The $300K Wake-Up Call: How to Embezzlement-Proof Your Dental Practice Before It’s Too Late
Did you know that 85% of dental practices get embezzled from? That’s not a typo—it’s a crisis. And the worst part? Most dentists have no idea it’s happening until thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of dollars have disappeared. In this eye-opening episode, Marissa Krugov and Chris Hammelev—co-founders of the Dental Practice Management Agency and known as “The Velvet Hammer and The Spicy One”—pull back the curtain on the embezzlement epidemic plaguing dentistry. From Robin Hood write-offs to fraudulent insurance billing schemes, they reveal the shocking ways team members manipulate systems right under doctors’ noses. More importantly, they share their proven framework for protecting your practice, what to do when you discover theft, and why dentists can no longer hide behind the excuse “they didn’t teach me business in dental school.”
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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- 00:00 – Shocking statistic: 85% of dental practices experience embezzlement
- 00:31 – Introduction and sponsor shoutout to Marketing 32’s performance-based guarantee
- 01:27 – Shoutout to Katherine Eitel Belt’s episode on leadership communication
- 02:27 – Meet Marissa Krugov and Chris Hammelev: The Velvet Hammer and The Spicy One
- 03:13 – Chris’s journey from hygienist to practice growth specialist and consultant
- 04:23 – Marissa’s early start in dentistry at age 15 and rise through corporate to consulting
- 05:23 – The marriage of two worlds: Combining DSO systems with private practice relationships
- 07:14 – The unique 12-month “teach them to fish” consulting model that pushes practices out of the nest
- 09:30 – Electronic SOP manuals that stay with clients forever, even after consulting ends
- 10:13 – When clients come back years later for refreshers with new teams
- 11:39 – The embezzlement deep dive begins: Why dentistry is the most embezzled-from industry
- 12:04 – The sobering 2023 case: How they caught their first embezzler despite clean reports
- 13:31 – The root cause: Why dentists are blind to what happens at the front desk
- 14:03 – The background check problem and why embezzlers keep getting rehired
- 14:44 – Robin Hood embezzlement: When team members hide patient balances in insurance write-offs
- 16:36 – The two numbers that should always match (but often don’t)
- 18:19 – The dangerous comfort zone: “I have enough in my account to pay bills”
- 19:15 – Real case study: The associate who made $300,000 more than he should have over several years
- 20:54 – Cash pay risks and what practices need to watch out for
- 22:27 – Why trusting the “20-year loyal employee who watches your dogs” is dangerous
- 22:54 – The embezzlement-proofing checklist: What to review and how often
- 23:35 – The claims report everyone needs but nobody’s checking
- 23:51 – The buddy system scam: Billing insurance for fake patients and splitting the payout
- 24:29 – The monthly 10-patient audit that catches most problems
- 25:05 – Why paper EOBs are keeping you vulnerable (and what to do instead)
- 26:04 – What to do when you find embezzlement: The critical first steps (and mistakes to avoid)
- 26:36 – Building your case in silence: Why you can’t tell anyone yet
- 27:07 – The $7,000-$35,000 cost of forensic accounting (and when it’s worth it)
- 28:40 – Liability insurance’s dishonest employee clause most people don’t know about
- 29:33 – Legal landmines: How to fire an embezzler without getting sued for defamation
- 30:47 – Golden nugget from Chris: Invest in your team emotionally and culturally to grow your practice
- 31:56 – Golden nugget from Marissa: Take your business by the horns—you can’t hide behind “they didn’t teach me this in dental school”
- 33:36 – The importance of coaches and getting help in an industry with the highest suicide rate
Marissa Krugov and Chris Hammelev didn’t set out to become embezzlement experts—but when they caught their first embezzler in 2023, it changed everything. Despite praising an office manager for clean accounts receivable and stellar KPIs, Marissa spotted one weird write-off that unraveled an entire scheme. That sobering experience led them to spend an entire Christmas vacation developing continuing education specifically to teach dentists how to embezzlement-proof their practices. The statistics are staggering: 85% of dental practices experience embezzlement, making dentistry the most embezzled-from profession. The reason? Dentistry is the only small business where owners have no idea how to bill for or collect the services they provide—they’re completely blind to what happens administratively.
The methods embezzlers use are both sophisticated and shockingly simple. “Robin Hood embezzlement” involves hiding uncollected patient balances in insurance write-offs to avoid confrontation and cover mistakes. Some team members bill insurance for fake patients—often friends with insurance coverage—and split the payout. Others refund credits to their own credit cards or manipulate production numbers to match the comfortable bank balance doctors expect to see. The red flags are there: collections in your software don’t match collections in your bank account, excessive write-offs that never get audited, mounting patient credits nobody wants to address, and claims that aren’t being submitted regularly. But most dentists operate in a dangerous comfort zone—if there’s enough money to cover payroll and overhead, they assume everything’s fine.
