How to Tell If Embezzlement is Happening in Your Office

I have been investigating frauds committed against general dentists and specialists for over a decade.

 

Several years ago I was approached by a specialist at the trade show of a dental convention. He had attended my fraud presentation that day and wanted to talk. He regaled me with his determined effort to find the “smoking gun”, that irrefutable piece of evidence that would prove an employee was stealing. The specialist told me that he had spent over 80 hours self-investigating his practice. He detailed steps taken during this self-investigation and was confident that, after reviewing hundreds of transactions, his office was fraud free.

 

I advised him that his conclusion may be wrong.  In a confident way, he challenged me to show him why his self-investigation could be flawed. I think he believed he had handed me an impossible task, because he was expecting me to need to review financial reports, audit logs and computer data from his practice and all of that information was located several hundred miles away.

 

William Hiltz is Prosperident's Chief Operating Officer, and oversees Prosperident's team of fraud examiners.