He wouldn't take me to court, so obviously that didn't happen. And I'm going to allow it. So anyway, let me... So 2017, when I... I was supposed to go to a restitution center. Once I got to California, it has a state penitentiary
[04:07] in the center of California. Two of them, Valley State Prison, and the other one is called California State Women's Prison, something like that. And they send you there to be classified. So they say, OK, well, you've gunned in your crime. You can only stay in a maximum security prison. You're a white collar crime. You're going to go to a minimum security. OK, so then they just kind of classify you out. You have to go through a bunch of psychological tests, medical tests. So when I was there, the judge sent an order. And that's in all of my court papers that I was supposed to go to a restitution center, which would basically mean I would go get a job during the day, and I would come back to the facility, I would check in, and they would basically lock you in all night long. So you're in prison, but you're getting a chance to actually do something productive by paying back your, I had like $600 in court fines. So once I got to this prison, the counselor
[05:10] that was looking over my paperwork, and again, her exact words were, we don't care what the judge put in. You're our property now. We can do whatever we want with you. So it's just like, oh, I'm sorry. But once you're in that system, you really don't care. So at the state, the prison system, they want to be paid. They have a lot of expenses. They have guards. They have insurance. They have retirement fines. So those counselors, by sending you away, is basically giving away business. So if they can find any loophole, anything, they're going to keep you there. So I am a white-collar crime in a maximum-securey prison. So that gave me a real bad taste, and I was stuck there for a really long time. So anyway, that started it. So that whole experience, when you're sleeping, can see a way from a woman that stabbed another
[06:17] woman and cut out her nine-month-old baby and set the person on fire because it kept that baby to be with her fiancé, who's the father of that child. What does that do to your psyche? So I'm being fed all this information, a scared little deer, you know, deer in the headlight, and so that screwed with me big time. When I got back from prison, I didn't leave my house. I didn't go anywhere. I couldn't work because I'm a convicted town. I was too embarrassed to go and actually do anything. I don't know, the first six months I pretty much did nothing but hide in the house. I had a lot of psychological problems, a lot of nightmares. I went and saw a doctor who put me on a huge amount of medication, which I'm still on today. I started cleaning houses for people because I could not find any more work. And then finally, I think the stress just got too much to me, so the doctor told me I
[07:20] had to be on permanent disability, and I've got been since I think 2008. So I'm on a huge amount of medications, just trying to keep demons at bay, help me sleep and maintain, but to this day, the thought of going and applying for a job, if I could, it all just comes back up again. So to me it's just easier for me to stay home. So overall, this whole experience is what I did. I did it to myself, but it's not like you can walk away from it. It has scarred me. And again, it's all my fault, but that's just unfortunately I had a real problem dealing with it. Well, when I got out of prison, the parole officer, when I first got there, he, the same thing, he looked me up and down and was very suspicious and just, you've never been in trouble before. And I'm like, no, he just kept saying, this just, so he actually, I had to meet with
[08:20] him like I think a week later and he pulled my file and he read everything and his exact words were, I got a real raw deal and he said, I just cannot believe that they sent you prison. And it's like, well, some, some, you know, the district attorney just wanted to make me the most a steward of Mendocino County, so he is what it is, but he was pretty cool. He could see that I was trying to do good and I was trying to make amends and so I was sentenced to three years probation and he petitioned the court and I got off after a year. So he had a lot of faith in me and he saw that, you know, I'm really not that bad of a person. So I was, when schools be a registered dental assistant, I worked in another county for two other dentists for a million years. I worked as a chair side assistant in orthodontic practice. When I moved in in 1993, I started working as, and his partner, it was called Purple at the time and the job that they had was a receptionist.