The solution starts with a systematic audit process: adding a submitted claims report to daily paperwork, conducting monthly 10-patient audits comparing EOBs to write-offs, converting all EOBs to digital records for easy access, and reviewing software audit trails for deleted or modified entries. When you do discover embezzlement, the next steps are critical: tell no one while you build your case, contact your liability insurance about the dishonest employee clause, engage employment lawyers to avoid wrongful termination suits, and decide whether prosecution (costing $7,000-$35,000 for forensic accounting) is your end game. As Marissa powerfully stated, dentists can no longer hide behind the excuse that business wasn’t taught in dental school. Your practice is your retirement—protect it with the same diligence you apply to clinical continuing education.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Dental Practice Management Agency: Marissa and Chris’s consulting firm offering 12-month practice management programs that combine DSO systems with private practice relationships, including embezzlement-proofing training and department-specific SOP manuals
- Free Embezzlement-Proofing Checklist: Contact Marissa directly for a complimentary checklist of what to review monthly to protect your practice from theft
- Marketing 32: Performance-based dental marketing agency with a growth guarantee—if you’re not growing, you don’t pay
- Previous Episode – Katherine Eitel Belt: Recent Marketing 32 Show episode on effective leadership communication and working with teams
- Electronic SOP Manuals: Comprehensive standard operating procedure documentation for all departments that stays with clients forever, including lifetime updates
Quotable Moments:
“85% of dental practices get embezzled from, which is just a disgusting number.” – Marissa Krugov
“Dentistry is the only small business where the business owner doesn’t have any idea how to bill for or collect for the dollars that they’re making. They’re completely blind to that.” – Marissa Krugov
“We are here for their success, not their time and money. If we ever feel like people aren’t really ready for change, we will be the first to say now isn’t the moment.” – Marissa Krugov
“You shouldn’t need a consultant your entire career. And I know people don’t believe that, but you really shouldn’t.” – Marissa Krugov
“There’s not this evil, weird person lurking that steals from you. It’s those people that you trust because they don’t think you’re ever gonna think it’s them.” – Marissa Krugov
“If you’re not thinking like a crook, you’re not going to think that way because you’re not a terrible human.” – Marissa Krugov
“The biggest comfort for doctors is when they don’t look—if they have enough money in their account, they’re comfortable. If they can pay the bills, they’re good.” – Chris Hammelev
“Susie learned from Lori who learned from Joanne—they just don’t do things correctly. And doctors will never know that unless they do the things that Marissa teaches them to do.” – Chris Hammelev
“If you grow your team, you’ll grow your practice. If you invest in your team—not just financially, but emotionally and culturally—your practice will grow beautifully.” – Chris Hammelev
“We can’t hide behind that joke anymore that dentists don’t know business. When people are coming to us crying because embezzlement has happened to them—I need doctors to take their business by the horns.” – Marissa Krugov
“This is what you signed up for. If you want the ultimate responsibility of being a business owner and all the autonomy that comes with it, you have to protect your business. This is your retirement.” – Marissa Krugov
Action Steps
- Add the claims report to your daily paperwork: Ensure you’re receiving a report of all submitted insurance claims each day—this catches fraudulent billing and ensures claims are actually being sent out
- Request the free embezzlement-proofing checklist: Contact Marissa and Chris through their website to get the comprehensive checklist of what to review monthly
- Conduct your first 10-patient audit this month: Pull 10 patients who made payments (mix of different insurances and cash pay), compare EOBs to write-offs taken, and look for discrepancies
- Convert to digital EOBs immediately: If you’re still using paper explanation of benefits, transition to electronic scanning in a public file for easy auditing access
- Review your liability insurance policy: Check for the “dishonest employee clause” that most dentists don’t know they have
This episode is brought to you by Marketing 32—the only dental marketing agency and team with a performance guarantee that is truly invested in the growth of your practice.
If you’re not growing in that first month they work together with you, you don’t pay. They really try to find practices they know they can help and partner with you for a win-win relationship.
If you need help with your marketing, visit Marketing 32 and hop on a discovery call to see if it’ll be a great fit.
Episode Transcript:
Brett Allen (00:19)
Hi, Brett Allen here, hosted the Marketing32 show where I connect with leading dentists, dental influencers, and industry experts, as you know, to uncover the greatest and latest best insights, innovations there are to help your dental practice to grow and thrive. This episode, as always, is brought to you by our team here at Marketing32. We’re the only dental marketing team that I know of with a performance guarantee that if you’re not growing, you don’t pay. We’re truly invested in your growth.
We demonstrate that, we track it. We want to be the most ethical marketing team out there driven for value. So if you need help with marketing, stuck in your growth, not sure how to take things to the next level, reach out to us at marketing32.com. We’ll have a brief discovery call and we’ll review what our process is like, see if we’re a great fit to work together. Quick shout out to Katherine Eitelbelt, recently had her on the show.
Chris Hammelev (01:15)
Yay.
Brett Allen (01:16)
Talked all
about effective leadership communication, ⁓ working with your team, all of that. She is a wealth of knowledge, especially if you’re speaking in dentistry. So ⁓ check that episode out with Catherine. It’s full of value. Today, I’m super excited to have some new friends of mine here in the Colorado area, Marissa Krugov and Chris Hamalev. ⁓ They are the co-founders of the Dental Practice Management Agency, better known as
The Velvet Hammer and The Spicy One, bringing together decades of leadership across clinical, administrative, and executive roles. With over 20 years in dentistry, Marissa has excelled as a life coach, regional manager, and national consultant, while Chris brings 32 years as a hygienist, treatment coordinator, and manager who has led top performing hygiene teams nationwide. Together, they help practices unify their teams, strengthen communication,
Chris Hammelev (01:48)
you ⁓
Brett Allen (02:15)
and implement sustainable systems that drive growth, profitability, and a thriving practice culture. Chris and Marissa, thank you for coming on the show today. This is going to be a fun conversation.
Marissa Krugov (02:25)
Thanks for having us.
Chris Hammelev (02:26)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Brett Allen (02:28)
Yeah. Yeah. Excited to go deep with you guys on who you are, how you work with practices, how you got into what you’re doing, your process, ⁓ and even more interesting embezzlement. it’s a high, that’s a high thing that I think is affecting the industry. It’s a big thing, right? ⁓ so why don’t we kind of to kick things off, we could, we could talk with each of you individually about like, tell us a brief background story of like how you got into dentistry.
