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Despite an eleventh hour attempt to secure at least a few more weeks of freedom, a Calgary dentist was handed a three-year prison sentence for a decade-long insurance billing fraud.
Last year, Alena Smadych pleaded guilty to fraud over $5,000 and admitted to bilking five insurance companies out of nearly $700,000.
Before Justice Gord Wong delivered his sentencing decision on Thursday, defence lawyer Alain Hepner presented the court with two letters from his client’s doctors, asking the court to adjourn the matter as his client is suffering from back pain that is “getting worse.”
“I am asking the court to allow me to investigate these matters on her behalf,” said Hepner. “If you send her into custody I don’t know what she’s going to do.”
Prosecutor Greg Whiteside opposed the defence’s application, pointing out that the letters were dated Nov. 3, 2025, and that the doctors had noted Smadych declined injection-based treatment and surgical options, opting to treat her pain with yoga and stretching instead.
“A number of months have passed,” said Whiteside. “She declined injections at the time as pain wasn’t significant and was improving naturally.”
Wong agreed and denied the application for an adjournment.
“If she’s got these issues … I’m quite satisfied that the prison system will be able to handle the situation,” said Wong.
Whiteside had proposed a two- to three-year sentence, while Hepner asked Wong to consider a two-year conditional sentence order, meaning Smadych would be allowed to serve her sentence at home, under conditions.
‘Strange billing practices’
Smadych, 55, used to own All About Family Dental on Elbow Drive, which she sold last year for $3.5 million.
The clinic was once the highest billing clinic in Canada for root canals.
In an agreed statement of facts filed as part of her guilty plea, Smadych admitted to filing more than $684,000 in falsified billings between 2013 and 2023.
The investigation began in 2021 after Sun Life identified “strange billing practices,” according to the agreed statement of facts, and uncovered practices like direct billing for repeat root canals and fillings.
‘Fake work’
The judge pointed out that an aggravating factor in her crimes was the fact that Smadych continued to defraud insurance companies while she was under investigation.
“Even though [Smadych] would have known her fraudulent scheme was on the verge of being discovered, she continued her fraud … for another two and a half years,” said Wong.
Court also heard that clinic billings spiked at the end of each calendar year. For example, on Dec. 24, 2020, the clinic had $19,000 in claims for 17 patients, with Smadych as the sole billing dentist.
Investigators also uncovered business ledgers that showed the real work done on patients and what the Crown described as the “fake work” used to bill insurance companies.
Further fraud uncovered
At Smadych’s June guilty plea, she admitted to submitting more than $125,000 in phoney billing claims to the Sun Life and Blue Cross insurance companies.
But in the months that followed, three more insurance companies came forward, and Smadych admitted to another $558,000 in fraudulent billings.
Before his client was sentenced Thursday, Hepner told the court that in recent months, Smadych has paid another $500,000 to Sun Life in connection with another fraud allegation.
Smadych blamed others
A pre-sentence report completed by forensic psychologist Dr. Patrick Baillie found that Smadych struggled to accept full responsibility for her actions.
Baillie also noted that Smadych blamed the fraud on a receptionist, and blamed the new clinic owner for her legal troubles.
“I didn’t think this was so serious … I know lots of people doing this,” she told Baillie at one point.
Smadych is no longer working as a dentist, according to the College of Dental Surgeons of Alberta, but Wong noted she is interested in practising in Australia, where her son is studying dentistry.
In 2007, Smadych was convicted of fraud over $5,000 for her involvement in a false return scheme at Home Depot.