[09:21] I did not have any background in the dental, general dental field, just orthodontic, which is braces, but they liked my, you know, personality. I did have some front desk experience, so they hired me. The office manager was one of the dentists, so she did all the books and before all I did was make a point in the dental firm, bill, insurance, make an audit. It was nothing exciting. And I believe in 1998, 97 in my reminair, the one dentist, his name, he sold his practice to Dr. Towne and he became a sole proprietor, so Dr. Weiss was no longer the office manager, so Dr. Weiss needed to take over that job. So then another receptionist was hired and I became the office manager. So then all the responsibilities, as far as banking, writing checks, everything was pushed on to me. So everything was fine, no problems, no concerns. I didn't know Dumpf that well because he only worked two days a week. Dumpf worked two days a week and then there was another partner that only worked
[10:24] one day. So you never really got to see or talk with them very much. Then when Dumpf took over Perkins Sheetdown, he was there, I believe four to five days a week. Then I got to know him a lot more. You know, you eat lunch every day together with the other staff. So what he shared to me was he'd been married three times. He was paying a crap load in alimony and he was, you know, failed businesses. You can say it to me more. You have heard the word before. Okay. So again, I'm just factual information. I try not to put a spin on it. It's just, you know, so he, the woe with me story, he, you know, took it forward to do anything. He can't, you know, can't afford this because he pays so much in taxes. And I get it. No, but he was making a lot of money. But he didn't have any write-offs. He didn't have any retirement. He didn't have anything, you know, medical insurance. So I had some knowledge because the boss I worked for previously was really good
[11:26] into 401Ks and medical insurance and how to set those all up. So I took that experience and explained it to Doug and said, well, this is how you do that. So he's very excited. He went ahead and put a whole retirement plan for the whole office, medical, you know, pretty much took care of the whole office that way. Oh, okay. Okay. Doug explained to me the way that I took it is, you know, he could really use my help and what that all entailed. was when it came to his taxes, we had a program called QuickBooks. And he showed me how you could take a deposit. So let's say you tally everything for the whole year, and then you turn over that information that you count and who does his taxes. If you didn't show as many deposits,
[12:27] then didn't have to pay as much taxes. So he showed me how right before we would tally the month for the accountant to take out some of those deposits and put them in a different month. And then print out that month, so it would show, I'm just going to say, instead of $50,000, it would show $40,000 deposit. So he put it back. And then put it back after you print out the paper. So that saved him $100,000 in deposits. Any cash that came into the office, he wanted it. He didn't want it run through the books. So I helped him out a lot. But in turn, and this is where it all went wrong, is he said, if you help me out, I'll give you some money. So I should have just said no. But I didn't because I was angry. And he paid to have my health landscape because I had just moved into this house a few years ago, and we were going to be selling it in a year or so. So he would give me, let's just say, movie tickets
[13:32] or pay for a weekend for my husband and I to go to Lake Tahoe. Or just, you know, every month it was something. Sometimes he just gave me cash because in the bigger picture, it was saving him a lot of money. So probably this happened for about a year. And I think my conscience just was really bothering me. And I had saw a program on, like, Dateline. And it was the same situation that was happening. And the doctor.com. And not only did he get in trouble, but his office manager, even though she didn't benefit from the hundreds of thousands they busted her and she went to prison. So, of course, that whole experience scared us not out of me. And I went to him and said, I can't do this anymore. This is what happened. I can't, oh, I assure you this will never happen. And I just was, like, not waffling, but just extremely uncomfortable. And when he saw it, he said, well, I'll just take this. And I said, I don't want anything to do with this anymore. So I was trying to back away from doing this. I was still doing it for him. So I just, at least for me, I felt a little bit better that I wasn't benefiting.
[14:34] So I still knew that I was getting in trouble if I kept this up. So in the meantime, we had an office pager that every registered dental assistant would take over the weekend. And if a call would come in, they would handle it. So because I was a registered dental assistant, there were certain jobs that by law I could perform without a dentist being in the office. So if an emergency came up, and I felt like I could handle it, then I would just take care of it, and then I'd let the doctor know. So it was Christmas morning, and I ended up at the pager over the long Christmas holiday. And a person called me, and she happened to be a patient, but she was also not really a close friend, but just a friend. I knew her outside of the office. She showed up on my doorstep in pain. And she did a root count, or they called up a lot of me, which is basically a huge asset. And if you needed to have the asset build up and drain, and just like a temporary put on, and then a root count later, that's not something that a registered dental assistant can do. I'm sure you have a root count. Do you remember how painful it is?
