Why Justice Matters - A Dentist's Story of Loss, Resilience, and Recovery

[0:00] you are listening to the dental practice owners podcast brought to you by prosperity from our unique perspective as dentistry's embezzlement experts prosperity'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 Prosperity's Amber Weber, Wendy Askins, and

[0:30] David Harris talk about the issues that matter to you.

[0:41] Hello dental family thank you for joining us this evening we appreciate you taking your time to continue learning about this epidemic of embezzlement that is just engulfing dentistry we have some absolute first this evening for you not only do we have a courageous victim who's going to be telling us his story this evening we also have the contrast of having a video which you just watched in the pre-show of the suspect who committed the embezzlement and the

[1:20] contrast in their stories is absolutely shocking to say the least also we have another first because we are focusing on some of the work that was done by our amazing dear friend Amber Weber Gonzalez so we're happy to focus on that let's get some boring housekeeping stuff out of the way first number one we're gonna be here for about an hour and a half and for those of you who've joined us before you know that Dave is pretty much a stickler on the on the

[1:52] timeframe that we have although I'm sure we'll have tons of questions this session is going is being recorded and it will be posted on our website and on our YouTube channel sometime between Friday and Monday so if you enjoy this webinar which I have no doubt you're going to you enjoy this webinar please share it with your friends and have them visit either our website or our YouTube channel to take a look at it also we are providing continuing education credit

[2:26] for this evening thanks to Altura periodonics and directly after this webinar concludes you'll be receiving an email which will tell you exactly how to obtain your CE certificate so with that boring housekeeping stuff taking care of Dave take us away Wendy you could make the firm news sound interesting thank you just before we we start tonight I just want to give our audience a little preview of what we're going to be doing next month so our date next month

[3:04] is November 15th and as usual we're going to start at 8 p.m. we have a really interesting guest his name is Emmett Scott Emmett is first of all the CEO of a dental support organization called Community Dental Partners he's also the president of an of an organization called the Association of DSOs and Emmett's going to talk to us about something that I think is on the mind of a lot of practitioners which is like what's it like to work with a DSO he also hosts

[3:37] a Facebook group that does a podcast called DSO secrets I've known Emmett for number of years he's a he's a terrific guy he's very up front about the DSO world and if you have any kind of curiosity at all about how DSO's work or what it would be like if you were to affiliate with one I can't think of a better guy than Emmett to answer those questions so he's going to be with us next month I think it's going to be a terrific learning experience

[4:06] and I can't wait great that's going to be so exciting I'm always excited about the things that we learn in our great webinars well this is a exciting night for me it's near and dear to my heart this was a very challenging an interesting case that I completed approximately two years ago there were so many multifaceted things that came up in the case but one of the main things is the client that I worked with Dr. Mark Saladin he was truly an

[4:38] inspiration in many ways while I worked on this case he was always great to communicate with I can just really honestly tell that he was in dentistry for the right reasons and truly cared about not just his patients but those who he felt were his dental team and so that's why I think this story is so important to share to those who are in the dental industry because I think all of us enter this profession realistically with a sense

[5:06] of compassion for others so and so realizing that and and communicating with him and developing such a great relationship with him has been so inspirational in so many ways and I I really think especially for new and upcoming dentists and dentists who have that sense of compassion it's really going to help you understand what dentistry truly is about and how important it is to learn other aspects that you don't think will occur in your

[5:35] practice. Well welcome Mark and thank you for coming on with us and sharing your story I will mention that Mark is at his fishing cabin tonight as the display behind him might indicate and tried to find a quiet corner. Perfect so what what we did is we've pre-recorded Mark a couple of weeks ago just telling about what happened to him we're going to play those videos but

[6:05] of course he's also with us live and we weren't sure if he would have a good enough internet connection tonight but it looks like he does he also graciously came on live so we'll probably have a little bit of discussion as well we're going to start with with what was in the media about his situation let's let's watch that first. An office manager for a Carthage dentist is accused of stealing tens of

[6:31] thousands of dollars from her employer authorities say from 2017 until January of 2020 Miranda Wolf failed to deposit nearly $60,000 in cash the customers have paid to the dental firm where she worked she's also accused of increasing her pay by more than $44,000 in 2019 and $2,700 in 2020 and using the company credit card to make more than $27,000 in unauthorized payments authorities have charged Wolf with three counts of stealing more than $25,000.

[7:09] All right well let's let's hear from the recorded Mark. Yeah and we had hired an office manager who actually started out as a dental assistant and worked in the practice for 25 years and had been office manager for approximately four or five years and we she had complete trust we uh you know for example the previous dentist had gone to you know church with her grandparents knew her parents I knew her parents she had been a patient in the practice as a child

[7:50] and you know knew her family she was well respected in the community just had complete trust so that's why she ended up with the job she really didn't have the educational background for it but we trained her and she really got the job because we thought we could trust her you know this was a person that had her husband was a was a friend of mine her she was friends with my wife with my family helped helped with my daughter's wedding you know there were a lot of a lot of

[8:30] things that she had done as as what we felt like friendship you know everybody loved her you know and the patients all loved her we hear that story a lot yeah that this person kind of becomes part of your family and I'm not sure it's it's accidental or it's done for other reasons I mean Mark you certainly had that feeling about her um yeah I uh I was bought in you know I bought into the to her in her uh story you know completely uh but one of the dis disheartening parts is after we uh after this came out you know people would come to me and say would say things like well

