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RICHARD DANIELSONOnce a best friend, a woman's embezzlement leaves a family confused and in financial disarray.
OLDSMAR - For a dozen years, Stephen and Mary Grote thought Denise J. Wilson was their best friend.
The Grotes vacationed in Savannah and North Carolina with Wilson and her husband, Mark. The couples sailed together. The Grotes trusted Wilson with a key to their home. They told their son's school to call Denise Wilson in an emergency if they couldn't be reached. They even put her name and telephone number on the microchip implanted in their pet collie Molly.
Now Wilson, 48, of Land O'Lakes, is serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted of stealing more than $123,000 from Stephen Grote's dentistry practice.
And the Grotes are trying to piece their lives back together.
That's because the couples not only were friends, but had business relationships as well. The Wilsons owned a lab company, Oral Reconstructive Techniques, that did business with Grote. He also hired her to work in his office.
There, officials say, she didn't have the authority to sign checks, but she forged his signature on nearly 80 checks written to her lab company. From early 2000 to late 2002, she also funneled money away from bills that needed to be paid and dipped into Grote's personal and business finances. She covered her crimes by intercepting and doctoring bank statements, fielding calls from creditors and telling credit card companies and the IRS that they could contact Grote at her home address in Land O'Lakes.
"She must have lay awake at night thinking of things she could do," Mrs. Grote said Friday.
Once, when a detective asked Wilson about the thefts, she said she couldn't explain why she stole, but once she started she couldn't stop.
Investigators say Denise and Mark Wilson used the stolen money to take a trip to Europe, remodel their home, and buy a Chevrolet Avalanche, BMW motorcycles and a BMW car.
Grote, 54, didn't discover the damage until he tried to withdraw cash from his checking account at an ATM. The account should have held several thousand dollars. Instead, the balance was closer to $1.90, he said.
After that, the Grotes called the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. They've spent nine months repaying bills that they thought already had been paid. They sold their home and moved to a smaller place. Their son had to switch schools, and because of the move they had to give up Molly.
Now a day doesn't go by that they don't have to contend with the problems arising from Wilson's theft.
"I'm under audit by the IRS," Grote said. "I'm under audit by the state. . . . My credit rating is gone. Funds were diverted every which way. A lot of bills were just not paid. She would intercept calls from creditors because she worked at the front desk."
Patients have stayed with him and his dental practice is sound, but Grote has reduced his staff. Now it's just him and his wife.
"It's just Steve and myself working because I have absolutely no faith and no trust in anyone else," Mrs. Grote said. "If you can't trust your best friend, who can you trust?"
And still it's impossible to get away from Wilson. Her handwriting is all over patients' charts.
"I can't go a day without seeing some evidence of her being here," Mrs. Grote said.
Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Brandt Downey sentenced Wilson, of 6625 Fletch Road, Land O'Lakes, on May 23. She had pleaded no contest to grand theft, forgery and scheming to defraud, and her sentencing was postponed once to give her time to make restitution. She did not.
Prosecutors say the 20-year sentence is appropriate considering how Wilson hurt the Grotes.
"Financially, she intruded on virtually every aspect of his life, both business and personal . . . and showed no remorse whatsoever," chief assistant state attorney Bruce Bartlett said. He thinks Downey considered the impact on the victims and "realized that this was a situation that was quite different than most and that he needed to send a message to this particular individual."
Mark Wilson was investigated too, but only Mrs. Wilson was charged.
"He benefited from the monies that were taken," Bartlett said. "He would have had to have known that they were living exceedingly beyond their needs, but from an evidentiary standpoint, we were not quite at the comfort level that we needed to be at to charge him."
Mark Wilson, whose number is not listed, could not be reached for comment Friday.
As a cautionary tale, Wilson's theft shows that small businesses should have dual systems of control, said sheriff's Detective John Spoor, who investigated the case. One person should write the checks, another should keep the books. And the owner should make spot checks or do mini-audits once a quarter, he said.
On Friday, a week after Wilson was sentenced, Stephen Grote remained grateful to Spoor, prosecutors and the judge. But he said it took him a while to sort through his feeings about Denise Wilson.
"When she was first sentenced, I was very elated and very excited," he said. "The next day, because of the long-term friendship that we had, I went through some rough times. But I came to realize that it was the crime that put her there, and it was a judge that gave her the sentence, not me."
- Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report. Richard Danielson can be reached at 727 445-4194 or Danielson@sptimes.com