Message Boards
Today's Active Topics Today's Active Cases Browse Forum Categories My Recent Activity My Messages Private Groups My Marked Threads My Subscriptions
Today's Active Images Today's Active Polls Most Active Topics Global Townie Map Advanced Message Board Search Message Board Terms of Use

You Should Know: David Harris by Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD, Editorial Director, Dentaltown Magazine

View Comments (1) More by this author (317)

You Should Know: David Harris
by Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD, Editorial Director, Dentaltown Magazine

David Harris is known in dental circles as the “Dental Fraud Guru.” In the business of uncovering fraud for more than two decades, Harris is dentistry’s go-to guy for detecting and investigating embezzlement in dental practices.

Tell me about Prosperident and providing fraud detection services to dentists.
Harris: I’ve been investigating embezzlement against dentists for more than 20 years. Initially, I was doing it on my own, as part of a larger bundle of services I offered to dentists. Over time, it began to become a progressively bigger part of my practice, until eventually it was my entire practice. In 2004, I brought my now business partner, Bill Hiltz, on board, and we began to develop the tools and specialized software that we use to detect and investigate fraud.

Several investigators on our team specialize in a certain type of software or practice specialty; for example we have one investigator who only investigates embezzlement in orthodontic practices; another deals exclusively with Dentrix and Easy Dental, and so on.

What is your background prior to starting this business? How did you get started in dentistry?
Harris: I’d like to tell you that I had some master plan. However, the truth is that I got into dental embezzlement investigation completely by accident.

Before starting Prosperident in 1989, I was an Army officer, taught university and did investigations for a multinational bank. I had left my job at the bank and was contemplating my future when a friend, who happened to be a dentist, called me. He thought his receptionist was stealing and couldn’t think of anyone else to approach. I went to his office one night and quickly found a duplicate ledger that the receptionist maintained. The dentist thanked me and I went away without giving the matter further thought.

A couple of weeks later, I had an appointment with my own dentist for a checkup. I was about to enter his office when, through the glass door, I saw the woman whom I’d caught stealing earlier. She was now working for my dentist. I quickly found a payphone, and, on a pretext, got through to the dentist. I told him about the time bomb that was at his front desk. In a panicked voice, he asked me what he should do. I started offering some advice, and about halfway through my second sentence, he told me I was hired. I’ve been catching dental embezzlers ever since.

What is the most important bit of advice you have for an office that thinks fraud or theft is happening?
Harris: The biggest mistake that I see dentists make is that they frequently telegraph their suspicions to their staff. Conveying suspicions can happen in many ways. The dentist might start to conduct his or her own (normally clumsy) investigation, he or she might be spending unusual amounts of time in their private office with the door closed, he or she might ask for extra reports from the practice management software, make a comment to an employee or just act unusually.

The danger with alerting a suspected employee is twofold; if the dentist’s suspicions are groundless, he or she will irreparably destroy the working relationship (and probably relationships with other employees also). Alternatively, if an employee is stealing and realizes that he or she is about to be uncovered, the strong urge is to destroy evidence. Sometimes this takes the form of wiping the computer’s hard drive and destroying all back-up media; we have also seen this desire take more sinister forms like arson. At the risk of making a very self-serving statement, dental fraud investigation is a job for experts.

You have a company “in the cloud.” How does that work?
Harris: Our work needs to be conducted in secret in order to maintain stealth. For this reason, we use cloud-based technology to access and investigate a dentist’s computer data. This means it is a very rare situation if we put an investigator onsite. This also helps to control costs to the dentist, and speeds our response time. It also extends our geographic reach – we are currently conducting fraud investigations in the U.S., Canada and Australia.

How likely is a dentist to be a victim of fraud? What statistics are available?
Harris: The true probability of embezzlement will never be known, because the statistical process requires two active steps that don’t always happen. First, the fraud must be detected, and I am certain many embezzlement cases in dental offices never come to light. If detection does take place, the dentist must decide to report the fraud, and again this is far from universal.

The few credible published statistics on the probability of a dentist being a fraud victim in his or her career offer a range of between 52 and 59 percent.

I’ll add a few more of our internally generated statistics to this:
  • The average theft from our 2009 case files was $157,000.
  • The minimum seniority for major embezzlers (fraud <$100,000) was eight years in the practice.
  • The average length of time the fraud went on without being discovered was three years
  • The percentage of fraud that was uncovered by some accidental event was 81 percent. Only 19 percent of all fraud was uncovered by some planned operation of the dentist control system.
  • The total cost of fraud to U.S. dentists annually is about $1.1 billion.

Embezzlement against dentists really is an epidemic. It is both pervasive and damaging.

How does someone contact you if they have concerns?
Harris: Our toll-free number is 888-398-2327, which is staffed from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern Time. We also have a priority e-mail address – fraud@prosperident.com – that we check seven days a week. There is also some good information available on our Web site, www.prosperident.com.
Dentaltown Magazine
September 2025
Dentaltown Magazine September 2025 Read Current Issue Read Archived Issues
Sponsors
Townie Perks
Townie® Poll
Who or what do you turn to for most financial advice regarding your practice?
  
Site Menu
Message Boards Magazine Continuing Education Podcasts Blogs Classifieds Dental News Events Townie® Poll Ebooks Townie Choice Awards
Company Info
Contact Us Advertise With Us Howard Farran DDS, MBA Policies and Agreements
Site Help
Sally Gross, Member Services Specialist
Phone: +1-480-445-9710
Email: sally@farranmedia.com
©2025 Dentaltown, a division of Farran Media • All Rights Reserved
9633 S. 48th Street Suite 200 • Phoenix, AZ 85044 • Phone:+1-480-598-0001 • Fax:+1-480-598-3450