[9:19] you know we knew certain things were going on and then we knew that you weren't aware of it but we didn't think you'd believe us and um you know that that was a little disheartening to you know that people didn't feel like they would could come and tell us that and that's just kind of the power she had over people she was she was really good at um um manipulating herself putting herself in a position where she had people uh feel like she was helping them um and sometimes she did but sometimes she just let others to believe she was doing all these things for other people

[9:58] when she really wasn't but one interesting thing that I learned Mark during the um investigation is how active she was in the community I mean that's one thing you really open my eyes with I mean from the agriculture world and many things like that I mean she was very active in the community as well right um one thing that that I don't think I'd ever shared that I you know looking back was very odd she would have these really close friendships uh and they'd be you know real intense friendships with another family and then it was just like she dropped

[10:36] them cold turkey uh and and I can name you know four five uh people like that um you know and looking back that's a little odd uh you know she she didn't have those long term uh you know close friends um I mean she she didn't want her to but you know she would have these you know be super active with uh with a family go to their you know be involved with their kids sporting events um maybe going to church with them uh and then it would always be well she you know did something to upset her or she you know she always had an excuse

[11:20] for why they it was their fault that they weren't friends anymore but now that I look back at that that's kind of a maybe a warning sign a little bit that she was uh maybe not always in it for the right reasons so that's a really good observation yeah so one of the most interesting things about what we're about to share here is when I first started the investigation and Mark and I were communicating really regularly um Miranda was no longer uh working in the practice how she was branching out into other aspects of dentistry um but Mark had reached out to me and said you know

[11:57] she she wants to know where we're at how much you found and and there was this constant urgency from her to communicate with us and so Dave uh finally came up with the idea that we need to give her the offer to complete a video um confession with us so that we could understand the true meaning by by what she had done because at the beginning of the investigation just like Mark is saying um she was considered part of the family and so there was some serious um questions about why did she do it we trusted her I mean she could have moved into our house if she wasn't

[12:34] in an emergent situation so that was what we're about to share here now is um what really shows a different mindset of what a lot of people would think would happen versus what actually happened I mean I was married to a man for 20 years that he was you know it's just trying to keep somewhat of a peace through the marriage and it got to where I didn't have funds available through him um to maintain the lifestyle that we had created for our family she's a very charismatic uh person and she uh was very good at manipulating people

[13:17] and I I don't think she thought that we would uh pursue it I don't think she thought we would try to get our money back or anything like that I think she was just trying to get what she could and move on and I don't feel like there's I think this is all just how can I get out of this the easiest way um she's completely abandoned her children I say completely I mean I'm sure she has some some kind of uh contact with them but she she walked out of the situation she was in with her husband and

[13:55] and left her kids so uh if it had been uh as bad as she she portrayed it I don't think she would have left her kids and and she did move in with another person after that you know the items that were stolen were not items that you needed desperately to get away from your husband she was so well loved and thought of in the community there was a lot of people that would have helped her both physically and financially get away from a bad situation and her kids if that was really the situation. Mark I always wanted to ask you which we never we got to uh ask this

[14:36] question but during the time that she was still working for you and um the embezzlement was occurring did it ever appear to you that she was struggling as far as like financially or wasn't able to go do things she enjoyed or did anything like that ever? No not at all she during the time that she was embezzling I believe uh they had a uh a farm animal that won the state fair I mean was the grand champion of the Missouri State Fair so uh you know they were able to attend they were able to go and do all those things um and just like always I mean I don't believe there

[15:19] was ever anything that she did without. Okay her husband had had a really good job I mean it wasn't you know I mean he he uh he had a good job and he made good money. And then when we finally uh decided she wasn't doing a very good job there were some other problems she was going through a divorce but we did make a decision that we were going to kind of take some of the responsibilities away from her because we didn't feel like the jobs were getting done like they should be and uh we um ended up uh we're gonna take her

[16:07] salary she was a salaried employee and make it back to a hourly wage well anyway when we did that comp you know computing we double checked it with the accountant the accountant ran some figures and said no uh everything is is uh way off and uh we came to the conclusion that what we thought we were paying her around 60 000 plus a uh a bonus was actually somewhere in the six digits. That is absolutely absolutely I'm so sorry and I'm on a slide behind Mark but one thing I wanted to ask you

[16:48] um which I think I know the answer but I just want to make sure I point this out is that you seem like a really genuine caring and kind person if she had come to you and she had said doctor I'm really struggling I'm in a really bad place in my life and I need some help you probably would have freely helped her well I I think we uh discussed this at one point but um I actually had gone to my wife uh at one point and talked to her because I had drank Kool-Aid as I'd like to say believed everything she said and I thought that her husband Greg had

[17:37] had uh you know become this monster she was describing and I'd actually gone to my wife we have a big basement our kids have moved out I'm like you know she could I said would you have a problem with us having her over to the house and and staying in our living in our basement with her children to get away if she needs because he would never think to come and check our house and she could park her car in a garage and you know have no idea that she was there and my wife was on board and I had even told her that uh but prior to that getting to that stage

[18:11] I had encouraged both of them to see marriage counselor um I had you know offered to pay for it uh you know I I really was hoping that that they could work it out that's way above and beyond and I I'm just so sorry this happened to you so yeah I was I was completely blindsided by it I had no idea that she had this uh dark side or this alter ego so to speak uh that uh uh you know uh you know if some of if we'd known some of those things we probably would not have put her in a position of of trust uh but we weren't aware of it you know she she volunteered at

