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steal because they’ve been there for a long time. If they
act dishonestly, it’s their longevity that enables them to get
away with it. Because they know the dentist, his habits, and
what the dentist looks at and what he doesn’t, they can craft
their fraud in a way that bypasses scrutiny. For example, if
you’re a dentist who checks your day sheet every day — I
think every dentist should do that — then someone who
is going to embezzle from you knows that. So they’re not
going to do something that leaves a mess on your day sheet.
They’ll have to find a different way to steal.
MD: I know we have a lot of staff members who read our
magazine, so I’m glad you brought that up. Maybe a better way
to state the practice management message is to say that a lot
of a dental practice’s success comes from the dentist’s ability
to find and retain honest, long-term employees. The long-term,
dishonest employee is a counterintuitive thought, and I think
most dentists would be flabbergasted to find out that a longterm
employee is the one embezzling from them. But I think
it’s a good point to make just because of the fact that those
employees would probably be the last people a dentist would
suspect in a situation like that.
DH: A lot of dentists go through a period of disbelief. They’ll
see some signs that somebody is stealing from them, and
then they think about their employees and they’ll sort of
rule everybody out — even those who they think have an
opportunity to embezzle. They’ll convince themselves that
the theft isn’t happening, and then they’ll go back to work.
At some point the noise gets a little bit louder and something
happens that they just can’t categorize as an innocent mistake
anymore, and then they realize they have a problem. A lot of
times there is a denial period that dentists go through when
they have long-term employees because they have a lot of
trust in those employees, whether it’s misplaced or not.
MD: Have you come across instances of a family member working
at the office and being responsible for the embezzlement?
DH: Yes, we have. One scenario is when you have one
spouse who is the dentist and one spouse who is the office
manager. The office manager has decided to get divorced
from the dentist, but hasn’t told the dentist that yet. So they
need to build up a war chest in order to pay their attorney
and find a place to live because their only source of
income is employment income from their spouse, which is
presumably going to be cut off when they drop the divorce
bomb. The spouse knows they will need money under the
mattress and that’s how they get it.
MD: I was thinking more about kids coming to work in the
office, or maybe an in-law. But that’s a great example that
never occurred to me. Do you have a list of potential warning
signs that dentists might see happening in their practice that
could warrant an investigation?
DH: We do. This is maybe where I have a slightly different
view than a lot of people who write and speak about
embezzlement. Many of them try to turn dentists into what
I would call untrained, ill-equipped auditors in their own
practices. These advisors give the dentists lists of things to
“
We see everything from stealing toilet paper at
the office to frauds that exceed a million dollars.
The average we see these days is probably a
little over $100,000. I think last time we did the
calculation, it came out to about $105,000.
”