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Deputies: Seminole dentist used employee insurance to purchase prescription drugs for clinic

 
Published July 26, 2012

SEMINOLE — A local dentist was arrested Tuesday after an investigation revealed that she used her employees' dental insurance plans to purchase prescription drugs, deputies said.

Dr. Nadia O'Neal, owner of the Nu Smile Dental clinic at 13611 Park Blvd. in Seminole, told her staff on three separate occasions in 2011 to call in prescriptions for Triazolam, a prescription medication used to sedate anxious dental patients, officials said. Pinellas County sheriff's detectives began an investigation following an anonymous complaint that O'Neal was using her employees' insurance to purchase the drugs.

O'Neal used employee names to purchase 0.25 mg of the Triazolam in July, August and September last year, deputies said.

The employees never received the medication, which was purchased at a reduced cost and later administered to the clinic's patients, deputies said. Patients were made to pay for the drug after it was administered.

O'Neal, of Indian Shores, faces three counts each of insurance fraud and obtaining a controlled substance by fraud along with a charge of knowingly employing a person to perform duties outside the scope. She was booked in the Pinellas County Jail and held on $35,000 bail.