[18:58] church at the in the nursery she uh her husband had a a very high uh administrative job in in our community in the in the high school um he uh you know they were well connected they they uh you know she was always doing something for somebody else and then then I bring that up to some people and they're like well she said she did that but she maybe didn't do everything she said she did you know yeah that's what's interesting through our conversations um mark during the investigation when we would talk about things that she had over promised and under

[19:41] delivered even in the practice right right getting patients in for treatment um sounds like even in the community she she volunteered to do things that didn't happen well and it it seemed like it got worse you know I think early on she maybe followed through with things when I say early on I'm talking 10 15 years ago uh and then just as time went on um she she just wasn't the same person you know looking hindsight you know looking back on it now I can see that but at the time uh he thought well she's just going through a rough time she's just gotta you know work through

[20:21] these issues and then she'll she'll be back to herself but um and her her father had passed away and and I and I don't know if this is on one of our uh clips but she uh I felt like she would always maintain a certain uh you know appearance in the public and in our community as long as he was alive because she wanted him to be proud of her but it was when he passed away I think that that kind of went away and so she didn't really care anymore to me the takeaway here for for Dennis in the audience is we should never confuse um kind of overt displays of religion

[21:05] or community involvement um with with displaying that the underlying person is fundamentally good now I think that's absolutely true and I mean you know it happened here but I've seen it happen in other situations as well I mean um and and I'm not obviously that's not always the case but you know the fact that somebody spends their Sunday mornings at church doesn't mean they're not an embezzler and you know to me that's one of the things Miranda displays very clearly absolutely we even hired an accountant to come in and work with her because

[21:51] we thought maybe she was not inputting the numbers correctly or if there was a you know some kind of another issue and and he worked with her several times and he you know he's like no we got to uh take care of I think she's on track now and uh he was completely uh fooled by her as well one thing I want to add here mark that really my first conversation with you when you share with me that you and the other associate doctor that you were partners with that the excuses that you were given um as to why things were not adding up from Miranda

[22:29] were things like you you know health issues you had carpal tunnel surgery there's a lot of things that happened that she had used and and turned to make it seem like well that's why our numbers are a little off well and and that is one thing I'd like to to point out um and I again we talked about this I don't know if it's on one of the clips but we uh we were going through a pretty tough time uh my my business partner and I uh both had very tough years the the main the main year that most of the

[23:06] embezzlement occurred uh I'd had bilateral carpal tunnel and and ulnar nerve release surgery I was out of the office for six eight weeks uh he was out of the office for nine weeks he has a special needs son and he required surgery at a children's hospital in Houston and so we were really leaning on her to try to take care of things and and we we didn't go follow through with our due diligence with our reports and things like we normally had been doing but she and we did notice that the numbers were off we noticed that the uh things were

[23:45] not adding up correctly and we pointed out but she always had a always had an excuse she always had an answer and uh and so again we trusted her so we we didn't question it and and and we were really stressed at that point embezzlers seek out vulnerability they you know they pounce in a situation and when they know that because of what else what else is going on in your life you've kind of taken your eye off the ball right when and when the you know the accounts receivable were a lot higher than what they had been in years past I mean there was excuses like

[24:24] well we've had an awful lot of ride-offs too this year you know then and uh uh the you know the numbers are not adding up because you guys haven't been in the office you know just uh and then there was another excuse that uh she had a separate computer that she did had reports that had been uh set up by a previous office uh consultant we had and she said that computer crashed so the numbers haven't been right since that computer crashed and that made absolutely no sense but uh you know we we were like well okay we'll get

[25:02] we'll get someone to help you figure it out and that's part of when we brought in the account was to to help try to you know bring that together so that we could get our our reports the numbers making more sense because we did know that something was off well I remember in the first conversation that you and I had um and you said to me you know okay my partner and I were both off for various times and now our accounts receivables gone through the roof and I said Mark that you know that makes no sense right and if your

[25:31] productivity was down you know my my expectation would be that your AR would would follow it downward and not kind of going the opposite direction and yeah I you know I remember you and I talking about that and we we agreed you know that just what what she's saying to me doesn't line up with what the numbers are showing and that's that's really when we started to think about digging in a bit deeper right and before you called us you went to the police and um gone and spoke uh to our local uh law enforcement uh police department um and we just didn't really feel like

[26:16] the uh the smoking gun wasn't really there to for them to be able to do much about it and we needed somebody with uh expertise uh to be able to put together a case because uh the police department just didn't have the uh background for the ability to uh to do that yeah mark really says here what I've said for many years the police can't solve this crime they just can't no and uh again it's a small community and uh not a lot of resources as well they they took the computer and sent it off for computer forensics um we never got it back

[27:03] in time for it to matter and I don't know that there was ever anything found on it but it was gone for several months um and by that time I think uh prosperity had a pretty good handle on it um so yeah there's there's there's no way that it would have progressed the way that it did without the report that we received I'm very confident of that thank you I'm pretty confident that had we not had prosperity in our case would have just been lost but the fact that we had such a good case I think they knew they had to do something with it David

[27:48] he's the first one I spoke with and he was I called and left a message and I can't remember exactly what I said but it was probably a kind of a mic drop moment for him he's like oh and he immediately called me back he pretty much told me it wasn't my fault he was very gracious in that way uh he says this happens this happens to people and uh you know it isn't that you did anything wrong all you did was trust somebody uh it went uh you know they gave us a timeline and I feel like you guys met the timeline uh and and you did come to me and say hey

[28:27] I think there might be some more here if I dig a little bit more uh but I'm gonna need a couple more weeks and we're like hey go for it and and you did uh and uh I thought that was was great yeah I I felt very good about the whole team uh and I keep bringing up Amber she was our main point of contact I feel and she worked with a couple other members in my in our in our staff and uh anyway there was a there was a whole team effort it wasn't just one person absolutely we we we chose to go with prosperity because our accountant was trying to

