Dolos Research · 2026
The State of Healthcare Practice Embezzlement — 2026
What 30+ documented cases reveal about how much trusted employees steal from medical, dental, veterinary, optometry, and audiology practices — and how long they get away with it.
Compiled from public news reports and U.S. Department of Justice filings.
$12.5M
documented losses
$403,800
average loss per practice
5.2 yrs
average time undetected
77%
of cases reached six figures
Dolos compiled and analyzed 33 documented cases of internal embezzlement at U.S. healthcare practices. The median loss was $200,000 and the average was $403,800. The largest single-practice theft reached $1.8 million, and the majority of schemes ran five or more years before detection.
Losses by specialty
Dental practices appeared most often in the dataset (11 of 33 cases), while medical practices had the largest average losses.
The common thread: one person, total control
Office managers were responsible for roughly 39% of cases. Bookkeepers and business managers were tied to the largest losses, and front-desk or billing staff accounted for about 19%.
In nearly every case, one trusted employee controlled the entire cash cycle — collecting payments, recording them, and reconciling the accounts — with no independent check. That single failure of separation of duties is what turns routine access into a six-figure loss.
Why it goes on for years
61% of documented schemes ran five or more years, and several continued for over a decade. Detection was usually accidental — an unexplained shortfall, a bank discrepancy, or a question from a patient about a balance already paid. By the time anyone looked closely, the losses had compounded well past the point of easy recovery.
Notable cases
| Practice type | Role | Loss |
|---|---|---|
| Medical (Amherst, NY) | Bookkeeper | $1,800,000 |
| Dental (Michigan) | Office manager | $1,500,000 |
| Medical (Seattle) | Bookkeeper | $1,000,000 |
| Audiology (Tonawanda, NY) | Office manager | $890,000 |
| Medical (Ohio) | Business manager | $834,000 |
| Medical (Ohio) | Administrator | $700,000 |
| Dental (Myrtle Beach, SC) | Payment/deposit staff | $612,000 |
| Veterinary (Pennsylvania) | Vet tech / office | $560,000 |
| Dental (Raleigh, NC) | Office manager | $548,000 |
What practices can do
- Separate duties so no one person collects, posts, and reconciles payments.
- Reconcile bank statements independently every month.
- Review adjustments, voids, and refunds weekly.
- Monitor financial activity continuously instead of relying on periodic spot checks.
See what your books aren't showing you
Dolos monitors financial activity continuously and flags these anomalies as they happen. HIPAA-compliant, pull-only, no patient data stored.
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This report draws on 33 publicly documented embezzlement cases at U.S. healthcare practices, sourced from news reports and Department of Justice filings published between 2024 and 2026. Republished reports of the same incident were merged into a single case, and large-scale external or insurance fraud schemes were excluded so the dataset reflects internal theft by practice employees. The median is used as the representative typical loss because a small number of very large cases skew the average. This report is informational only and is not legal or financial advice.