Not Guilty Verdict Returned In Dalton Dental Office Theft Case

  • Thursday, June 15, 2017

After a week-long trial, a Whitfield County jury on Monday acquitted Jennifer McGill, former manager and district manager of the Dalton office of Benevis, d/b/a Kool Smiles, of charges from her 2012 arrest after the company claimed her lone involvement in the alleged theft of over $112,000 of cash intended to be company bank deposits.  

Ms. McGill was represented by McCracken Poston, a criminal defense lawyer from Ringgold.

The allegations were that Ms. McGill, who was office manager and later district manager over the Dalton Kool Smiles office during the period the company claims the money was not deposited and stolen, had taken the cash for her own use.

The defense disputed that Ms. McGill had stolen the cash, but admitted that she had not deposited the over $112,000 during the two-year period. The defense said it was applied to an "intensive incentives program" for the office and its employees.

The defense claimed Ms. McGill was instructed by the then chief operating officer of Kool Smiles, as well as her then district manager who performed quarterly audits to utilize the cash for what attorney Poston described to the jury as "an 'intensive incentive program' that made the office operate at a frenetic pace to drive up the sales of Medicaid-billed services."  

Attorney Poston said of the almost constant contests, incentives, and recognitions in this period of time at the Dalton office that "the place was operating like something between a game show and a sweatshop."

He said, "Creature comforts were purchased and brought into the office for the benefit of the employees, including iPods, a popcorn machine, exercise equipment, visits from a masseuse, and a seemingly never-ending series of contests and prizes for top performing employees, or for the office as a whole, as its Medicaid sales numbers went up." He said daily prized included cash awards for employees who met and surpassed sales performance goals, and evidence was provided of the practice in the form of a receipt from a winning employee.

"This was all going gangbusters, until the United States Senate Finance Committee began to make inquiries of the practices of these dental claims, including specifically Kool Smiles, of using incentives to drive sales of Medicaid-billed services," Mr. Poston said, "And then an expose' by the PBS series "Frontline" was being produced."

Attorney Poston added, "Evidence came out in the trial that the company, worried that employees would use their cell phones to become whistleblowers, went so far as to create daily incentives for locking up employee cell phones during work hours."

He said that evidence was given at the trial that a box of the receipts for all of the items purchased with the cash that would have proven his client's innocence was removed from the building without warning, and then two large men in dark suits, who claimed to be from a security company hired by former Kool Smiles COO Bill Brigham, showed up on Feb. 1, 2012.

One of the men, Robert Strickland from Strickland Security and Safety Systems, Inc. of Atlanta, was wearing an "NFL ring," which he spun around in Ms. McGill's face as Mr. Strickland interrogated her with his colleague, Raymond Glaze, the attorney said.

Attorney Poston said, "Ms. McGill, who was five months pregnant at the time, was told by the men that unless she cooperated, she 'would have her baby in prison an never see it again.' "  

He said, "Ms. McGill testified at trial that one of the men wrote out a statement for her to sign, and she signed it to get away from them.  It was proven at trial that many of the things handwritten on the so-called confession were patently not true, but Ms. McGill was told to write it and she complied.  An example of this is the written 'explanation' for the crime, that her husband was laid off from work and that she had taken a pay cut to take the job. Iit was proven to trial that neither of these things were true, and the defense put up expert witness Dr. Gregory DeClue, a forensic psychologist, who had tested Ms. McGill and found her to be among an 'extremely suggestible' personality type.

"Dr. DeClue also testified about modern interrogation methods and training that ensure against false confessions, noting the lack of any recording of the contact between the men and Ms. McGill.

"Strickland has claimed in multiple social media sites that he spent three years playing in the National Football League. And so much of his work as a bodyguard involved intimidation.  When I confronted him in cross-examination with the team rosters from the Philadelphia Eagles, Minnesota Vikings, and New York Jets from 1983-1985, Strickland had to admit on the witness stand that he was not on them and had never played a single game in the NFL."

Mr. Poston said that it also came out in the trial from the then human resource director of Kool Smiles, that she had not been the one who called Mr. Strickland's company to interrogate her employee, but that they were called in by then COO Bill Brigham.

Mr. Poston said, "All the jury had to do was connect the dots on the timeline.  As long as things were going well, the fact that 45 of 52 weekly deposits in a year did not make it to the bank was no problem.  It was all getting poured bac into the company and was ensuring high Medicaid billings.  When the United States Senate inquiry turned toward Kool Smiles, Ms. McGill went from being a company asset to its greatest liability.  Sending Mr. Strickland and Mr. Glaze to coerce a false confession out of her could give the company an explanation for the absence of over $112,000, an excuse that would fill a large hole on the books that could have been questioned in a potential Medicaid fraud investigation."

Ms. McGill was found not guilty by the Whitfield County jury after four hours of deliberations.

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