[29:13] uh put some things together but we just uh my partner and I we we pretty much determined that uh we didn't have a smoking gun we didn't have direct tie with what we were presenting and so uh we went to the experts and uh uh Amber was able to take um the uh we used uh Eaglesoft and she was able to go through our Eaglesoft accounts and actually find those smoking guns

[29:53] one thing I want to add here mark is I did have interaction with your staff and it was pretty amazing how um they were 100 behind you the the ones that I talked to and truly value um how well you were to work for and uh truly what what a great dentist you were so that that was very enjoyable um and the minute I'd ask for stuff you and the staff would just respond immediately that's sometimes yeah it was it was very important but I really didn't hurt the owners she hurt uh the staff of the team

[30:32] they didn't feel like doctor the other doctor and I were stolen from they felt like they were stolen from and the patients the patients loved her as well and uh everybody you know took it to heart and that was that was very noticeable during the investigation I mean it was very well known that everybody was 100 on your side and wanted some justice so here's where we get into he said and she said and I I kind of laugh at this because whenever I speak and I talk about what people confess to versus what they really do I've

[31:18] said for many years that on average a thief confesses to one sixth of what they've actually stolen so let's watch Miranda first and then and then mark and do the math I do not 25 maybe so Miranda says 25,000 let's let's find the truth the total the total amount was 154,000 yes it was a little shocking that it had added up to that amount but uh it looks like uh the way everything has gone through that there's a good chance that we're going to recover most of it so yeah 20 25,000 times six 150,000 what was stolen

[32:04] was 154 yeah my numbers looking pretty good right now you know what I also found very interesting about this uh video confession with Miranda is that um having worked working closely with Amber I could tell during the interview that she was asking specific questions and I knew Amber knew the answer because I know what a thorough investigator she is and then Miranda would either say no I didn't do that or I don't remember and you know I I just thought to myself and I talked to Amber about it later and I said

[32:48] you knew exactly what she had done I mean we're not going to talk about it now because we're not going to talk about specific death methodologies in public but I was like you knew exactly what you were asking her you knew what was driving that question from the methodology that she had done and she sits there and denies it we're going to play in a few minutes what I call the Alzheimer's slide yeah and that's you know all the little clips I've heard every telling her and there are a lot of them there was I mean there was no question when I brought

[33:22] that forward and and I sent a copy to our local law enforcement and our prosecuting attorney that that she was guilty I mean there you know it was it was all the all the lines were connected to all the dots and and you know it was a direct correlation between who was making the deposits when the deposits were made when what day it was what day the deposit the amount deposit should have been and what when it actually went in the bank I mean our accountant who is a really good accountant had gone through and he had well I have this amount and this

[34:04] amount and I know these aren't the same but he he didn't have that he couldn't take that program and and the bank statements and correlate them he didn't have the expertise with the dental software to be able to connect it all together yeah and you know I I actually had two cases in federal court right now in Houston and I'm working with the assistant US attorney who's prosecuting both cases by the same woman of course so she's a serial investor just going around hitting offices in Houston as fast as she can stealing I mean this last case I worked on

[34:47] she was up to $26,000 she worked there six months um anyway um but that is exactly what the secret service agents um had told me and what the assistant US attorney had told me was that our report just put everything together for them because they understand they understand theft but they don't understand dentistry they understand theft methodology but they don't know how it's done within the dental office or the different types of payment methods or payment offerings from insurance companies they don't understand that so it it's you know kind of like you said Mark

[35:35] the first time you went to the police they're like we can't really do anything with this but then you take them back and report and it just lays it out beautifully and in layman's terms for them exactly what happened when it happened a master list of losses which is like every single transaction that theft touched um and all the info information that they need so easy to just go get a subpoena yeah well the the one point I would make when we when we went to the law enforcement what's really scary is it wasn't that they didn't say they couldn't do something with it it was

[36:19] that they looked at it and almost acted like well we just need more information we need more information and we just deduced from the conversation hey they're not going to be able to do this they don't they don't understand what really happened and the the advice that I'll give to the audience is a mistake we see a lot is people confuse somebody who knows 20 more than they do with an expert yep and you know sometimes people will go to their accountant or um you know they'll go to the police and they'll kind of get the cold shoulder from one of those and then they just

[36:54] give up and the thing that Merck did that that ultimately produced a good outcome was he he didn't take no for an answer from them he said all right we just need to move this up the food chain and and that's kind of where we came in and after that all the all the other parties could do their jobs my motivation was more uh let's not let this happen to someone else uh and if we were lucky and got 25 cents on the dollar uh that would be you know about what I would expect I you know I wasn't really you know I really wasn't expecting a whole lot as far as financial recovery you know um

[37:43] but uh it looks like uh the way everything has gone through that there's a good chance that we're going to recover most of it you know that's one of the big myths a lot of people think I won't see any money from this and almost everybody we work with gets back more money than they expected to and and that certainly seems like the case here you know the sentence that she got was somewhat tied to a payment uh schedule so that in if she doesn't follow through with some of this she's she's looking at having all the charges

[38:21] brought back so um she's got a lot of motivation to to get it paid back yeah we're increasingly seeing judges incentivize people to pay back um I saw a case we were involved in a little while ago and somebody got sentenced to five years in jail however if they paid the money back they didn't do the jail time what happened I mean they went to their father you know their their rich uncle whatever and they borrowed the money and they made the payment and they stayed out of jail yeah um and from the doctor's perspective you know that was um the number involved was

