We are placing this business and its owner Markia Hood on our watchlist. We have written elsewhere about Maryland's Kristi Heffington, who pled guilty to three charges related to her work in a dental office (see https://www.prosperident.com/maryland-woman-indicted-for-embezzlement/ for discussion).
Kristi is currently on parole after serving jail time for her comvictions, and we do note that a parole violation caused her sentence to be increased.
After her termination from that dental practice, Kristi subsequently worked for several companies performing outsourced insurance claim submission for dentists. A check with two companies for which she had performed this work confirmed that she was no longer with either company.
A new company performing similar work, S.O.S Dental Experts, recently showed up on our radar. A search of corporate records reveals that it was created as a Wyoming LLC on November 26, 2019. Wyoming is a jurisdiction that permits "anonymous" corporations, where the names of officers, directors and stockholders are not made public. The address of the company listed on its website tracks back to a Wyoming "agent" who is in the business of creating similar companies.
Unusual for a company like this, the "about us" section of the company's web site makes no mention of who the ownership or management of the company are, and simply points to 20 years of experience in the dental field.
Markia Hood claims no connection with Kristi Heffington
We received communication from Markia Hood, a former co-worker of Ms. Heffington at one of the companies that we had contacted. Ms. Hood (who sometimes goes by the last names Rittenbaugh or Johnson) stated that Ms. Heffington had no involvement with S.O.S Dental Experts, and that Ms. Hood was the sole owner of that company.
This is somewhat at odds with what Ms. Hood claimed on her Facebook page, where Markia Hood said this:
And a part of the company's website includes "A Note from the Owners" (plural), and seems to suggest that the owners worked together previously, as we mentioned that Ms. Hood and Ms Heffington had done.
We did question Ms. Hood on the numerous references to "Eunice" in the testimonials on the company's Facebook page (Kristi Heffington's middle name is Eunice) such as the one shown below:
We also asked about the blog section of the company's website, which was set up by "Matthew Heffington" (Kristi's husband is coincidentally named Matthew Heffington).
To date, we have not received a response to these questions, and we note that Mr. Heffington's name has subsequently been removed from the blog.
The lack of transparency on the website and apparent contradictions between what we are told by Ms. Hood and some independently gathered information certainly raise the question of involvement of Ms. Heffington, and encourage caution when dealing with this company.
We note that Markia Hood testified in favor of Ms. Heffington in one of her many court proceedings in Maryland. Details are HERE.
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