Interviews with Embezzlement Victims

[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, 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. Talk about the issues that matter to you. Hi, this is David Harris. In this podcast, my colleagues Amber Weber and Wendy Askins are going to interview three of our clients, as well as somebody who was not a client, all of whom got embezzled, and Wendy and Amber are going to talk to them about their experience and what happened. So the first interview is going to be Wendy interviewing Dr. Craig Scott.

[01:06] I'll be back after that interview to introduce the next one, so sit back and enjoy. So I'd like to start with where I first met David Harris. This would be a good little background. I had seen him at our practice manager's software head of meeting, and David was there speaking. And I ended up subsequently hearing him at another meeting, but I remember sitting at the meeting thinking, this is really great information. for someone who might actually need it. I'm not one of those people because I've got things under control but this is gonna be great for somebody and I hope they use this information. Well, fast forward, probably a couple of years and one of my employees approaches me and says, you know what, I was looking at some stuff, Dr. Scott and I was making some calls and I noticed this patient that we started last week doesn't have a contract entered and I know I posted the down payment. So, well, I'll take a look at, I'll see what's going on. So I ended up ring visiting with our financial coordinator, mentioned when I just heard, she said, you know what, let me take a look at it,

[02:07] I'll figure it out. Said, all right, just let me know. Couple days passed, I went back and I said, so did you find anything out on that? I said, yeah, you know, they just forgot to enter it at the front desk. I got it entered, it's all taken care of, no problem. I said, all right, great, thanks. The same person who initially visited with me comes back to me and says, so what did you find out? I said, well, I talked to her and she said, they just forgot to post it and everything's fine, now the contracts entered and she said, was there a deposit slip? I said, I didn't ask. So I go back, I say, you know what, that patient we talked about, I went back to our financial coordinator, that patient we talked about, do you have a deposit slip for that? He said, yeah, I said, okay, because I'm thinking she's not gonna lie to me, she's not gonna be so brazen as to say, yes, I've got a deposit slip but they're not be able to show it. So I said, that's fine, great. For a third time, this... And a boy who initially approached me says, so what did you find out? And I said, yeah, she said she's got a deposit slip.

[03:08] And then this employee looked at me kind of cocked her head. And I guess he said, did you look at it? And I felt at this point like, you know, when your mom told you to do something and you know you've got to go through all these steps to do it, you know how to do the job. But you're kind of like, well, I just want to do enough just to get by and maybe we will find out that there's nothing to this. And that's what I was doing. But she was pushing me to go all the way to the end on this. So I was at a point where I didn't want to approach our financial coordinator for a third time because then she would probably think, why does he keep asking about this? And if there's something going on, that raises some red flags with her. So I thought I'd do some investigating on my own. So I started looking at our audit trail in our practice management software. And I looked at this patient and I noticed that this transaction had been voided. And so I thought, well, that's kind of weird. It was a cash transaction and it had been voided. So then I started, I just picked a date, date to kind of a timeframe about six months. I started looking at everything. And there were several voided transactions

[04:09] and almost all of them were cash transactions. So then I spread my search out even further to look, okay, the last year, the last year and a half. And I keep finding more of these. So then I call our practice management software, tech support, I say, hey, listen, I got a couple of questions. Can you guys look at some stuff for them? So they ended up pulling up these patients that I'd kind of earmarked or tagged and they said, something's not right here. You should almost never have voided transactions and you've got a lot and they're all by the same person. And so I said, all right, so that's about when things started to sink in, okay, there's something going on and I don't know if there's a good answer for this. So I said, listen, I've got a few more names. I'm gonna shoot those over to you. If you could look at those and let me know that'd be great. And I said, yeah, we could do that, but what we recommend, and she actually, prior to that, she said, give me just a second. She went and talked to somebody else, the tech support person said, we think you need to hire somebody right now to investigate this. This is beyond a small discrepancy and there's something definitely going on here. And in fact, I think the words were, we 110% recommend that you hire somebody to look at this.

