What a Dental Fraud Investigator Knows That You Don’t

Embezzlement warning signs: the controls every practice owner should run this month

Here’s the statistic that should reorganize your Monday morning: about 70 percent of dentists will be embezzled at some point in their careers, and the average thief takes six figures before being caught. Not the careless dentists. Not the absentee owners. The majority — because the person stealing is almost always the trusted one with the access.

David Harris runs Prosperident, the dental-only forensic investigation firm — 35 years, a team of 25, endorsed by seven state dental associations including Michigan’s. When he joined us on the Dentelligentsia podcast, he was refreshingly practical: you can’t make theft impossible, but a handful of controls make it hard to hide. Here they are, ready to run this month.

Understand what you’re hunting: the conceal, not the steal

Harris’s framework: “Embezzlement has two parts: the steal and the conceal. The steal is how your money becomes my money. The conceal is what I do afterward to hide it — and that’s what we hunt.” You’ll rarely catch the steal — it looks like ordinary work. The conceal leaves marks: adjustments, deleted transactions, altered reports, and a general fog around the numbers. Which is why his first warning sign is behavioral: “One of the first casualties of embezzlement is transparency. When somebody is stealing, there are things they don’t want you to see.” The team member who guards the software, resists vacations, or bristles when you ask questions isn’t necessarily stealing. But every embezzler does exactly those things.

The fifteen-minute monthly check

Harris’s core control costs fifteen minutes a month. He calls it checking the articulation: run your day-end reports for the month and compare them to the month-end summary. “Fees, adjustments, and payments should match exactly. If they don’t, somebody came in on a Saturday and did things in the software they didn’t want you to see.”

The point isn’t only detection — it’s deterrence. A team that watches you run this check knows the books get reconciled by the person who owns them. His favorite catch was a doctor who called and said, “I’m seeing adjustments, and they all take place on Sundays.” Harris’s reply: “Bingo. That’s somebody trying to hide something from you.” Off-hours activity in your practice software is a flare.

The hiring controls almost nobody runs

Two checks before anyone touches your money. First, the background check: “Roughly one in four American adults has a criminal record — and it astounds me the percentage of dental practices that hire people without checking that basic fact.” Serial embezzlers exist — Prosperident’s searchable Hall of Shame holds roughly 750 convicted dental embezzlers — and they apply for front-desk jobs.

Second, verify references like an investigator: “Don’t phone any number an applicant gives you for a former employer. Google the practice and call that number — or you may be getting a warm reference from the applicant’s uncle pretending to be Dr. Smith.”

If you suspect something: do not confront

This is the instruction Harris repeats most, because the instinct runs the other way. Confront a suspect and one of two bad things happens. If you’re wrong, you’ve torched a loyal employee’s trust. If you’re right, evidence disappears — and worse is possible: “If somebody thinks they’re about to go to prison, the list of things they’ll refuse to do to prevent it can be pretty short. Do not make yourself a guinea pig in that sociology experiment.” Prosperident’s investigations run covertly, on cloned software, precisely so the suspect keeps behaving normally. Call the specialist — and note his caution about well-meaning generalists: “Don’t confuse somebody who knows 15 percent more than you with an expert.”

Delegate — never abdicate

The deeper fix is a posture. “The difference between delegation and abdication: delegation is giving you a job and holding you accountable. Abdication is ‘I never want to hear about this again.’ A lot of dentists abdicate when they need to delegate.” Divide financial duties so no one person controls a transaction start to finish — collusion, Harris notes, is rare — and stay the person who reads the reports. His two-word summary hangs over all of it: “Trust — then verify.”

And for the owners it’s already happened to, his absolution is worth printing: “It was an unequal battle. They knew what you looked at, what you didn’t, and the best day of the week to steal from you. Stop blaming yourself, and let’s focus on what you do now.”

Hear the full conversation with David Harris, CEO of Prosperident, on the Dentelligentsia podcast — including how his first case ended two weeks later at his own dentist’s front desk, and how practices rebuild trust after a theft.

We spend our days protecting a different asset of yours — the real estate under the practice. Tenants and buyers only — talk to us.

For more on our interview with David Harris, check out our article, “Is Someone Stealing From Your Practice? What a Dental Fraud Investigator Knows That You Don’t.”

And follow David Harris on Linked In or check out the Prosperident website.