Tag: New York

Office manager at Flushing, NY dental firm busted for pocketing $35K in insurance checks

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Law enforcement agents extracted a former Flushing dental office manager and hauled her to court on charges that she allegedly stole thousands in insurance payments to the clinic.

Prosecutors said that Manhattan’s Katerin Rochet, 37, was picked up on Jan. 9 on a nine-count indictment charging her with third-degree grand larceny, first-degree falsifying business records, criminal possession of a forged instrument and identity theft.

According to Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown, Rochet allegedly stole more than $35,000 in insurance payments made to the Flushing Dental Group, located at 39-01 Main St., where she worked as an office manager.

“[She] used her position to steal from the people who gave her a job,” Brown said in a Jan. 10 press release. “In deliberate acts of deception, the defendant is accused of opening several bank accounts in the dental office’s name — posing as the president of the office — and then swiped the insurance checks that were intended for the dental practice. This kind of brazen thievery will not be tolerated.”

Brown said the theft took place between January and May 2017, while Rochet was employed by Flushing Dental Group. She allegedly forged an official record from the Department of State’s Division of Corporations with the office president’s name, then used it to open several bank accounts.

Within a few months, authorities said, Rochet allegedly collected more than $35,000 in insurance checks intended for Flushing Dental Group. She allegedly deposited the checks into the accounts that she opened, then funneled the money into a bank account that her mother owned.

The scheme was unraveled through an investigation by the NYPD Queens District Attorney’s Detective Squad.

At her Jan. 9 arraignment, Rochet was ordered held on $25,000 bail and to return to court on March 14. She faces between 3 1/2 and 7 years behind bars if convicted.

Content retrieved from: https://qns.com/story/2019/01/11/office-manager-at-flushing-dental-firm-busted-for-pocketing-35k-in-insurance-checks/

Long Island NY woman arrested for dental office embezzlement.

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Erika Lucassi

An Ozone Park, Queens, woman was arrested Tuesday for allegedly stealing money from a Manhasset dental office for nearly nine years.

Erika Lucassi, 36, was working as an office manager at Manhasset Dental on Northern Boulevard, detectives said in a news release, when she began writing fraudulent business checks to herself in January 2009 and continued through December 2017. The amount of the checks was not disclosed.

Detectives said around 9:45 a.m. on Dec. 16 Lucassi also stole an undisclosed amount of cash.

Lucassi is charged with second-degree larceny and first-degree falsifying business records and was arrested without incident.

She was set to be arraigned Wednesday in Nassau County First District Court.

Content retrieved from: https://theislandnow.com/manhasset-107/queens-woman-charged-grand-larceny-manhasset-dental-office/

Upstate NY Woman charged with stealing money from dentist office patients

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A woman who worked in a local dental office is accused of stealing money from patients.

On Friday, New Windsor Police arrested 32-year-old Carmen Alvarado-Green of Wallkill on four-counts of falsifying business records, grand larceny, felonies, and three misdemeanor counts of petit larceny.The arrest came after a two-month investigation by the Town of New Windsor Police Department’s Detective Division. The investigation revealed that Alvarado-Green altered business records and stole money from patients at Windsor Dental, located in the Town of New Windsor, police say.

Alvarado-Green was arraigned in New Windsor Court. Bail was set at $10,000 cash or $25,000 bond. She was later released after posting bond.

Do you have questions about embezzlement?  Give Prosperident a call at 888-398-2327 or send an email to requests@dentalembezzlement.com

Read More: Hudson Valley Dental Worker Stole Money From Patients, Police Say | http://hudsonvalleypost.com/hudson-valley-dental-worker-stole-money-from-patients-police-say/?trackback=tsmclip

NYU dental school workers busted in identity-theft operation

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Trying to get information on a credit card scam at NYU’s Dental School was like pulling teeth.

A marijuana bust led police to uncover a massive identity theft operation that officials at the prestigious university tried to hush up, law enforcement sources told The Post.

Joel Scott and James Giscombe Jr., who work with patients treated at the school, were busted last summer for allegedly lifting credit card information from more than 350 victims using a mini card skimmer.

They allegedly opened credit card accounts with it and went on shopping sprees totaling about $100,000.

Scott, 24 and Giscombe, 31, were allegedly seen on video surveillance using the stolen cards to purchase Long Island Railroad and Metro North tickets, which authorities said they sold to their buddies for half price, sources said.

They are also accused of selling some of the stolen information to other scammers across the country.

Despite receiving several complaints from victims, the school did not notify other patients to be on the alert until the NYPD made the arrests, the sources said.

The fraud was finally brought to light when a Queens gang unit officer collared Scott for buying pot in St. Albans on May 18, 2013. During the bust, the cop noticed a skimmer and 19 credit cards in his BMW, according to court documents.

The officer downloaded the skimmer and found the patients’ information, officials said.

NYU officials claim they weren’t aware of the scam until police contacted them the day after Scott’s arrest.

Scott and Giscombe were terminated on June 5 and July 1, respectively, after an internal investigation by the university.