[05:11] They gave me prosperity, which I was familiar with because I sat through those two meetings thinking I would never need them. So in fact, they gave me the orthodontic component lead which is Wendy, they gave me her number. So I called Wendy and it went to voicemail. So I thought, and this is a Friday afternoon. So being OCD like I am, I didn't wanna wait till Monday if she didn't call me back. So I thought I'm just gonna call the main number. And sure enough, I call and David answers the phone, which I thought was a little bit weird that David's answering the phone, but maybe that's something he does. So I talked to David probably for 45 minutes or an hour. I explained everything to him and he said, yeah, there's probably something going on there that we need to look into. And he explained to me how the process works, what to expect, what they need from me. how to handle the employee during this time, which that's a whole other webinar series on how that worked out. But, and then if there is embezzlement,

[06:11] how the prosecution works, whether it goes to a judge for restitution or goes to court, he laid out all these scenarios and he talked about the cost and how all that works. So he laid all this out to me and I said, listen, I gotta talk to my business partner and I'll let you know. Well, I ended up visiting with him, I think on Monday, I called back and we signed up to get started, to start the whole process. And sure enough, after the investigation, was found that we had been embezzled for a significant amount. And then we just kind of went through all that. Nothing was unknown to me because he told me if this happens, here's what we're gonna do. And so we went forward with prosecute, well, first for terminating the employee and there was a process or a protocol for that. And then how to handle all of that and then to move forward with current staff, how to handle that. So it was a little kind of touch and go at times with the staff because they were all worried about, did she steal our information and do we need to change bank accounts and all of this?

[07:12] So we were kind of a little bit walking on eggshells with certain things, but we've gotten through it. We're still in the currently the investigation phase where the local police department took the case on, but then I think the secret service requested the case because my understanding is once. it gets to a certain amount of embezzlement. They become interested in that because I'd heard that maybe they can seize property and there's some other things they have at their disposal to help with the investigation or the prosecution. So that's where it is right now. And I spoke to the Secret Service agent, he said, we're investigating it. The US attorney is gonna take it over and the wheels of justice grind slowly. So be patient. If there's anything you need, call me. If I need from you, I will call you. So that's kind of where we are right now. That's pretty much it. Sorry, I had to unmute my mic. So tell me, because I'm kind of one of those affective people.

[08:16] How has this embezzlement, how did you feel about it when you found out it was true? How has it affected your life in terms of in your practice with your team? I mean, even your family, even your family life, it's got a good soul on that. Yeah. So first off, you trust everybody in your office, especially someone who's in charge of money or managing staff or who has a little more responsibility. You trust it with a lot of things. And we put a lot of trust in this person to manage our finances. the way that we wanted them managed and we assumed that she was doing that. And one other thing that I didn't mention earlier is that for a period of time, even before all of this came up with her, it seemed to me for the last two or three years, we were always

[09:19] just getting by. Everybody was getting paid. We didn't have to cut hours. We didn't have to not pay people. But it was there's never any extra money. And I would know we'd have a good month. And I know we have a good month. Our bills are a certain amount and there should be a little bit left over. There was never anything left over. And that was interesting in retrospect. Except the time I thought, well, there's probably an explanation. I'm just missing something. And I would go back and look at some things that were expensive, was our lab cost up something. And I never really found something. But it was interesting to look back at that. Well, now I know why. And then how that affected us. My wife was ticked whenever I told her about it. She was really upset. And of course she wants to hang her out to drive, send her to prison. I'll say, well, we can't do all of that. We're not going that route. But I understand how she felt. And I to a degree felt similar to that. But when someone you trust does that to you, it hurts. And I'm not an emotional guy. I'm not a compassionate guy. I don't tell anybody I said that.

[10:19] But I'm a very stoic type of person. And so not much gets to me. But this, whenever I've got someone I'm counting on that I put 100% of trust in does. this, that changes everything. So as far as how it affected the practice, we had given certain people the practice privileges through the practice management software to do certain things. What I did, it might have been a little too much. I've pulled everything off. Nobody has any privileges to do anything other than, you know, open the computer, turn on the computer, look at reports, the very basic stuff. If there's an adjustment to a contract, if there's a discount, if there's a voided transaction, if there's a new employee who needs privileges, I'm doing all of that. Or my business partner as well. We're the only two that could do anything. So I kind of took on a lot more responsibility as a result of that. At some point I might relinquish some of that. But right now, every little thing has to run through me. So that's how I kind of probably overcompensated for that. But I feel that's what we need to do right now to ensure that nothing

