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By Dr. Neill Slater, Guest Writer
I never thought I would become a victim of financial fraud. I guess no one does. I’ve been a partner in an ER physician group for 15 years. I’m well-versed in personal finance and naturally skeptical, and I think of myself as an astute judge of character. I own several businesses, and I have extensively invested in residential and commercial real estate. I even have a non-medical MBA. Yet, I was conned like anyone else.
What I’m about to tell you is embarrassing. I accept that failure is a part of business and life. However, trying and failing is emotionally different from being duped, so this is one story I’ve kept to myself for years. I’m only telling it now because of recent developments and so others may learn from my errors. This is the story of how I got scammed out of $75,000 by a smooth-talking dentist.
Financial Fraud
If you search online for “doctors and fraud,” you will get a list of articles about physicians committing crimes. Even when you Google “doctors being victims of fraud in the USA,” you get results discussing Medicare fraud and other scams perpetrated by physicians. One of the only articles I could find concerning doctors as victims was from MedicalEconomics.com in 2016, titled 6 Reasons Doctors Get Scammed, by someone named Dr. Jim Dahle. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. You would be mistaken if this lack of media attention makes you think doctors and other medical professionals are not susceptible to fraud.
Approximately 2.4 million cases of financial fraud are committed in the US each year, causing billions of dollars in losses. While fraud cases have remained relatively constant, the economic losses have steadily increased. Financial fraud can be broken down into seven categories: products and services, charity, phantom debt, prize and grant, relationship and trust, employment, and investment. Criminals target different populations for each type of fraud, with physicians most often falling victim to investment fraud.
More information here:
Beware of Pump-and-Dump Schemes
The Encounter
I met “Trent” at an outdoor bar with my friend and business partner “Barry” in late 2017. It was one of those beautiful winter days in Austin, where you can enjoy being outside. Barry informed me that Trent’s dental business was a few steps ahead of our urgent care company, and he thought we could learn something about growth from the meeting. While we sat under a heat lamp and enjoyed a beer, Trent told us his story.
He graduated from dental school in San Antonio and then moved to Dallas, where he started a dental office. He got married, had kids, and focused on his business. In time, he learned about marketing, billing, and how to run a profitable dental practice. Like doctors, he told me that most dentists are bad at business because they are never taught in school. Once he figured things out, he rebranded to a slick, new dental format and brought on investors, which allowed him to expand rapidly and hire other dentists to work for him. After a few years, he had 11 profitable locations. He admitted that he let the success and money go to his head, and he was caught cheating on his wife. The resulting divorce forced him to sell his ownership of the business. He waited two years for his non-compete to end, and now he was back, doing things right this time. He had already raised money and had started a few dental offices in Austin, and he was looking to expand.
Trent was handsome, charismatic, and relatable. He came across as humbled by his divorce yet confident in his knowledge of the dentistry business. We discussed the similarities between the urgent care clinics that Barry and I owned and what Trent was doing. Trent did not ask me for any money, and I left feeling he was someone with whom I could be friends. He clearly knew marketing and branding. I had seen his offices and advertisements around town, and they were fresh, slick, and…
Read More: How This Financially Literate Doctor Got Scammed Out of $75,000