And then ultimately how you got to working together and what you’re doing today.
Chris Hammelev (03:01)
⁓ So I did a couple years of college, didn’t know what I wanted to do and looked at dental hygiene and said, wow, that sounds like fun. So, and there was no math, I have to put that out there. So I there’s no math and this looks like fun, let’s do this. So I did it and really fell in love with the profession of dentistry and pretty much everything about it. And I’ve had some great mentors, you know, over the years and then ⁓ really
Brett Allen (03:14)
Yeah.
Chris Hammelev (03:29)
took it upon myself to start growing hygiene teams and then moving on and then growing another one and then moving on and then growing another one and just seeing the impact it had on the practice. from there just took off and started consulting, you know, with another consulting group where I met my now business partner, Marissa, and we just decided that this was, you know, not necessarily honoring the brand of where we were and what we wanted to be. So we split off and
did our own thing and here we are. So it’s just rewarding every day to see the practices that we work alongside do beautiful, beautiful things. Ressa.
Brett Allen (04:09)
That’s great.
That’s great. Yeah.
Marissa Krugov (04:11)
Yeah, well, I started super early. I was 15 or 16 when I first started assisting. And I fell in love with everything dentistry. The dentist that I started with taught me like I was his associate. So he would pull out path books and just got me addicted to dentistry. And his wife was the insurance coordinator. So she taught me everything insurance. I just, same thing, fell in love with all things dental and have been in it ever since. So I’ve kind of, after private practice, went corporate.
worked my way up from being an adult all the way up to being a regional manager of 23 locations here in Arizona. it kind of got a little bit too much for me, the corporate mentality of kind of more, more, more. And I felt like I couldn’t protect my team anymore. So I thought if I could consult, I can kind of marry the beautiful systems that DSOs have with the beautiful relationships that private practice has, which is exactly what Chris and I do.
Brett Allen (04:45)
Okay.
Yes, I love
that.
Marissa Krugov (05:08)
And this is where I am.
Brett Allen (05:12)
That’s great. I want to go deeper on that aspect because I think as we see more private equity come in, more DSOs, more corporate, ⁓ it’s almost like that’s what’s going to happen in the industry. And it’s just going to become more and more corporate dentistry, which there’s some good things and there’s some challenging things and bad things, right? ⁓ So I would love to hear more about your background and specifically how you guys merge those two worlds.
Chris Hammelev (05:12)
Yep, yep.
Brett Allen (05:41)
and work with practices. So you bring the value of organization, you bring the value of next level leadership into solo practitioner and smaller, and probably, you probably work with smaller group practices too, right? Not just the solo practitioner. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Hammelev (05:52)
All
Marissa Krugov (05:57)
Absolutely.
Chris Hammelev (05:57)
Yeah, so smaller
group and even some private equity. So, you know, they’re, they’re not bound by the rules of bigger corporate offices. And a lot of them come to us and say, Hey, we love the corporate part, you know, because it’s organized and we can duplicate it. but, and we are private equity for a reason. We want it to be personal. We want it to be, you know, a wonderful experience culturally, not only for the team, but for the patients.
Brett Allen (06:00)
Okay.
Chris Hammelev (06:27)
can you help us do that? So we do quite a bit with that as well.
Brett Allen (06:27)
Mm-hmm.
⁓ Cool, cool. So yeah, let’s talk about the practice management agency, your team, and how you work with practices. Can you kind of walk us through maybe who’s the ideal practice that you work with, and then maybe some golden nuggets of value of how you work with them, and detail a little bit more about your process that makes you unique from.
all the other advisors that are out there and consultants working with practices.
Marissa Krugov (07:02)
Yeah, so ⁓ Chris and I, when we started, we knew that we did not want to keep our clients into perpetuity. So that was one of our founding principles. We are here to teach them to fish and let them go fish. ⁓ And we also, our tagline with ourselves, if you will, is that we are here for their success, not their time and money. So if we ever feel like people aren’t
Really ready for change even though they say they are which is a lot of people in life Or if their team isn’t behind them or whatever the case is we will be the first to go to people and say hey look is Now isn’t the moment maybe there’s another time that this might work for you But we are not going to sit around and suck people’s time and money so we kind of took that basis and and and move forward with building our ⁓ Program that we have so we have a 12 month program
⁓ or month a month. it’s, it’s, it, there is a contract, but it’s more for HIPAA than anything. Like just don’t steal our stuff. We won’t steal your stuff basically. ⁓ and really what that looks like is leadership with the doctors, teaching them how to run their business better. teach them how to embezzlement proof their business, ⁓ how to speak to their team better and get them from the heart up, not the neck up, right? Just really truly getting them bought in, which is not easy to do.
⁓ and then we have also what kind of makes us a little bit different is we have, ⁓ department trainers that start month two through about six or seven, depending on the team. And what they do is we have hygiene admin, assistant trainers that go into each department, clean up all the systems. If they’re beautiful, we leave them alone. We don’t need it to be like the Chris and Marissa show, right? Like if it’s cute, keep it. If it’s not working as well, then we, you know, spit China and clean it up. But.
⁓ After that six months, they’re given an electronic SOP manual that stays with them forever. And we constantly update it, even if they’re not continuing to be clients. Just if we have new forms, or new OSHA forms, or whatever, we just throw it in their forum, because we think it’s the right thing to do. ⁓ But yeah, so that’s it. At the end of 12 months, some of clients are our what’s nexters, right? They want to stay with us and like, hey, we just got another associate, or we built a whole new practice, or now we have three practices instead of two, or two instead of one.