[15:36] I've spent my whole life doing this, but you don't need it. Fill me in on that. on how I know her. Okay. So anyway, this lady came in. I could tell that she needs something I couldn't help her with. So I called John at home and his man answered the phone and said, well, they were out if they were, like, you know, somewhere else visiting, you know, because it was Christmas. And like, oh, this person's in an extremely large amount of pain. You need to get a hold of him on his cell phone. So she tried to call him and he wouldn't answer. So, I mean, I'm having to deal with this woman, you know, for hours. There's nothing I can do for her. So I just kept pestering him, and, you know, this is an emergency. This lady, you have to find her. Where is he? So he finally called me back and he was extremely irritated that I was bothering him on his Christmas holiday and that I'm an RDA and I should be able to handle it. And I remember, John, this person needs a rickshaw. You know, it's like, there's nothing I can do. This is Christmas Day. I remember having a conversation. My kids were like two and three years old. My husband was like, Farron,
[16:36] are you kidding me? What, you know, it's like... So the next cell he ended up having to go down to the office and apparently somehow this was my fault. So I remember the next day in an interim, my husband and I were looking to buy another house. We put an offer on another house. We were selling the one we were in. And he knew about all this because I told him, look, they're going to be the loan companies that are calling you for a reference, making sure that I work there. Work here. So I remember either the day after Christmas or the following day, he am calling me. And just, in a nutshell, explained that he was extremely disappointed with me over this whole thing. He was still irate, and I told him that I just kept saying, John, what was I supposed to do? Well, you should have handled it. This part is a little funny because I really don't remember why he thought I could handle it. I just, for the life of me, I don't remember that part. But then the subject changed to, I should just fire you.
[17:38] And it's like, John, I'm getting a house now. It's like, you know, I'm putting an offer. Oh, wouldn't that just be really shitty if you lost this house over this whole thing? Well, maybe you should just keep doing my, you shouldn't complain anymore about, you know, doctoring my book form. He didn't use those words. But you wouldn't want to lose your job over this, wouldn't you? And I just remember thinking you're threatening me. And on my mouth, I'm just thinking it, but it didn't come out my mouth. I'm thinking, oh, God, if I had my job, I'm going to lose this house. And this is something that I've been waiting for a long time. So, you know, if you keep doing this, you're not going to have a job, and then you're going to lose your house. So that's how I just kept doing it. But then I was angry. And in my mind, I started thinking, you know, he owes me. And it kind of went downhill from there. That was my realization. I felt like he ruined my holiday.
[18:38] There was nothing I could do. I've been doing all of this stuff for him for four months without getting anything back and now he's threatening me. So you know what, I'm going to go ahead and take some of his money and that sounds really bad but that was my thought process so he owed me. So how it started was simply someone paid cash or something so I told him they paid let's say I'm just you know $500 and they paid $300 so then I doctored the books and showed that the bill was paid in full, $300 was in cash and the other was credit adjustments off but in fact I kept that money so that's how that's how it started. I'm not going to blame Dr. Son, he's the one that showed me how to do it. Yeah I did but it didn't give me the right to go and do what I did not at all but that's how I learned how to do it. I might have come up with it like that, you know what I mean?
[19:39] He knows pressure and time do a lot of terrible things to people but as much as I can tell you today he's the one that showed me how to do it and so I just unfortunately did the long thing. So it started with cash just here and there. Of course he never noticed it because he trusted me and he still got his money. I kept doctoring his books for you know he was able to go and take nice trips. He was really big into cars. He could afford the business with paying his car payments. You know, it was really great for him. His retirement plan was getting funded. Everything was doing really well. And I felt a lot better than a lot of taking his money. I felt like, OK, good, he's paying me. He's paying me for doing his dirty work. I know, David, I wish I could give you a better excuse, but that was my thought process. It was probably because, you know, so I was getting paid, you know, X amount of dollars.