[38:58] about 350 thousand dollars so you know that's 350 crowns he didn't have to do to put himself in the same place in terms of retirement well and one thing that I think marked during our conversations during and after the investigation um that was a little bit of closure for you is you knew Miranda was branching out into other aspects of dentistry and and I think now with what happened you you helped prevent pot hopefully other practices or or other things being taken advantage of by her because it is she she had been well trained she had been

[39:37] trained by a national uh I mean most people would probably know her name if I if I said it I'm not going to but a national well respected practice consultant and she had taken that stepping stone and and moved it moved it to a position where she could potentially be a practice consultant and she and I can't remember the name of the the company wouldn't want to say it either but she had her her picture posted on a on a website and was was promoting herself as a dental uh consultant so she was just uh um trying to she she was very good at the lingo she was very

[40:23] good at the the verbiage get like I said she's good at manipulating people and and uh she would she could you know get herself in a position to to stealing in so she was hired by a big well known dental consulting company uh when mark told us about that I you know I know the company fairly well I made a phone call and said you know you might want to just double check this one before you you do anything else and and Miranda's picture was on their website you know it was it was a done deal but when they heard from us they they undid it very quickly

[41:02] yeah and and you know responded 100 properly but yeah you know it was it was entirely possible that she took the um skills shall we say that she was applying in mark's office and you know suddenly you had a chance to do it in 20 different offices right so you know that would have that would have been like the like the fox having sole possession of the keys to the henhouse um and I'm glad we all stopped that well we've talked about money and you know what's happened there of course something I think the audience wants to know is how do you feel when

[41:38] all this is happening and and I I really um liked what mark said here I mean the message might not be what everybody wants to hear but um the way you describe the experience emotionally mark in the in the video that's coming up I think was was really instructive that's the worst part for me I've been practicing for 32 years I love being a dentist I have always been passionate about taking care of my patients it took some of the steam out of my uh uh sales so to speak uh in practicing you know I I was always proud to own a dental

[42:24] practice I always uh uh took pride in that and I just kind of lost that desire to for ownership anymore and so since since then I have uh sold uh my half of the practice to my partner and I'm a independent contractor now and I've cut back on my days uh I'm still seeing my patients I'm still taking care of them I'm still keeping uh my staff members that I've worked with uh for so long employed that's important to me you know it's a it's a neat practice and it's a fun place to work uh but this emotionally kind of took it out of me

[43:03] yeah it uh it did

[43:10] I'm sure it did add that on top of COVID and everything else that's going on it's been a heck of a three-year run yeah wow and this this contrast is pretty graphic I think the audience will like watching this oh I'm sick about it I mean they were great people to me and have continued to be I mean I mean there's there's no justification for my actions and I understand that and I just yeah some tears there now um Mark Mark tells a little different story community that that still believe her side of things that her

[43:56] husband was this this horrible person and that uh she tells them that uh she would do it all over again if she was put in the same position I mean and that's something I've heard in the last six months so you know that's the side of the story that she tells people if she was very remorseful she wouldn't she wouldn't be spreading that story you know the items that were stolen were not items that you needed desperately to get away from your husband I mean like I said three televisions uh you know I think one would have probably suffice to get by with but

[44:34] I don't think there's much remorse there I think it's exactly what uh I think she got exactly what she wanted out of it again there was no remorse until that document was handed over to law enforcement and it was presented to her criminal attorney and he pretty much told her hey they got you uh so you better be remorseful so that's when the remorse started happening that was so well put mark yeah that's uh that's and I feel like that's exactly you know I think that tells the story right there I mean there's a lot more I could go into in detail

[45:13] like I said uh part of what she stole was through purchases on through Amazon and utilizing a company credit card over a period of time and we were able to go back and see the items that that were stolen and they were not they were not items that uh that you know you needed to survive uh you know they were frivolous things a lot of them were gifts that she sent to another person that she ended up moving in with so um you know it uh it was it was just a very odd list of things that she purchased

[45:59] so my question is you you had mentioned the the story that she's or that she was going around town telling was mainly about maybe the abusiveness of her husband or something like that yeah does the community um that you live in are they aware that she's stolen from you and that she's been prosecuted for that number one and number two are you at liberty and do you feel comfortable discussing that with people in your community I mean everybody like I said it's a small town and everybody knows everybody's business uh so if somebody asks me and really

[46:48] wants to know if it's something that you know isn't overly personal I have no problem telling the truth I mean I have nothing to hide um and again that's a you know that's another point I brought that up with a amber the other day uh you know if you have nothing to hide if there's nothing that you have done wrong there you really don't have a reason to not pursue prosecuting someone um is it is it fun to go through now but uh uh you know if you if you've done nothing wrong it's you know you need to to do the right thing

[47:32] absolutely well this is what I described as the Alzheimer's slide let's uh let's listen to all the things Miranda suddenly can't remember background and tell us about the first time you took money from cornerstone family dinner um to be honest amber I really do not remember I don't remember so so you're saying miss wolf that that was your first embezzlement action to what I remember yes are you sure that you have really no memory or the first time you did this I really do not I I do not okay can you give me um when that first

[48:13] started to occur no you didn't buy anything else on the credit card not to my recollection no is there a time that you didn't enter payments into the patient software and kept kept the cash or or I mean not to my knowledge you had administrative privileges in the software right um I believe I did do you have an estimate of the total amount that you took I do not I do not so did you ever accept a cash payment from a patient in your time at the dental office for the patient page you to apply to their account