Brett Allen (08:58)
Then he needs to be tweaked, that’s nice.
Chris Hammelev (09:13)
Great.
Marissa Krugov (09:19)
So those people will stay with us a little bit longer through those growth stages. But for the most part, we kind of push them out of the nest. Go fly. Consultant your entire career. And I know people don’t believe that, but you really shouldn’t need a consultant your whole career.
Chris Hammelev (09:24)
Goodbye. Yeah.
Brett Allen (09:26)
Yeah, I love that.
I re-
I remember when we first met, and thank you Laura Brenner if you’re listening for introducing us, ⁓ that you made that point. And I was like, wow, yeah, that’s what consulting and advisory should look like is you’re still there as a resource. can tap into you guys, but ultimately they need to spread their wings and fly, like you said. Doesn’t need to be a constant expense on the business.
Chris Hammelev (09:34)
to that.
Absolutely.
Yeah. We’ve had offices, I’m so sorry, Brett.
Marissa Krugov (10:01)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Hammelev (10:01)
Sorry, Brett. We’ve had offices come back too. It’s like two, three years down the line, they call and they’re like, okay, we have a whole new team. We have a whole new this. Can we do this again? What do we need? Yeah. Do we just need a refresher? Do we need something more? And things like that. Or they’ll say, hey, could you just come quarterly? Because we’re really nervous about letting you go. So could you just come once in a while?
Brett Allen (10:13)
A refresher, yeah.
Chris Hammelev (10:26)
And we’re always accessible to our teams and our doctors, even when we’re not working together. If you have problem, call us. We’re not going to like start the clock and send you a bill. Just, yeah, we’re not lawyers. So just call us. We’re happy to help you.
Brett Allen (10:37)
Yeah, Oh man. Oh man
Marissa Krugov (10:38)
We’re not lawyers.
Brett Allen (10:45)
That’s great. That’s great. Well, I love that. ⁓ That’s definitely unique to the space. And I love that approach. You mentioned something, Marissa, as you were giving an overview, you mentioned embezzlement. So I wanted to take a moment, if we can, this next block of time for the podcast. Let’s go deep on that, because we haven’t had anybody on the show that really has gone deep on that. Walk us through how this is impacting the industry, because I’ve heard some amazing statistics.
of how frequent this problem is. Let’s talk about the signs of it. How do we recognize it, diagnose it, and then how do we cope with it, fix it, prevent it, all of that?
Marissa Krugov (11:27)
Yeah, such good questions. Yeah, it is staggering. 85 % of dental practices get embezzled from, which is just like a disgusting number. Chris and I, I know in 2023, Chris and I caught our first embezzler on one of our teams. And it was super sobering for us because we have team members of ours who build amazing reports.
Brett Allen (11:35)
That’s amazing.
Marissa Krugov (11:52)
And we give them to our teams monthly and we go through KPIs in our monthly meetings and we look at AR and I dive in deep to write offs and all the things insurance and we, we were praising, praising this office manager for all the things that, her AR was good. It was clean. And we, at one point I saw a weird write off and I dug in and I called Chris and I’m like, my God, Chris, this is a, like, I think she’s stealing.
Brett Allen (12:02)
Cash pay.
Chris Hammelev (12:03)
Yeah, everything.
Marissa Krugov (12:21)
And in fact, she was, and that was when we were like, Oh my God, we, we have to look deeper and we have to teach doctors how to protect their business. So that, that kind of, it was at the end of that year. And I spent the entire Christmas vacation building a CE for Dennis to teach them how to embezzlement proof their practice. I was like, we can’t sit and know what we know and not at least try and shout it from the rooftops for them, but it’s, it’s scary. It’s very scary. The number of it and.
I think it’s the why behind it that scared Chris and I the most is why is it so high in dentistry? We are the most embezzled from field. And the only answer I could come up with in my mind is it’s also the only small business where the business owner doesn’t have any idea how to bill for or to collect for the dollars that they’re making. They don’t what admin’s doing, right? Like they’re completely blind to that, most of them.
Brett Allen (12:57)
really? all… Wow.
Chris Hammelev (12:59)
Okay.
Brett Allen (13:14)
⁓ yeah.
Chris Hammelev (13:15)
No clue.
Marissa Krugov (13:19)
more savvy dentists nowadays but for sure most of the dentists back in the day they had no idea that’s what Suzy does up front I don’t do that right so
Brett Allen (13:23)
Hmm
Yeah, before computers and everything, it was just paper. That’s a lot easier to hide things.
Marissa Krugov (13:30)
Yeah.
Yeah. And things like we don’t do background checks often in dentistry. We make our clients do it now, but the amount of people still today that I’m like, did you do a background check? And they’re like, oh my god, we didn’t do a background check. They’re like, oh my god. So that and also the docs aren’t prosecuting. They aren’t. how we’re doing it, I don’t know. Yeah.
Brett Allen (13:51)
They just fire the team member and move on. somebody, next dentist
down the road may hire this person because they got a great resume.
Marissa Krugov (13:59)
100%. Chris and I see one of the names of the people that I caught before Chris and I ever even knew each other. Probably about every three months show up on Indeed and our clients will be like, hey, this person showed up. I interview her? No. Because I had to fire her. She was stealing and she was prosecuted and has a rap sheet from Here to East by Jesus and still she’s showing up on. And so that tells me that every three months someone’s hiring her.
Brett Allen (14:11)
⁓
Chris Hammelev (14:12)
No!
Marissa Krugov (14:26)
and she’s showing right back up in the hiring field, right? So yeah, it’s scary.
Chris Hammelev (14:32)
And
Brett Allen (14:32)
Wow.
