Failed follow-up: The case of the dubious dental work
I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to do a follow-up on this story, but the trail appears to have gone cold. Here’s the story as we know it so far: In 2004, a woman (who had previously run unsuccessfully for a city council position) files a $6,370 claim for dental work against McDonald’s, claiming that she injured her teeth biting into a cherry pie. Less than three months later, she files a $6,006 claim against McDonald’s for dental work resulting from biting into a piece of bone in a cheeseburger patty. The insurance company investigates and determines that both claims were false: The dentist who allegedly performed the dental work (coincidentally: her employer, where she had access to billing documents) says he performed no dental work on her. It so happens that the year before, the woman had pled guilty to first-degree theft in which she had purchased property with her employer’s money as well as embezzled $27,000 in cash. (Coincidentally, in that case, she also worked in a dentist office as an office manager.) My frustration is that I haven’t found any coverage of what the result of the insurance fraud charges were. There are quite a number of cases involving the defendant over the past five years, but I think 07-1-06399-1 is the relevant one here, since the arraignment date matches the news article date to within a few weeks.
The hearing was continued to October 9, 2007, then delayed one more day, at which point the defendant pled guilty, and a statement to that effect was filed the next day. In November, a felony judgment and sentence was handed down (case 07-9-33438-1) consisting of $500 plus restitution. Jail time or home detention doesn’t appear to be recorded into the case history, so I don’t know the full extent of the sentence.
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