“The college has instituted new procedures to prevent this type of misuse of information from recurring,” said NYU spokesman Philip Lentz.

During the investigation, cops executed a search warrant in the home of Patricia Graham, chief of staff for the schools executive vice president, who Scott lived with.

Giscombe’s apartment was also searched by investigators who reported finding a knife, a gun and ammo.

Scott and Giscombe face up to a year in jail for each forged instrument count. Giscombe also faces up to 15 years in prison on the weapons charges.

Do you have questions about embezzlement?  Give Prosperident a call at 888-398-2327 or send an email to requests@dentalembezzlement.com

Content retrieved from: http://nypost.com/2014/05/11/nyu-dental-school-workers-busted-in-identity-theft-operation/

Acquitted of murder charges, Kingston NY dentist goes to prison for perjury, insurance fraud

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Kingston dentist Gilberto Nunez sentenced to 2-1/3 to 7 years in prison

KINGSTON, N.Y. >> The Kingston dentist who was acquitted last year of killing his lover’s husband was sentenced on Tuesday to a maximum of seven years in state prison for numerous unrelated charges.

Gilberto Nunez, 49, of Poughkeepsie, was sentenced by Ulster County Judge Donald A. Williams for charges related to insurance fraud and lying on a pistol permit application. Williams called Nunez a “calculated liar” who has “shown absolutely no remorse.”

“You are devoid of any shame,” Williams said. “Tragically, and perhaps pathologically, you believe that society’s rules do not apply to you.

“Because I see no remorse, I see no chance of rehabilitation,” the judge said.

Nunez was convicted of a total of 12 felonies at three separate trials in Ulster County Court in 2016:

• During the spring trial at which he was acquitted of murdering Saugerties resident Thomas Kolman, Nunez was found guilty of two counts of perjury for having a fake CIA identification card on his computer and for giving Kolman’s wife, Linda, with whom Nunez was having an affair, a letter purporting to be from a CIA agent.

• In October, he was convicted of grand larceny, insurance fraud and falsifying business records, all related to an insurance claim he submitted after a February 2014 fire at a building he owned next to his dental office on Washington Avenue in Kingston. The jury agreed with the allegation that Nunez improperly received an $8,400 insurance payment for what he claimed was rent he lost due to the fire.

• And in November, he was found guilty of perjury, offering a false instrument, and filing an apparently false sworn statement for claiming on a pistol permit application that he never was terminated or discharged from employment or military service for cause. Nunez was discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1990 under “other than honorable conditions” after being absent without leave, or AWOL, for almost three years.

Williams sentenced Nunez to 1-1/3 to four years in prison for each of the convictions associated with the pistol permit application, to be served concurrently; and one to three years for each of the charges associated with the insurance claim, also to be served concurrently.

But the first and second sentences will be served consecutively, meaning the full term is 2-1/3 to seven years — with the minimum reduced to two years because of time Nunez already has spent in jail.

Nunez also was sentenced Tuesday to one year in jail for the charges related to the fake CIA documents, but that sentence is to be concurrent with the others, so it doesn’t raise the total.

Orange County Senior Assistant District Attorney Maryellen Albanese, the special prosecutor at all three of Nunez’s trials, asked Williams to give Nunez the maximum allowable sentence for each charge and to make all of them run consecutively, which could have led to a maximum of 42 years in prison.

In arguing for the harsh sentence, Albanese said Nunez committed the crimes to manipulate others for his own benefit.

“He is truly evil,” she said. “Society deserves protection from his sociopathic, narcissistic behavior.”

Defense attorney Evan Lipton asked Williams to order just six months of jail time and five years of probation, the sentence recommended by the Ulster County Probation Department. Pointing to 130 letters sent to the court in support of Nunez, Lipton said the dentist is a respected member of the community.

Williams said that under other circumstances, the charges of which Nunez was convicted probably would have led to a plea bargain resulting in misdemeanor charges, and the judge scoffed at the suggestion by Albanese that all of the sentences run consecutively, or back to back.

Still, the judge had harsh words for Nunez.

“What these trials demonstrated is that he was an individual who was consumed, consumed by an illicit affair” and was “willing to do absolutely anything at all in order to promote his prurient interest,” the judge said.

Williams said the thing he found “most troubling” was the “eerie calm” Nunez displayed during the six hours of police interrogation about the death of Thomas Kolman, who Nunez claimed was his best friend.

“What struck this court … was how eerily calm you were through this interview,” the judge said to Nunez. “That eerie calm will never leave me.”

Nunez was charged with second-degree murder in October 2015 for Thomas Kolman’s November 2011 death. Prosecutors alleged the dentist killed the 44-year-old man by lacing a cup of coffee with a medical sedative so that Nunez could have Linda Kolman to himself.

The defense in the murder trial said Nunez had nothing to do with the death and that it could have been the result of a heart problem.