Chris Hammelev (14:32)
some
of it, Brett isn’t taking money, right? They’re not like pocketing it, but it’s Susie learned from Lori who learned from Joanne and they just don’t do things correctly. And they write off things they should be charging the patient for, or they are not sure what to do with this weird thing. So they just write it off over time or, or hide it or delete it completely. Because there’s some softwares that don’t track that stuff. You can just get rid of it.
Brett Allen (14:41)
This is the way to do it.
yeah, the reconciliation
process, yeah.
Chris Hammelev (15:01)
Yeah,
so, you know, they make it work and ⁓ doctors will never know that unless they do the things that Marissa teaches them to do. They’ll just never know it. And the biggest, I think the biggest comfort for them is when they don’t look, is they have enough money in their account, they’re comfortable. So if they’re comfortable, they can pay the bills. Yeah. Yep.
Brett Allen (15:12)
Wow.
yeah, they’re like, this seems on par. This is kind of what we’re seeing every month. We’ve got enough margin
here. I got enough to cover my overhead and payroll. Yeah.
Marissa Krugov (15:31)
Yeah,
we hear that time and time again. you know, there’s another way to, which was what I found that office manager doing a lot. She was also taking money, but I have deemed it since Robin Hood embezzlement because what I’m finding is, they’re hiding this money that let’s say Chris comes in, I tell her she owes 500 for her crown, but then insurance doesn’t cover it. And so she owes, she pays her portion, but now she owes another 500 because insurance didn’t cover their part.
Well, instead of me going to Chris and getting yelled at or getting yelled at by my doctor for not collecting from Chris, I’m just gonna write it off to that Delta write-off or that Cigna write-off to an insurance write-off. And, you know, doctors complain all the time. We blame a lot of our Our write-offs are terrible. And I’m like, have you audited them? Which is part of what I teach them. How you audit a manageable amount. You have to audit all of them. But…
Brett Allen (16:08)
⁓
My write-offs are so high. ⁓ well.
Chris Hammelev (16:14)
Yeah.
Marissa Krugov (16:24)
so that they know because oftentimes we either find like Chris said, people are not trained well, they just don’t know, or they’re definitely doing some of that Robin Hood embezzlement. They’ve got some bleeding hearts and they also wanna cover their booties. it’s, give or take.
Brett Allen (16:38)
Yeah.
So let’s go a little bit deeper on like the signs of this. How do we diagnose that this is a problem I’ve got? I’m a practice owner. Maybe I’m not as great on my accounting, but I’m checking in, I’m looking at things, I’ve got some oversight. What are some red flags we can look for that would be, okay, I need, you know, I’m not really a consultant. I don’t have anybody holding my hand on this, but there’s something going on. Like what things are?
obvious signs.
Marissa Krugov (17:08)
That’s a great question. So I think the biggest signs I typically see ⁓ is the production and the collections. I’m sorry, the collections in the software and the collections in your bank account aren’t matching. Like those two things don’t equal each other. Right. So I see a lot of that, but the doctors, like Chris was saying, they get to a certain point where the amount in their bank account is this amount that they’re really comfortable with. You know, I just actually talked to a doctor this morning and he’s like, ⁓
Okay, now that I have all these investigators in, I’m noticing that there’s a lot of things that she was stealing, but I always produce this amount and it’s always in my bank account. Well, she was tweaking that. So you can hide that. So I think there’s certain things that you just have to look whether you think that there’s an issue or not. And I think it’s that trust but verify. That’s the part that scares me the most is that docs don’t have time or the want to do that after they’re in a face all day.
Chris Hammelev (17:45)
Mm-hmm.
Brett Allen (17:51)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Marissa Krugov (18:07)
I got that money in the account, I can pay the bills, payroll’s covered, cool, we’re good. But that’s not always the answer. So that’s why I teach them to audit. like I said, it’s a manageable amount to audit. you have to look. You have to look at those EOBs versus what write-offs are being taken. You have to look at where your refunds are happening. know, I have offices that have a lot of credits, and that’s a perfect place to embezzle from because nobody’s looking at those credits.
Brett Allen (18:23)
Hmm.
Marissa Krugov (18:33)
In fact, doctors don’t want to, they don’t want to have to go back, give, start handing out checks to people. Right. So they’re like, don’t look at the credits. I don’t want to know, you know, so that’s a really easy way for me to go and refund my credit card, which is what this woman that I talked to the doctor today about was doing. She was refunding her credit card with credits. So she was overcharging. Nice little kickback.
Brett Allen (18:48)
⁓ interesting.
wow, interesting.
Marissa Krugov (18:56)
Yeah.
Chris Hammelev (18:56)
They’re out there. You can’t even think about it, can you? Like, who does this?
Brett Allen (18:58)
Yeah, we had.
Marissa Krugov (19:01)
Yeah.
Yes.
Brett Allen (19:03)
We had one of our clients, he’s got four offices, group practice, ⁓ all different brands because he acquired them over time. And ⁓ the associate at one of the offices that he wasn’t at all the time, ⁓ great relationship, everything cool, but, and I forget the specifics around what was going on, but he was getting, per the agreement and the employment offer, he was getting a percentage of his treatment.
Chris Hammelev (19:32)
you
Brett Allen (19:32)
Paid out to him but because of how the insurance or whatever was filing and what that percentage was calculated off of he was actually taking more of what he should have gotten then yeah, and so that nobody knew this until like I Think a year after that relationship had ended He had moved on to another practice the OM was digging through things and was filing something issues like wait something’s off here from you know
the reports or whatever. And so they dug into it and he had made like $300,000 more over
Chris Hammelev (20:07)
you
Brett Allen (20:08)
the span of a couple years than what he actually should have been paid. And they could prove that it was intentional. Like he had, like you could see how he had gone in and manipulated things so that the amounts were being paid out more to him. I don’t know the specifics of it all, but.