[49:00] I mean I may have accepted the payment

[49:07] and my basic thought here is liar liar pants on fire um one one thing I'll tell the audience that that uh those of us on the panel will know is that a lot of times when somebody says honestly or I'm being honest with you what comes out of their mouth next isn't actually honest and and Miranda did that at the beginning but you know for somebody who seemed generally like she had her act together and was a bit of a control freak her her loss of memory in this interview was was kind of startling in fact it

[49:41] was funny and Amber will remember this at one point her lawyer who's you can't see him he's just off camera but her lawyer who was with her actually kind of turned to her and said nobody's going to believe that you can't remember this stuff you know and I was asking her about her first theft there and and I'm going to use kind of a clumsy analogy but for most of these your first theft is kind of like when you lose your virginity you know all of us remember you know how that happened and and you know what the weather was like that day and here Miranda was saying no I

[50:14] you know I don't remember the first time I stole so that's not very credible yeah well and again looking at this clip the face facial cues yeah are so telling to me because I saw that look in her face and that little biting of the lip or the look away and look down and and say something and then close her eyes and bow her head you know and I'm sure she was lying to me you know now now it's easy to see but you know at the time didn't didn't didn't see it you have the advantage of knowing her for a long time but my impression

[50:59] as we were interviewing her was exactly that and you know the people who study neuro linguistic programming talk a lot about you know what eye movement means in terms of truthfulness and yeah Miranda was giving off all the vibes of of lying there and of course you know she had the the water works going and yeah Amber and I after kind of compared notes and and our basic conclusion was you know this woman's neither she she's not truthful and she is a manipulator yeah well and I talked to some of her her former friends that she had come to

[51:36] when this was first kind of you know there were there were some gossip around town that something was going on and and they said that she came and just cried her eyes out and told them this big story and one of them after she left just told them all that she was not truthful she you know I won't use the word she used and and and then when they heard what had actually happened they're like they couldn't believe how good she was at you know just being able to start crying and and you know spin this tail and just like when you played the clip of the remorse

[52:16] you know she's she's crying and she's and her voice is quivering and and I think even at one point when you asked her if she wanted to add anything she could quiver and and you know these little these little things is all fake she was unquestionably sorry but I think she was sorry about getting caught as opposed to sorry she did it yeah yeah you know that's that that's the differentiation I think she was more concerned when she agreed to do the confession with us I think she really wanted to see if she could keep some of her credibility and continue

[52:52] this new path she she had from a career perspective and I'll never forget this she kept first saying well how much have you found and you know wanting to know a number remember that day realistically how much we had found and not going to disclose that to her because I think she thought if they're not smart enough to figure this out and it's a small enough amount I can keep everything swept under the rug and Mark and your associate business partner will just let it go and I can still stay on this path that I've created for myself and I I truly in my heart

[53:30] of hearts think that's the reason she uh contacted you so much um after she was no longer employed and and wanted to speak with us because I think she really thought she could find a way to to keep her credibility oh yeah she thought she could spin us and um Amber once or twice said something very that I loved in the in the interview she said that's Miranda that's not consistent with the evidence that we have yeah and that just kind of rocked Miranda back and you know she um okay so you know these perhaps while I'm trying to play these guys they're actually

[54:05] playing me well and I think she was uh I think that's exactly what she went into it thinking I'm just going to go fishing here and find out what I think they know and then I don't maybe have to confess to it all yeah all right well let's turn that let's turn the page because that to me was a a fascinating story about the embezzlement but now let's turn this into helping people and one of the questions that uh Amber Amber was was interviewing Mark for the video you're seeing uh one of the questions she asked is what what advice do you have for for the dental

[54:43] profession I would not put all my trust in one person um and uh put put uh checks and balances into your uh system so that uh you know you keep everybody uh honest so to speak but it's more just for your own peace of mind come up with your you know uh come up with your own system to make sure that your your due diligence is done and making sure that everybody is doing things the way they should be because if you don't um you're allowing somebody to an opportunity to to take advantage and some people just do not have the ability to say no or they don't

[55:35] they don't understand that uh they think oh this isn't any big deal people can rationalize things you know um and make it feel like oh well this isn't that big a deal and and I earned that he wouldn't have what he has if it wasn't for me and you know those types of things uh they weren't the ones staying up all night studying for that path test uh so um but they think that they're the ones that that are making you successful so but you do have to have some kind of a system and and and if there's something that doesn't add up investigate it don't let it don't let it go

[56:15] if I had to sum up the the considerable wisdom that mark just delivered I would say trust but verify which of course is quoting President Reagan

[56:32] well uh then mark the question I have is um winding the clock back 10 years I mean let's let's allow ourselves the time machine so that we can go back 10 years and if if somebody had said to you we'll work with you we'll help you put the right controls in place um yeah is that something knowing what you know now that you wish you had done I wish I had done that um of course uh I I would have liked to uh and you know I feel like again I said I said it in the in the clip you should there needs to be a system and if you if you have a uh a way of doing it and doing it consistently

[57:21] you know it's not really making work for you you're but you're you're doing what you should to keep keep everybody honest yeah yeah you know I I hate to say it but in the majority of practices that I see the only reason that embezzlement doesn't happen is because employees choose to be honest when you know they could have made another choice and to me that's kind of Russian roulette you know sooner or later in the in the course of a 35 year career in dentistry you're going to run into somebody who thinks they have a higher right to your money than you do absolutely

