Owner of Beaver dental practice charged with filing false insurance claims

Sept. 17--BEAVER -- The owner of a dental practice has been charged with filing false insurance claims.

The state attorney general's office says Jacqueline A. Ingram, 41, bought Beaver Dental Associates LLC at 244 College Ave. in Beaver in 2008. According to a police report, Ingram fraudulently submitted $54,861 worth of insurance claims and was paid about $25,000 between the time she bought the practice and October 2013.

Prosecutors reported the following details from the case:

Ingram, who is not a dentist, paid about three-quarters of the asking price for the practice from the previous owner, a dentist. She and the dentist worked out a rent-payment plan for the remainder of the cost. That dentist continued to work in the practice.

Ingram opened a second practice in Grove City about two years after buying Beaver Dental Associates. Around that time, she began lagging on bills at the Beaver office and stopped paying the mortgage on the building.

The former owner of the practice stopped working for Ingram in April 2013, but she continued to submit claims with his name listed as the dentist.

Employees reported that Ingram changed individual records to reflect the former owner as a listed dentist when a different dentist actually saw the patient.

Ingram handled billing to all insurance companies.

Besides the fraudulent claims, officials from Maverick Dental Labs in Export, Pa., reportedly billed Beaver Dental Associates for more than $5,000 between November 2013 and January 2014, but never received payment.

Ingram, of Indiana Township, has been charged by the attorney general's office with submitting false claims and theft. She is awaiting a Sept. 29 preliminary hearing.

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