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DH: Definitely.
MD: From the different cases you’ve seen over the years, what
would you say is the range or average of how much money is
usually taken?
DH: 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.
MD: Have you actually caught somebody who was just stealing
toilet paper?
DH: It’s not one that we normally chase. But it certainly
happens, and we do have dentists complaining to us about
it. Sometimes it’s the tip of a bigger iceberg. But, yes, we
do have lots of dentists who complain about things going
missing when the staff members are probably the only
people with the opportunity to steal. Another thing is, if
you look on eBay, you’ll see all kinds of dental gear for sale.
MD: Interesting. To my knowledge, I have never been embezzled
from. But in preparing for this interview, I was trying to think
like the criminal mind, and ask myself what I would do if I
had the opportunity. A chairside assistant could maybe sell
bleaching kits on eBay, the kind that don’t need custom trays,
like the pre-made ones from Ultradent. Those could be sold on
eBay directly to patients for a markup. Is that the kind of thing
you’re talking about, or do you mean actual equipment?
DH: Both. If a compressor is for sale on eBay, I highly doubt
the dental assistant snuck it out of the office while nobody
was watching. But you’ll see hand instruments and all kinds
of consumables that are for sale online at a lower price than
you can buy them from a supplier. Theoretically, I guess some
of this stuff is gray market that somebody bought in some
other country and imported. But I think the vast majority of
it just kind of “fell off the truck” in one way or another.
MD: Wow, and that’s not really something that anyone polices,
or could even. It seems like a difficult thing to try to get a
handle on.
DH: I hate to say it, but I think most of the purchasers of
this stuff aren’t end consumers buying bleach kits, but other
dentists saying, “Wow, this stuff is really cheap on eBay.”
MD: In a dental office where the dentist doesn’t pay a lot of
attention to what arrives in the boxes from Patterson Dental or
Henry Schein, you might have somebody ordering things at full
price and then putting them on eBay. Three days later when it
disappears, no one misses it because the dentist didn’t really
need it or even order it in the first place, right?
DH: Yes. Unless it’s enough to distort the ratio of consumables
to productivity, which would have to be a whole lot of stuff
going out the back door, nobody is ever going to notice.
MD: I’ve heard stories about dental assistants, for example,
coming into the office on a Saturday and making bleaching
trays for people and charging for it. Obviously it’s illegal, but is
that considered embezzlement as well?
DH: I’m not sure it meets the formal definition of
embezzlement, but it’s some kind of stealing, yes. What it
really amounts to is practicing unlicensed dentistry. I saw
something the other day about a dental assistant who would
bring her friends in on Saturdays and do fillings on them.
MD: The very first story you told was about a woman who
was fired from one practice for embezzling, who you then ran
into at another practice. Then you told me about the woman
in Toronto who stole from 13 practices. It seems like at some
point they would be prosecuted. Is it up to the dentist to decide
whether they want to prosecute these employees?
DH: Prosecution is the responsibility of the government,
not the individual dentist. So when people say, “I’d like to
press charges,” or “I’d like to not press charges,” they’re
assuming a privilege that they really don’t have. It is the
government that carries that responsibility and the financial
and evidentiary burden that goes with it. Having said that,
what a dentist can do is either communicate their interest in
having somebody charged, or communicate that they really
don’t want a person charged. Most of the time law enforcement
and prosecuting agencies will give some weight to
that. Also, if somebody hires us to investigate and we gather
a fair amount of evidence, they can instruct us whether to
share it with law enforcement. If we don’t share that evidence
with law enforcement, in most cases they will have
no interest in prosecuting because they don’t have the realistic
means of gathering the same information themselves.
MD: Have you seen any cases where it was not a full-time
employee doing the embezzlement, but instead the dentist’s
accountant or somebody who only comes in once a month, an
auxiliary position like that?
DH: The only cases where we’ve seen an appreciable amount
of theft is with some kind of bookkeeper or accountant;
somebody who has some level of control over the banking
function, such as writing checks. A part-time bookkeeper
is the only bookkeeper there, so even if that person only
comes in three days a month, there is nobody else doing the
job when they’re not there. So they can probably succeed
there on a part-time basis. With somebody like a part-time
receptionist, however, we really see very little stealing.
Somebody who mans the front desk on Fridays is going to
have a tough time getting away with much.
MD: Might another warning sign be an employee who insists
on doing all the insurance claims herself?
Interview with David Harris51