Marissa Krugov (20:14)
Gosh.
Chris Hammelev (20:32)
Well.
Brett Allen (20:32)
It seems
like there’s all these different little ways that you could get burned. like cash pay, I know that’s another way. Like if a patient pays with cash, it’s like, okay, well, yeah, like what can we do for our listeners? What can we do for the industry of like, hey, here’s what you need to watch out for. And then this lead this to the next segment of the conversation. what do we, okay, now we’ve figured this out. Now what? How do we fix the problem?
Chris Hammelev (20:42)
Mm-hmm.
Brett Allen (21:01)
What options do I have? And then, you know, as a team, right? Like, man, you find out this team member has been doing this and nobody knew about it. That’s like culturally, you know, like the, the, the everything that the energy that comes and how that impacts the team. Like, let’s talk about that. I know there’s a lot that I just said there, but.
Chris Hammelev (21:22)
Mm-hmm.
Marissa Krugov (21:25)
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, the how is it happening? OK, so let’s start there. There’s so many different ways. And to be honest with you, there are so many times where I’ve called Chris and I’m like, my gosh, there’s a whole different way. Like it’s the thing is, if you’re not, you don’t think like a crook, right? And this has made me try to start to think like one just so I can be like, what else could they do? Right. Like, but you’re not going to think that way because you’re not a terrible human. So it’s.
Chris Hammelev (21:25)
Yeah.
Brett Allen (21:40)
Yeah.
Right?
Marissa Krugov (21:51)
I don’t want people to constantly be worried about how could it be happening as long as you’re checking the things, you’re verifying things, you will find something if it’s funky, right? Eventually you’re gonna figure that out. You can’t live in fear, but you also can’t put in the sand and just pretend like, well Suzie’s worked for me for 20 years, she would never. Like I’ve put ortho on her kids and she watches my dogs when I’m out of town, whatever. That is.
Brett Allen (22:04)
Yeah.
Marissa Krugov (22:15)
There’s not this evil, weird person lurking that steals from you. It’s those people that you trust because they don’t think you’re ever gonna think it’s them. I mean, I’ve got wives and partners and office maids and I have brother. I had some plants.
Brett Allen (22:21)
Yeah, they don’t look evil. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓
⁓ man.
Chris Hammelev (22:29)
A brother. We got a brother.
Brett Allen (22:32)
Family members, oh well. So what
are some of those things they should check? Like end of month reconciliation report, like what are we looking at?
Marissa Krugov (22:42)
Good question. I have a checklist too, Brad, if you have a place where you link anything, can send it. Let’s give it so that people can have it and then they’re more than welcome to reach out if they have any questions at all. I’m happy.
Brett Allen (22:47)
Yes.
Yeah,
let’s do that. We’ll put it in the show notes for sure.
Marissa Krugov (22:54)
Essentially what people do, you know, they get those at the end of the day, you get that report and they’re like, I don’t ever even look at that. My office manager or whoever puts it on my desk and I don’t look at that. I look at my production, make sure it’s good sometimes. If we’re lucky, they do that. But really the thing is, is I want them to look at that. That’s okay. It’s good. They should have that. The biggest thing that most people don’t have in that is ⁓ the claims report of submitted claims. And the reason why we want that is because we’ve caught people billing insurance fraudulently.
Brett Allen (23:07)
Yeah.
Marissa Krugov (23:23)
for patients that weren’t even patients. was like, Chris is my buddy. She has Cigna insurance. She’s not even a patient here, but I’m going to bill Cigna for a bridge. Right? I’m going to bill Cigna for a bridge and I’m going to have them pay the patient.
Brett Allen (23:30)
She didn’t even ever come in.
Uhhhh
Marissa Krugov (23:38)
Yeah, ⁓
Chris Hammelev (23:39)
And then we split it, because I’m her buddy. So
I got 1,500 bucks. I’m going to give her 750. I’m going to keep 750, and we’re good. Lot, but it just happened.
Brett Allen (23:47)
That’s a big one. That happens a lot.
Marissa Krugov (23:49)
wouldn’t say a lot, but we’ve caught it happening.
Brett Allen (23:52)
Okay.
Marissa Krugov (23:52)
So part of what I’ve kind of put in place is that claims report, and that’s just a report of all the claims that went out. It also helps you know in that your claims are going out. Because there’s a lot of times we go in offices and we’re like, when’s the last time you sent out claims we’re not getting insurance payment? I’m busy. I haven’t been able to do that. I’m like, ma, that’s the first thing you need to do. We need money, right? We’ve got to keep it flowing in. So that’s a good thing to add to that. Definitely look at it.
Brett Allen (23:55)
claims report.
Marissa Krugov (24:17)
What I really love is for once a week for the docs to grab like 10 patients, I’m sorry, once a month for the docs to grab 10 patients that were payments. So not production patients, like 10 patients. And do some from Cigna, do some from Delta, like, you know, whatever in network, out of network, cash patients. I just want you to pull it and look. And what you do is you need to make sure that your exclamation of benefits, those EOBs are electronic. If you have a paper EOB in your office.
Brett Allen (24:29)
Just dig into 10.