[11:24] happens. Plus, by doing that, I'm setting a precedent with the current staff that Dr. Scott is checking everything. So I'm not saying I'm putting fear into them, but I kind of am. Because they know he's looking at everything and I can't do anything without him overseeing that. So that's where we are right now with that. And that's what has changed. So it's a little more work for me. But I don't mind it because I know what the alternative could be by not having everything run through me. Next we're going to hear Amber interview a wonderful lady, Dr. Dominique Bacchus. who got embezzled by her long time office manager. Let's listen. First question, what made you suspicious? Well, there were a few things that happened that made me suspicious. One is when we were transferring from care stream or ortho track to TOPS, we had a trainer come in

[12:28] and my financial coordinator, who was the embezzler, did not have the employer policies in place so that we could convert contracts from TOPS. And she acted very strange because I had asked her if she had done all of her legwork for this conversion and she said yes and then she just acted very confused. And she had always been on top of things. And so I started kind of questioning what she was doing if she wasn't doing things right. And the trainer raised some suspicions as well because she didn't understand why things hadn't been done. Then we had a day where, can I use her name? Yeah. Okay, we had a day when Susie was not at the office and I noticed that a $100 bill was clipped to the outside of a chart. And I asked my employee at the time,

[13:30] I said, why are you putting cash on outside of a chart? It's just going to the lot box. And she said, well, that's what Susie told me to do. And I found that very odd. And then there was one other thing that happened. My treatment coordinator took a very large cash payment. And then Susie backed it out of the ledger. And so those were the things. So it was behavioral, but it was also tracing down that $100, finding out that it had never been deposited, and then other things. After that, I kind of started to follow and watch her. How did you feel when you first became suspicious? Honestly, I felt like I was being paranoid. I thought I was crazy. How did you feel when an investment was confirmed?

[14:34] Honestly, I felt devastated. I felt hurt. I played the why me victim game. I really, honestly questioned my judgment in people because she was someone who was the grandmother tight, who did everything for me. me in the office and would have never thought in a million years that she would have done that. Did you ever blame yourself? I guess I did because I felt like I was on top of things and this made me realize that I really wasn't. So what did you learn from this experience?

[15:35] I learned good things and bad things. Okay. I learned not to press anyone, which is my protective mechanism, but I also learned how determined I can be and how strong I can be in the face of adversity because when this happened, my life fell apart. I told my husband I'm out. I went to my office every weekend. I went through my day sheets and I discovered a bunch of missing money before I hired a pressure event. And I did things that I didn't think I could ever do. What good things did you learn? What good things? Yeah. Oh. I learned how to file a police report. Good one.

[16:36] I have no idea how to do that. I learned through check my insurance for employee theft. Had no idea that that was even in place. I learned how to protect myself the best that I can. What changes did you make since then? So I definitely limit my employees to what they can access on our on tops. And I'm in control of the cash box. And this may or may not be right. But when I hire someone, I tell them that I did have a person in my office who embezzled and that I prosecuted them. And if they want to embezzle that this is not the place they want to be employed. I also set up security features on my alarm that I get called when someone goes in after hours.

[17:46] And everyone knows that if they don't tell me that they're going to the office, I will call the police and have them arrested even if they are my employees. taking online payments and I started getting all of my insurance through electronic fund transfers so a couple of things like that. Was there anything else you would want to share or you want anybody to know with your experience? I would say definitely hire someone to help you because when this happened all the thoughts were running through my mind. How do I file a police report? Am I going to get my money back? Where do I start? And I remember calling David Harris and he was in the car driving Friday night and he talked to me for three hours and by the end of that conversation

[18:53] I felt like I had someone who had my back and he did and I don't think what I could have gotten through this by myself and what in the process of the investigation what I discovered and through prosperity made me realize that I could actually stop this woman from hurting someone else's business and I feel really good about that. And for the last of our client interviews, we're going to have Wendy back again with one of the nicest guys to ever graduate from dental school, Dr. Kirk Speck. So let's listen to Wendy and Kirk. All right. Well, I think the first question that you guys put to me was what made me suspicious? And I think most of us kind of know

[19:57] we should have better checks and balances than we have. But at least I did know that. And but it's just, you know, you're always so busy. You're several projects behind. And it's just something you're going to do sometime. So but what actually made me suspicious was that she, the gal that did it, was progressively becoming kind of more detached from her job. And actually sickly, it was kind of interesting. I think it was having an impact on her health. Simultaneous with this, we had an influx of new employees, too. Some of our people left. And we had some pretty good people come on board. And so now she had people that she hadn't, you know, she didn't know if she could trust or not. And some of them were involved in the front office.