Nunez was freed from the Ulster County Jail on $1 million bail shortly after his murder arrest, but he was returned to the jail after his November conviction in the pistol permit case to await sentencing.

Do you have questions about embezzlement?  Give Prosperident a call at 888-398-2327 or send an email to requests@dentalembezzlement.com

Content retrieved from: http://www.dailyfreeman.com/general-news/20170207/kingston-dentist-gilberto-nunez-sentenced-to-2-13-to-7-years-in-prison

Former Niagara Falls NY dental office manager spared prison

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Louis J. Carr, 42, of Niagara Falls, the former front desk administrator at a Buffalo area dental office, was spared a federal prison term and was placed on probation for two years by U.S. District Judge Richard J. Arcara Wednesday on his conviction for selling about 75 forged prescriptions for hydrocodone last year for $50 to $60 apiece.

Assistant U.S. Attorney George C. Burgasser said Carr between March 2014 and last September created the forged prescriptions using a stamp with a dentist’s signature. He printed them on the office computer system and then deleted all of them. He was nabbed by an investigation conducted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the prosecutor said.

Do you have questions about embezzlement?  Give Prosperident a call at 888-398-2327 or send an email to requests@dentalembezzlement.com

 

Content retrieved from: http://buffalonews.com/2015/06/24/former-dental-office-manager-spared-prison/

Is your CPA protecting you from embezzlement? Embezzled dentist sues CPA firm, alleging accounting malpractice. Not successful yet.

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New York dentist Ronald Ghiz was embezzled by office manager Carolina Vallario to the tune of $400,000.  in 2013, Dr. Ghiz sued his accounting firm, Shreck and Company CPAs, on the basis that they should have detected the embezzlement.

No final decision has been rendered on this case, and it is possible that the parties may have settled out of court.

Do you have questions about embezzlement?  Give Prosperident a call at 888-398-2327 or send an email to requests@dentalembezzlement.com

ghiz-vs-shreck

A really bad way to start your dental career — dental student arrested for stealing NBDE exam questions

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Attorney General Spitzer and State Education Commissioner Richard Mills today announced the arrests of three city residents in the theft of the dental licensing exam administered by the American Dental Association. The defendants used a high tech system involving a concealed camera and computer monitor to steal the test, which is given to an estimated 20,000 dental students nationwide annually. The test, which is administered twice a year, is taken by students who wish to obtain a license to practice dentistry.

The theft allegedly occurred when one person posing as a test taker transmitted the image of the exam using a concealed camera to the two co-defendants who were in a car outside monitoring the transmission on a computer monitor. The defendants are: Svetlana Bogomolova, 28, of 2 Gaylord Drive North, Brooklyn, N.Y.; Yelena Tayba, 35, of 201 Brighton Ave., Brooklyn N.Y. and Nicola Kapitanov, 33, of 67 McArthur Ave., Staten Island N.Y.

“These defendants threatened to put dental patients throughout New York at risk,” said Spitzer. “Had their plans to sell the tests been successful, an unknown number of unqualified dental school graduates would have received a license to practice.”

State Education Commissioner Richard Mills said “The arrests were the result of quick action and great teamwork between the Attorney General and the State Education Department. Those arrested used sophisticated electronic equipment. This shows the need to anticipate increasingly varied and clever schemes to defraud the public. We will continue to take all possible actions to protect the public.”

The defendants are charged with Grand Larceny in the Fourth Degree, Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Fifth Degree, and Obstructing Governmental Administration in the Second Degree.

The case was investigated for the Department of Education’s Office of Professional Discipline by Supervising Investigator Thomas Meade and Senior Investigator Wanda Meade. The case is being handled by Assistant Attorney General Ronda Lustman, under the supervision of Criminal Prosecutions Chief Janet Cohn and the head of the Criminal Division, Peter B. Pope.

Do you have questions about embezzlement?  Give Prosperident a call at 888-398-2327 or send an email to requests@dentalembezzlement.com

Staten Island NY woman swiped checks from dentist’s office, then cashed them with her boyfriend, police allege

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — An Annadale woman is accused of swiping 14 blank checks from the dentist’s office where she used to work, so she and her boyfriend could line their pockets with thousands of dollars.

Alyssa Decicco, 24, of Van Allen Avenue, who worked at a dental office in Annadale, grabbed the checks sometime between Oct. 28 and Jan. 7, police allege.

She and her boyfriend, Patrick Smith, 26, of Cranford Street in Great Kills, then went to the New York Community Bank at 2555 Richmond Ave., where, on 13 different occasions, he cashed the checks in his name, police allege. They got $5,500 in all, but they met with failure on the 14th try, on Jan. 7, court papers allege.

“That’s me in the video still. I cashed 13 checks and attempted to do number 14,” Smith told police, according to court papers.

Both were arrested last week and charged with multiple felonies and misdemeanors, including third-degree grand larceny and second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, according to information from District Attorney Daniel Donovan’s office.

Do you have questions about embezzlement?  Give Prosperident a call at 888-398-2327 or send an email to requests@dentalembezzlement.com