Marissa Krugov (24:47)
this is not the right way to do it. You need those scanned in. They don’t have to be in the patient chart, but just in a public file. Yes, so that you don’t have to keep those paper ones, but so that you from home, if you wanted to, can go in and look, okay, Chris’s write-off should have been $100. It was 200. What the heck happened? Or they didn’t pay for this crown, and I noticed the entire crown amount got written off. So they just kind of need to go through and audit the write-offs and clean that up.
Brett Allen (24:53)
A digital record, yeah.
Chris Hammelev (24:55)
Hmm.
Marissa Krugov (25:13)
and see what’s going on. That’ll tell them a lot because usually that’s where I find people, even if they’re stealing money, they gotta hide it some way. So if you, you’ll start to see like weird deleted things or whatever like that. Most softwares have ⁓ an audit ⁓ list of just any, yeah, just anything that’s been audited out of there. So you can look and see who did what and when they did it. That was one of the things we also, yeah. So that’s another thing to make sure you check.
Brett Allen (25:29)
Thank you.
journal entries and things, yeah.
Chris Hammelev (25:37)
Okay.
Brett Allen (25:42)
And then, okay, so we find out we’ve got this problem. ⁓ What options do we have now? How do we handle it effectively, legally, with the team?
Marissa Krugov (25:52)
Great question. The first thing you want to do is nothing with your team. You don’t want anyone to know. And I don’t want my docs telling people that they’re looking. They need to do these audits with nobody knowing, unless they have a partner. Then, hey, Chris, my partner, you do five, I’ll do five. That’s totally fine. But no one should know. And when they find things, the first thing they want to do is go up to them and be like, why’d you write off Chris’s balance? So I was like, don’t do that. Collect. We’re building a case, because sometimes it’s not what you think it is. Sometimes we find things and it’s not embezzlement.
Brett Allen (26:02)
Okay, yeah, yeah
Chris Hammelev (26:06)
Yeah.
Brett Allen (26:21)
Yeah,
you don’t want to go shoot them and kill them when they’re like, well, didn’t know this is how Sally told me to do it.
Marissa Krugov (26:24)
us.
Exactly. So build a case and once you know it’s something you have to decide in your mind, what’s your end game? Are you going to prosecute this person? Are you truly going to prosecute? Because the truth is, is it takes about anywhere from seven to $35,000 to have someone come in and forensic accounts. And that’s not you prosecuting them. That’s just them. Prove it. Prado of a doubt that crystal for me. Right. So
Chris Hammelev (26:28)
Yes.
Brett Allen (26:45)
all the legal ⁓ everything.
Making the case. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Marissa Krugov (26:55)
a lot of money, so are you going to prosecute? This is why most people don’t, and I’m not saying don’t, but when people are stealing your money, what don’t you have? 35 grand, right? Like to throw at this. ⁓ that would be the thing, is if your end game is I’m prosecuting, then you need to call somebody who is a forensic accountant, and there are dental-specific ones. There are ones who just do this, and that’s what they do. ⁓ I would, usually Chris and I say lean towards a dental-specific person, because they know dentists.
Brett Allen (27:06)
Yeah.
They know,
yeah.
Marissa Krugov (27:24)
They get it. going to be able to dig through those a lot faster. And a lot of them build in time. They’re going to be able to dig through them faster. that’s always kind of like, prosperity is a big one. But you have to figure it out. If your end game is like, listen, I’m not going to do all that. I don’t want to deal with this. I just want this person out of here, then ⁓ it’s getting them out and making sure that no one else is in their little ring with them before you do. A lot of times, it’s different.
Brett Allen (27:48)
Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. So you,
Chris Hammelev (27:51)
2.
Brett Allen (27:51)
you go through the headaches
and the pain and the expense of all that comes time to actually confront the team member. How do you have that conversation? What? mean, obviously you fire them. maybe, well, I don’t know. Maybe there’s cases where you don’t, but what, what’s, what are those next steps? Okay. Now, now, now Sally’s gotten fired. The team’s asking questions like all of walk us through that.
Marissa Krugov (28:04)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Well, I call whoever your insurance provider is that’s going to cover your butt with their legal people if they get a wrongful.
Brett Allen (28:26)
this is something you can file insurance on. Yeah.
Chris Hammelev (28:28)
yeah.
Marissa Krugov (28:28)
Well, I
call your liability insurance, those people, ⁓ most people’s liability has a dishonest employee clause in it, and they don’t even know about it. ⁓ And they actually will help cover you, but they have to do some of that investigation too. really, it’s an and or anybody who would cover your butt if you had a wrongful termination. We need to get to make sure that a lawyer is behind this and unemployment
Chris Hammelev (28:29)
It’s some.
Brett Allen (28:31)
Yeah, errors and emissions, all of it. Yeah, your general liability.
can you get involved? Yeah.
Marissa Krugov (28:57)
employment lawyer, excuse me, so that you can, you you got to cover your butt too, because what you don’t want is say, Hey, Chris, I’m firing because you stole from me. And Chris was like, Oh, this is defamation and all these things. And I’m going to sue you. Right. Right. Even if she is stealing. So it really, you got to make sure that you’re covering your butt before you just say any words. HR, employment attorneys, make sure you have that liability insurance.
Brett Allen (29:02)
Yeah.
⁓
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Marissa Krugov (29:22)
Do your homework to figure out what it is to cover your butt before you do that. And those people are gonna tell you what you do. Have anything signed? Do you just let Chris go if you’re not gonna prosecute and not mention any of the other things? Hey Chris, it’s just not a fit. You’re not doing the things I need you to do?
Brett Allen (29:37)
And you’re just going to, yeah.
Chris Hammelev (29:39)
And that’s what you also
tell your team. You’re not allowed to defame that person or
slander that person. Anyway, you don’t know. There’s no prosecution. There’s no proof that that happened. ⁓
Brett Allen (29:44)
You’re not allowed to say anything.