[20:59] And. And so she didn't have full reign anymore. And so I think that kind of made her nervous. She knew people could see stuff. And so she actually, she went out on sick leave. And she was like really sick. And ultimately, she said she wanted to resign. And while she was gone is when you and I started talking. And so at that point, it became apparent that definitely things were going on. And so I was nervous about her because she was. I felt a potential danger to my team. And and I didn't know what she would do to the practice and everything. So I didn't just accept her resignation. She did resign, but I had an attorney involved with it and stuff to try and make sure to keep things.

[22:06] As legal as possible, I just didn't want any backlash. And then that's when you and I dove into this, Wendy, and and kind of went from there. But it's yeah, it's a it's a challenging thing. I mean, on one hand, even if you are suspicious, nobody wants to admit that they. Haven't been competent in running their own business in that way. And and so I think it's it's. scary thing for most of us to admit that maybe it's happened to us. And so I think there's a number of people that would rather just not know. And that is disappointing to me because I know David's given the numbers of how many people have been, you know, embezzled once and embezzled twice and three times and so on. I've been embarrassed to say I've been one of those that's embezzled twice. You know, the practice I bought when I first got out of dental school was being embezzled by a gallop.

[23:06] It was like 20, 21 years old. And so I didn't know that. He didn't know that and she continued on. And that one we found we're on a pegboard system. Computers were just barely getting started. And that one we found reasonably early. But still, you know, we lost some money on it. And just how I was in a small county and the district attorney was my patient. So I was able to contact him directly. So that was good. And we confronted her directly. And they basically said, when you're done with the conversation, walk her is a really small town. Walk her down the street to the police station. And so that's what happened. Yeah. Filed. But yeah, and they said, well, do you want to lock her up tonight? Or do you think she's a flight risk?

[24:08] And so in that case, I actually, she was a bastard case. She was crying and just first denying it. And then just like, I'm so sorry. And anyway, she was worried, I think, what was going to happen. I drove her home. I thought she would probably crash or something on the way home. Dropped her out for her moms. And that was last day of her software. But she did go back and work in a dental office, which I think is an important thing to realize that I'm sure that she did it again. And I don't know. There really, other than you guys, nobody's putting a stop to this that I know of. So I think that's part of the reason why I wanted to say something is it would be nice if we could, if this could stop. I don't think it'll stop. But if we can catch it early and if each of us can become a little bit more responsible,

[25:09] I know I still need that right now. Yeah. How did you, when we were working together, how did you feel when you found out that it was a confirmation that she was stealing from you? I mean, I remember us working very closely together. And I said, I don't know. I remember that you were very hurt. Yeah. Am I remembering that correctly? Absolutely correct, yeah. One, you feel betrayed, but you also feel hurt because this is somebody you trust. Obviously, the people that you put in charge of your finances are ones you've decided are the most trustworthy. So you feel embarrassed. You feel betrayed and hurt that the person you trusted would do this to you. You do have a lot of emotions and a lot of you

[26:09] feel a little stupid. You know, it's like, yeah, you shouldn't let that happen. But I think my take on this is that what you guys are doing is fantastic. And I think if more people would set their fears aside and get their practices checked out, even if they're not, I mean, what do you have to lose? You don't have anything to lose. And for an initial scanning and you guys and other businesses too that would do something like you guys do, I think so many of us are so caught up in the stuff we're doing that we need people that are pros at this almost occasionally look, you know, I think a one-year forensic audit of your practice would. I mean, I would go for that. So what are some of the changes that you made since the embezzlement?