[20:40] And then, because I started offering his books, he was paying me more money, you know, more money. He was like, if someone gives you, you know, redone, you know, does your landscaping, then that's money I don't have to pay out. You know, paying for dinners, vacations, whatever. A lot of it was just, you know, he would pay my credit card bill. He would just, stuff like that. So when you get used to that, and then I chose to stop, now all of a sudden, you don't have as much money. At my, you know what I mean? Like, I told him I didn't want to do it anymore. And that's when I, this is just my opinion. So I can't tell you what was in his head. But so John was getting what he wanted. But he had to pay me to do that. Right. OK? So then when I said I don't want to do this anymore, he got mad at me, obviously. And then this whole patient came up, and now he's threatened me. my job, which at the time, I didn't think about, well, then he's going to have to go
[21:44] find someone else. It's like, which I'm sure anybody would do the same thing, you know, if someone's dangling that carrot. But in my mind, I'm going, oh God, I'm going to lose my job, I'll lose my house. I have to keep doing what he's doing. And John, I'm assuming, is going, great, now I don't have to pay her. She's going to keep, you know, she's going to keep doctoring my book because I'm going to threaten her job. Right. So this is what I'm thinking he got so mad because I kept thinking, wow, there was nothing I could do. I'm not Dennis. I can't throw him somebody's mouth. So I, he just kept, well, this is your fault, you ruined my holiday. I just said, well, you're not making mine much better, you know, you're, you're my family's coming to my house for goodness' sake, I got two little kids and I'm sending an hour on the phone trying to call me down. He's a very volatile man. He was a big personality and a lot of people really liked him or they didn't really like him, but he was like a very demonstrative, very, he's like six foot five and just a
[22:46] very big man, big, big voice. When he was mad, everyone knew about him in the office, but anyway, he would scare me sometimes. And over the phone he scared me because he threatened my job and so anyway, I used a certain amount of money. Now it's gone, but I'm still having to do the very worst. That's the first thing he said was, if you have a credit, if you have a credit, give a criminal record. And I said, no. He said, are you sure? Because I'm going to ch- I said, no, I've had a fee ticket and that's it. No. No. No. So he checked and he was like, and then the next question, No. No. No. why are you sleeping with him? No. Did he threaten you or did he tell you? No. No. No. You know, it's like, no. No. No. A lot of people, honestly, and again, I didn't see it. No. A lot of people thought that we were husband and wife. Okay. Not so much just because we did get along really well. My stepfather and his personality were near images of each other. So even though it was a toxic type of environment, it was something I'd grown up with.
[23:48] So it wasn't uncomfortable for me to handle. Okay. If that makes sense at all. I just knew how to work with him. Okay. I knew how to make him calm. You know, it's just a lot of people didn't understand. And I just, I think he was just a whole, he shared a lot of his life stories with me and people always have told me I'm a really good listener. And maybe in his life, a lot of people didn't listen to him. He was in Oklahoma and he was an only child. So he was kind of spoiled. and got his way, but he was very much overachiever, but he didn't have a lot of patience for people. That's why he'd been married three different times. He was on his fourth wife during this period. He was not in an affair with one of the other dental assistants who worked there. Sonia was just a whole big custody fight. He was always on edge. He was always... People used his nickname was Johnny Nitro,
[24:48] you know, like Nitroglycerin. You know, he would go into a rage, and that was just the way he was. But I think he trusted me. I don't want to say he took advantage of me being naive, or I felt sorry for him. I don't want to make me look like, oh, poor, poor Maury. It's not. It's not. I knew exactly what I was doing. I should never have said yes to the first amount of money. I knew it was wrong, but I was just being greedy. So it was... If I wouldn't have done it the first time, I think it was more like a, hey, if you do this, you know, I can give you some money. So, I mean, in the beginning, it was kind of like he made me feel like, well, everybody does it. He called me, his other office manager, did the same thing for him. He had another practice in the city. It was called just man. She did the same thing.
[25:48] So I don't know where he learned about the critical things. I don't know if it was from her. I don't know if he was a very, very smart man. But again, I don't... It was just when you take care of it. When you get my dog to the cleaner or the groomer, when you pick up my clinking, it's like I was the wife. I was the one that took care of everything. And it just, he feel good. It made me feel important. And if he needed to vent, I was the person. So I mean, you know, it was good for my ego. It was helping him out. And I think it's just because his personal life was always so explosive and so dramatic. And when he would come to work, it would be calm. He just took care of everything. So I think... You created his oasis, sure. Yes, yes. And you know, in June, it's like he made me feel needed. He made me feel important. He made me feel, you know... Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, it was... It both fed our egos, I'm sure. But like I said, I don't know if it was just that he needed it to be done.