[58:07] well mark again I just want to really really thank you um for being with us tonight um you know I've been an investigator for almost 11 years now so I do this on a daily basis and every single time I find embezzlement my stomach turns and I have a few choice words that I can't say in public that I say in private um it's still after 11 years and this is what I do full time amber as well I still feel sick and I can't imagine honestly what it's like to be a business owner and that punch in the gut that you must have had when you first found out what was happening

[59:02] and then the amount of money that she stole um I I work with a lot of clients who have embezzlement confirmed and they all feel like some part of it was their fault and we know that that is completely not true this is something that is done to you and there is no excuse that was done to you it's not your fault but what um what I admire about you is your willingness to say you know number one I don't want this to happen to anybody else in the profession that I love so dearly so I'm going to prosecute her to keep her out of other

[59:46] dental offices number one number two your attitude of I'm going to share my story because I don't want this to happen to anybody else again I want to keep her out of the office and I want to share my story and I want to let people know that it can happen to them just like it happened to me and that I called you courageous in the beginning um when I was talking about this webinar and I believe that with all of my heart because I mean I've had clients when we confirm or when I confirm embezzlement that have cried on the phone because they're just so broken over the loss of

[1:00:27] trust and it's not even really the loss of money it's the loss of trust and I kind of get the feeling that that you might have been that way even with Amber where it just absolutely broke your heart and I appreciate you having the courage to share your story with everyone else so that they can learn um from what you've gone through so it won't happen to them well it uh again we we didn't believe it my wife and I we didn't believe it when we first you know we we kept thinking there's some kind of mistake you know there's some kind of mistake but then the evidence just

[1:01:04] mounted and it was so yeah I mean it uh it was it was hard it was very hard part on everybody it wasn't just me it was a lot of a lot of people well I think it's interesting um that you added how hard it was on staff as well well and patients I've had patients break down and cry they didn't believe it in the chair they go well I just want to talk to you about this real quick and Dr Saladin I just want you to know I'm so sorry you know then they just break down and cry they're like we just never dreamed that she would do something like that and she had an

[1:01:44] oh her office was towards the front of the building uh the front of the lobby and people patients would just drop by to say hi you know they wanted to talk to her she was that kind of a person everybody knew her yeah Wendy's Wendy's right about Mark being a real life hero and and I don't use that term lightly and I I remember very well that first phone call so I was uh I was speaking at a conference in Dallas I think and you know I finished speaking and I checked my voicemail and there was a there was a message from Mark and you know I

[1:02:20] I called him back he he told a bit of that story in a video clip earlier and my instant impression was you know this is a this is a man of tremendous quality and you know just the way he conducted himself and told the story and yeah obviously he was he was hurting a bit at that point and you know he did all the right things for all the right reasons at at at every moment and you know that was my initial impression and everything I've seen since really reinforced it so Mark we we all thank you and and on behalf of the audience you know who are

[1:02:54] putting in some some nice comments as well you know thank you for doing this what I'd like to do now while while we're finishing up our group group hug here is just turn it over and take some of the questions that have been piling up and Amber and Wendy I think you guys have been keeping a little bit of an eye on the questions what would you like to bring forward and then we can kind of figure out who can best answer them well I have I have kind of a compilation of of questions and I can ask in in maybe one question for maybe Amber and maybe you too Dave normally

[1:03:40] in prosperity investigations we are very covert about the investigation we take a copy of the data we don't talk to staff members we're very secretive about it because one of our main instructions is that we don't want the doctor or anyone else tipping off the suspect because there may be some ramifications to tipping off the suspect or there may be some data deletion or something to cover their tracks in this case Amber that you did with Mark it is it sounds like it's way outside of the purview of how we usually handle an investigation we've had quite a few questions

[1:04:25] about that can you explain why this investigation was different than how we normally do it well I think one of the main things is when we collected the data and set up our remote system our clone of the data she was already gone had been gone for a while so I think there was that was one of the main reasons that the staff particularly one of the there was a key team member who was a former hygienist and also did a lot of business things from there so she was made aware what was going on because there was times that I would need reports that were outside of

[1:04:59] Eaglesoft for other things so I think from my perspective she'd been long gone for several months before Prosperitin was contacted because Mark and his business partner like we we just talked about they already went to the police they talked to their accountant you know they tried to go down some paths to figure some things out prior to calling us and because it was a small community I mean she knew the purpose and the reason why she was terminated I mean I remember our first conversation that Mark told me you know our first thing we figured out that you know her

[1:05:35] compensation wasn't what it was supposed to be and you know we terminated her so I think there was just a lot of knowledge in the community small small community and she was aware what was going on okay okay and then Mark when when you separated employment from her um did did you fire her or did she quit that was actually that was actually one of I feel like one of the smarter things we did um we had her come down to a different office than her office and while we had her down there we had another employee with us and we had another employee

[1:06:20] at her office not not going through her things or anything just right there and we brought her in and basically I didn't want to hear an excuses I mean I already knew what was going on and I just told her that that she was being terminated because she we had lost trust in her and that was important in the position we had her in and she left and we didn't let her get back on the computer we didn't allow her access to any office materials we just let her go in and get her personal affairs and she already had her computer up and we were able to immediately go

[1:07:03] into her computer she had say passwords we were able to download amazon we were able to we found an awful lot of material that we wouldn't have found had she had access back on that computer after she knew she was terminated great that's such valuable information thank you so much and just absolutely textbook that is exactly the advice we can give somebody yeah definitely