Marissa Krugov (29:48)
Just know that you have proof.
Brett Allen (29:51)
Unless there’s some kind
of ⁓ lawsuit that’s filed and there’s a verdict, only then you have the ability. Wow. Yeah.
Chris Hammelev (29:55)
Right, and even then it happens.
Only then. Yes. Yeah. Just it’s
no longer a good fit. We had to let her go.
Brett Allen (30:05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s funny how the fire, know, the people we let know, the team knows before you know, oftentimes like, yeah, she wasn’t a good fit or he wasn’t a good fit. Yeah. Well, this has been an awesome conversation. I think we go deeper. We’re already at 30 minutes. ⁓ Yeah, so I guess we’ll just close with, and this is the format of the show.
Chris Hammelev (30:08)
That’s the only thing you can do.
Mm-hmm. Right.
Marissa Krugov (30:18)
Yeah,
they do, they do.
Chris Hammelev (30:24)
Ha ha ha!
Brett Allen (30:34)
Chris, maybe you can go first since Marissa’s been talking the most. I feel bad we haven’t had much from you. Yeah, the golden nugget, right? Like what is that one thing, what’s that one epiphany if we could help our listeners have that, it would have a huge impact in their practice, their lives.
Chris Hammelev (30:35)
I’ll go first and then we’ll wrap it. I know what she’s going to say. ⁓
I
think the golden nugget for our teams are, and it sounds a little bit woo woo, know, doctors, if you have a vision for what you want, you need to be super clear, you know, about it and you need to get your team invested in that, in your vision. And then if you invest in your team, not just financially, but, but emotionally and culturally and getting systems in place and making it a beautiful place to work. If you invest in that, if you invest in your team,
⁓ your practice will grow and it will grow beautifully and you’ll have wonderful support. that said, if you grow your team, you’ll grow your practice. It’s really what it is.
Brett Allen (31:27)
Yeah,
how can I help my team get ahead so that I get ahead? Yeah, that’s communication. It’s listening, leadership.
Chris Hammelev (31:31)
Exactly.
Being a servant leader, absolutely.
Brett Allen (31:38)
Yeah,
yeah, that’s great. I love that. And Marissa, what’s your golden nugget?
Marissa Krugov (31:45)
You know, I think we always have had this joke that we talk about how dentists don’t know business, right? They don’t teach them that in school. But it’s not really that funny when you think about it, right? Like when we think about that joke, it’s not really that great of a joke. So my biggest thing is that we can’t hide behind that anymore. know, when people are coming to us and crying and just upheaval because this has happened to them with embezzlement, like I need the doctors to take their business by the horn. I understand it’s a lot.
Brett Allen (31:51)
Yeah, yeah, it’s not in dental school.
Marissa Krugov (32:14)
to be the only producer and the business person and the HR person, you know, all the things. But this is what you signed up for. And if you want this ultimate responsibility of being a business owner and all the autonomy that comes with it, you have to protect your business. This is when you retire, this is the thing that’s going to, you you’re going to hopefully sell and be able to retire well. Please have another retirement though. But I think that that embezzlement piece is huge. what
Brett Allen (32:19)
the hats.
Marissa Krugov (32:41)
It’s not even the embezzlement, it’s that they don’t know what’s going on with their business. And that’s very scary. And you have to educate yourself. Just as much as your clinical CE, it’s just as important to make sure that you have business CE.
Brett Allen (32:46)
Mm.
Yeah, Coaches are so important. Even life coaches. ⁓ There’s so many areas that you can tap into the expertise of somebody else who’s been where you are. that can, we should all have help. Don’t go the walk of business and life, ⁓ relationships, marriage, all of it. Get advice. It’s so much nicer when you have somebody holding your hand and talking through things.
Chris Hammelev (33:06)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Brett Allen (33:24)
⁓ I mean, in an industry that’s plagued with the highest suicide rate, right? Like get help, reach out, talk to people. ⁓ there’s a lot of challenges in dentistry and business ownership, all of it, but there’s a, I guarantee you the problem you’re facing that you feel like is your nightmare. And it’s like so heavy right now. Somebody’s already been through it. Somebody’s already walked through that. So, well, this has been awesome. Great conversation.
Marissa Krugov (33:48)
yeah.
Brett Allen (33:52)
really value both of you and our friendship and your advice. And, ⁓ this has been, this has been great. So if anybody wants to get in touch with you to kind of explore working with you, should we send them to your website? Is that the best place to go? Or do you want to give out your emails? Do you want to, what, what kind of is website best?
Chris Hammelev (34:10)
Yeah, can give you
websites. Great. We can give our emails, you know, they can call us. I mean, we have no, no problem, you know, with them just picking up the phone, giving us a text, just, tell us who you are. So it’s like, Hey, can we talk? I’m like, spam, you know, you know, but we can give you all that. We’ll get you all that information prep for the show notes and put it all in there. We’re good.
Marissa Krugov (34:23)
Yeah
Brett Allen (34:28)
man, gets only spam calls and texts everyday.
We’ll put it in the show notes. Yeah, please, please send
it over. But for now, if you’re listening, it’s really easy website to remember dental practice management agency dot com. Really easy dental practice management agency dot com. Well, awesome. Thank you again so much. It’s been great conversation.
Marissa Krugov (34:52)
Thank you. Yo, thanks for having us.
Chris Hammelev (34:52)
Yeah, it’s been awesome.
Thanks so much, Brett.
Brett Allen (34:55)
Yeah,
until next time on the Marketing32 show, everybody have a great day. Take care.