[26:51] Just he played the woe with me story for a really long time. Like six months, you know, I never had money. It's, you know, the trick of government. I have to pay, you know, taxes to the city because I'm a business owner. They tax me on a type of, like, I just remember them saying, you know that this is that, you know, when you've got typewriters who this is in the 90s. You remember that typewriter that I had to buy? Yep. So I had to pay sales tax on that. And then I have to pay the government taxes. I, you know, and I'm just like, really? And he's like, yeah. I'm like, well, that doesn't make any sense. You have to pay taxes on it twice. Yep. So you're a business owner. So I mean, this is the stuff he's telling me. And I just want, well, that's not right. That's not fair. So it's, this is me standing back and looking at it. Again, no excuses, David. I'm just telling you that I started feeling sorry for him. He's been married three times. He had child support. His ex-wives were all obnoxious. He had to pay them all out when he never had any money. He was a really bad money manager. Like I said, he spent way beyond his needs all the time.
[27:52] So I think it was the same thing. It's like, John, instead of taking a draw from your salary, let's actually put you, or, yeah, instead of just taking a draw, let's actually put you on a check that you get every two weeks, and you'll get taxes taken out of it, and it will be so much smarter. You know, you don't have to worry about... You know paying the government a huge amount of money because you're not paying, you know, every quarter or something your taxes So he liked all that idea you could get benefits and his retirement retreat is like the quote, you know putting you became corporation It's like this is all stuff that I help them do So I think it was just he felt that he needed me or he felt really close to me Because I took care of everything so I think in the court papers He said that it wasn't the money. He was it was more about the Just lost the word. I think he just felt Gosh darn it It was that I lied to him that he totally trusted me. I took advantage of him. He just was so
[28:58] Yeah Exactly that he was more upset about that than the money Is what he told he was in court and he said that so I remember I read that in the transcript I was there, but I was pretty you know numb to everything. He was very He was really good about gifts. He was always very generous when he would go to it So I mean when you said he probably has the first nickel honestly he wasn't. That was his problem. He was so nice to everyone. He liked to spend money. He really did. He'd buy, like, I remember him coming back from vacation and buying these like $500 sunglasses. And I'm just like, John, why would you do it? Some real name brand, he went to Hawaii, some name brand, Johnny Bahama or something like that shirt. And it was like a tropical Hawaiian shirt. And it was like $150 for this shirt. It's like you could probably buy somewhere else for $25. But he always had to have the best. But by doing that, he'd spend so much money that I never had any. So when he just was
[30:05] generous, he was always very generous. But I don't really, with him, I think it might have been both. Maybe it was the money because I knew that he didn't have, you know, that I mean, he worked really hard for his money. He did. But he just didn't know how to save it. So anyway, I started getting, when all this started, it was just here and there. It wasn't like a conspiracy. assistant thing, I wasn't writing checks to myself. I wasn't. All I would basically do is taking a chunk of the cash that came in, because he had no way of knowing. So that's how it started. Then I want to say that my little voice, if anything, would just, if he would be livid for whatever reason, mad, angry, yelling at the whole office,
[31:07] I would go into the, well, he owes me. And this little amount of money is not enough. So then I remembered him paying my credit card. So I thought, because I was authorized to sign on the checks. So I would pay my credit card, and I would sign it. And he'd never looked at any of the bank statements. He just would, like, I would give him all the checks to sign. And he just would flip through them and go, OK, you just sign them. So I remember saying specifically, fine, but I'm not going to sign anybody's paycheck. That I always felt awkward doing. I don't know why. So he just didn't want to be bothered. There were other things that he could be doing than sitting there signing checks. Signing checks. Mm-hm. Thanks. That's why I'm paying you, you handle all this stuff. I just want to come here and work, and I want to get my check, and that's it. I don't want to do anything else. So he trusted me, so that's how it started.
[32:09] It just became easy, and I think at that point it just kept getting worse. To be quite honest, I think if you want to have like an angel on your shoulder and a devil on the other, the angel that was telling me, you really know better than this, you shouldn't be doing it. I didn't want to listen to that person because, man, I'm having a great time spending all this money. And it's just too easy. I think that's what the problem was. He never checked, but he trusted me, and I took advantage of that trust. Thanks for listening to the Dental Practice Owner's Podcast. Brought to you by Prosperident. You can contact Prosperident through its website, www.prosperident.com, or by calling 888-398-2327. If you have questions about this podcast, if you would like to
[33:10] 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.