[1:07:33] so mark I have a question for you because you did contact the police and a member of our audience wants your experience but in their experience because they've had embezzlement occur they said that they feel like the police generally are not interested in this type of scenario well I would say in a larger community that's probably probably true in our in our case I don't I don't want to make fun of our police because they're great and in our respect I'm a great deal but it was almost a little bit like they got excited

[1:08:15] because they don't have this kind of dollar amount you know that you know they're used to somebody having a car stolen or you know something like that you know six digit plus cases so they kind of got excited about it a little bit but I think I just think it was overwhelming to them because like I said before they didn't have the expertise to to really go through this and you know we might have been able to get the accountant to hire somebody to but by the time we trained the the people to use the software we hired somebody to go with

[1:08:53] the account to help them put it together they never would have got it together in a precise manner like this like this report was uh the report was like I said it was when I handed that to the to investigator his eyes lit up he was all excited because he knew he had what he needed to to do something with it and and then at that point forward I was I was a little disappointed on how some of the how it all happened she never was officially arrested she again I feel like she manipulated things she was able to have a meeting with her attorney

[1:09:31] and the police and the police didn't didn't arrest her she was finally arraigned but it was just kind of a you know just a process to to get the ball rolling so to speak but it wasn't she never she never even spent a minute in a cell or anything like that it wasn't I mean she did had go in and have her mug shot that was on the on the television report that he showed earlier but other than that there was no no nothing like you would think would happen to somebody had stolen you know six digit plus I always joked about it I said you know if they if she had stolen a

[1:10:19] truck or a car they would have arrested her and put her in jail but in this case she she was like she stole the truck but she was selling pieces of it to help pay for her lawyer to to fight it so it was it was just very odd how it how it happened interesting thank you um we have a few kind of double back questions here um two questions someone um did not hear how much she inflated her own pay that's our question and then someone else also asked about um can you repeat what the total theft amount was

[1:11:05] uh well let me just back up just a little bit we she her her base pay was you know 57 or 60 000 and uh she would get a bonus based on um collection quarterly and we had a formula that we went through to calculate that and how it was supposed to happen was she was supposed to have a meeting with one of the doctors if we both weren't present a lot of times both of us were present and we go through the figures and we go through the formula together and then we would sign one of us would sign a check a you know a regular check uh it would have our signature on

[1:11:47] it well she had access to direct deposits and uh she had access to uh you know she gathered everybody's information for payroll uh and we had a payroll uh company that did our payroll for us but uh she started having them give her an additional bonus that obviously hadn't been worked through the formula it was not in the form of a check that uh uh we both had signed so it just kind of slipped under the radar and I you know the exact the total amount was you know 140 000 but with recovery costs and everything the total judgment that we got was for

[1:12:28] 154 000 okay so so you recovered I think so so you recovered the cost of um or your losses due to that you recovered those as well as the amount lost correct that's right I think 27 000 she she had three felonies uh because she stole three different ways she stole 27 000 uh by using the office credit card and and it be considered wire fraud because she was purchasing items on amazon and shipping them across a state line too that was another another uh little point there and then the other was she was taking money uh from deposits she was the

[1:13:20] only person that uh was making the deposit she had actually changed the system that we had and we didn't know it uh she was going in and depositing the money herself and she was siphoning some cash off of that and then the inflated salary and and uh I'm gonna and you guys may need to help me because I don't remember it it's been a while since I've looked at the at the breakdown but 27 000 and somewhere around 40 000 I think uh cash uh that's maybe it was all right yeah so uh then she elevated her her salary somewhere around 70 000

[1:14:06] wow that's just shocking yeah so the amber they they we usually say there are almost always at least three theft methodologies and that's kind of what mark has has said about the three were were there three or were there more were there other theft methodologies that were just kind of not you know I we we thought at one point uh that she and we feel pretty strongly that she took cash from some patients and didn't make documentation in in the software um but we we didn't feel like that was some another way we should pursue because

[1:14:52] it would it would it just muddied the water uh I think maybe it was you Dave that that said that that uh you know we we can pursue that we can you know we can get witness statements we can do a bunch of things but if if if somehow they can prove one of them didn't happen it kind of takes away from the the the three methods that we had solid proof on so we we didn't do that and when we say three the the important factor for me that there was three different ways is a felony is is anything over 25 000 so she had three felonies she didn't just she just she

[1:15:36] didn't you know get in trouble one time and she had three different separate incidences that she that that were charges that were brought against her now she plead out to where she just has one but if she doesn't pay us back all three will come back on her record interesting good information all right well folks we're uh we're at our little beyond our our time for tonight um so just a couple of things before we wrap up first of all if you uh if you enjoyed tonight we would love you forever if you'd leave us a five-star google

[1:16:16] review and the easiest way to do it is just go to that link that's right on our page prosperity.com slash review us um also a reminder that we will be back uh in a little bit less than a month where we're going to have my friend Emmet Scott talking about the DSO world and it's a great chance to learn about that part of dentistry and you know we all know that the DSOs are growing rapidly and swallowing up practices so there's information there that every practice owner probably needs. I would like to thank our our co-hosts for tonight and and always

[1:16:56] uh Wendy Askins and Amber Weber Gonzalez on camera uh Sheila O'Driscoll who's really the executive producer of of our webinar series behind the scenes and of course our our special and uh we we used adjectives like courageous and heroic guests Dr. Mark Salad and Mark thank you so much yeah um and we look forward to seeing all of you in a little less than a month Wendy I'm talking on your slide what what else sorry you just got on a roll here yeah go ahead um there are the places where you can reach us and we look forward to seeing you in less than a month

[1:17:36] thanks for listening to the Dental Practice Owners 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 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 we'll be back soon with another episode