March 16, 2026, Sheridan, Arkansas – A former bookkeeper for Arkansas Dental Centers PLLC helped herself to $964,000 of the company’s money, according to an indictment filed in the U.S. District Court in Little Rock on March 3.

A federal grand jury indicted Samantha Louise Stocks, 35, of Sheridan on 21 counts of bank fraud.

The five-page indictment said that Stocks was paid about $50,000 annually at the family-owned network of independently operated dental clinics located throughout central and southeast Arkansas.

She worked out of ADC’s Benton office. The company’s website says it offers cosmetic, restorative, general and implant dentistry plus oral surgery. (The indictment didn’t name the dental company, but Whispers was able to confirm that she worked for ADC until March 11, 2022.)

Part of Stocks’ duties included handling the finances and compiling financial reports. Stocks also paid bills for ADC. ADC issued her a company credit/debit card in 2020, and Stocks was an authorized signer for several of the company’s accounts at Arvest Bank of Fayetteville, which allowed her to make cash withdrawals for business purposes.

But between 2020 and March 2022, she made about 195 unauthorized cash withdrawals totaling about $680,000 from the company’s accounts, the indictment said.

She also made about 20 unauthorized direct deposits to herself from the company’s bank account that totaled about $106,000, the filing said.

“The deposits were unauthorized either because she increased the deposit amount above what she was entitled to receive for her salary or she issued an additional direct deposit payment,” the indictment said.

The payments were then deposited into one of her personal bank accounts.

But she also went on a spending spree with the company’s credit card on about 300 occasions for a total of about $179,000, according to the indictment. The purchases included her utility and telephone bills, clothing and “personal tanning services and products,” the indictment said. She also used the company credit card to pay for trips.

She used her Arvest account access “to initiate these unauthorized transactions” from about seven accounts “and masked these unauthorized transactions by transferring random amounts of money that appeared to match legitimate payroll amounts,” the indictment said.

“All the unauthorized transactions resulted in money being transferred to and deposited in at least three different business accounts, all of which were not associated” with ADC and had Stocks as an authorized signer, the indictment said.

When asked about one of the unauthorized transfers, Stocks “originally lied and stated the transfer was to an old” ADC account, the indictment said.

She is charged with the intent to defraud, having “knowingly devised and participated in a scheme to obtain moneys and funds” from Arvest. It listed 21 transactions, most of which were cash withdrawals.

Source: https://www.arkansasbusiness.com/article/former-bookkeeper-indicted-for-stealing-964k-from-dental-firm/

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