[27:16] And I know you continue to evolve with your procedures, but what are some of the more important changes that you've made? Yeah. Well, I think initially, you know, the checks and balances that you guys put in to compare things we did. And then you go back to focusing on growth of your practice and, you know, new technology is developing all the time and you're jumping on that bandwagon. And, you know, as often as it is to say these checks and balances sometimes get pushed to the back again or you want to delegate it or something. And so, you know, from when this happened and you were with me figuring this out, I know we're probably three or four times bigger than we were. So we've grown and moved to a new location and, you know, bigger building. A lot of things have happened and those things once again become the thing that

[28:17] pushes all this to the back burner. And I know at this stage I'm not doing as good a job as I can. And so I think training somebody that you really, really trust in my I have a family member that I trust. I know family can steal too, but this is somebody I trust a lot. And so he and I are gonna try and do this together. Hope that answers it. Yeah, we'll call it a wrap. How about that? And for our final interview, Amber's going to speak with Gloria, who's the husband of a dentist. Gloria and her husband got embezzled. They were not prosperity clients. And you can listen to her comments about that. And what really stood out to me when we talked the other day, Gloria, is how you said that you think you would've got a better outcome if you had done, investigated a different way, you know?

[29:21] Yeah, I know if I had hired a accountant, yeah, to go through everything. Okay. So what made you suspicious initially? Her being very territorial. Okay. Great. At her mom. Okay. And she made everybody believe she was the only one that really knew how to do her job. And her job was so difficult and it was so complicated. to teach. Okay. How did you feel when you first became suspicious? I knew something was going on. I didn't know if it was drug abuse or I mean I just knew something was going on. I just wasn't sure exactly what it was. Okay. How did you

[30:26] feel when embezzlement was confirmed? Validated about my hunch. Okay. Did you, did you guys ever blame yourself? Yes. Why? Because I think my husband should have been watching the day sheets closer and and he should have been doing this audit trail report and all of these girls should have had passwords. No one had passwords. Yeah. So what is the main thing that you learned after this experience? Ground shafts checking audit retrieval.

[31:30] just randomly. And of course, you know, not really understanding their background. You want to really want to talk to that a few of the last employees, you know. What changes did you make in procedures after she left? Okay, well, whenever somebody pays cash, they receive, they get a receipt. But then we also print off another receipt and they sign it. And then that receipt gets stapled to the day sheet. Now if a patient does not ask for a receipt, then, I mean, if that's an open window, there's a loophole there. That was one of the procedures.

[32:37] Everybody has passwords that are assigned to them. They log in the computer. And I've taken, I'm very, I'm very cautious on who gets rights to do what, you know, on the tentrics. You're able to pick and choose. what action they're able to do in the computer. Yeah. So, what made you determine to keep your investigation in-house? Well, because I was going after Cash that she had stolen, and everyone said Cash is very difficult to prove. So, there was a chance that I wasn't going to get any cash back. I decided to do it myself because of my policy that we had. Okay.

[33:39] It was the dishonest employee policy. It only covered 10 grand. Okay. And then, what happened? I mean, did she get prosecuted? What's the status of that case? Yeah, she went in front of a grand jury. She was found guilty. And she has, I'd seen her two or three years of probation, but she does have a record. Yeah. And what advice would you give to other dentists who have the fear that something could be going on? I would say, you know, you have to find the professionals and let them do it because, you know... It took me a year of working every single weekend Putting together this report for the investigator

[34:40] And even then the investigator had to come in the office sometimes two or three times a week And he would sit and ask me questions and understand dendrics and on the software and I would if there's a suspicion I would hire an investigator if there's not a suspicion I would definitely just pull audit trails randomly and just see the rights of what everybody's allowed to do in the office and Just a presence understand making the staff Feel as if you there you are watching things Yeah You know downloading ports Going over the day sheet I Learning how to open a ledger. I don't think a lot of dentists. You know do these things. Yeah Yeah, what was interesting to me is the you know You guys had that break in and the only thing that went missing was the cash from the drawer. Yeah

[35:47] That's what was interesting to me Well, and she's waiting. She was waiting for a distraction to you know my daughter was really ill and And in 2009 was probably the peak of her illness And that's when she took the most. She knew, you know, everybody was distracted. Yeah. Yeah. Well, excellent. Well, thanks for sharing that with me. And hopefully it will help some other people who think they have something going on also. Thanks for listening to the Dental Practice Owners podcast, brought to you by Prosperident. You can contact Prosperident through its website, www.prosparident.com, 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.

[36:47] Amber, Wendy, and David will be back soon with another episode.