With her supervisors' encouragement, the manager of the Dalton office of a children's dental clinic that catered to Medicaid recipients created an overheated incentive program to recruit new patients—without knowing it likely violated federal regulations—that for more than a year made the clinic “something between a game show and a sweatshop,” according to her lawyer.

Then the U.S. Senate Finance Committee began investigating Kool Smiles, the Atlanta-based pediatric dental chain that owned the Dalton clinic, said Ringgold attorney and former state Rep. McCracken Poston. A joint investigation that same year by “Frontline” and the Center for Public Integrity entitled “Dollars and Dentists” alleged the dental chain pushed unnecessary treatments for Medicaid patients.

Now a liability: the meals, massages, electronics and thousands of dollars in cash prizes that manager Jennifer McGill offered to her staff to recruit new patients, persuade them to undergo additional dental procedures and bolster Medicaid billings, according to Poston, McGill's attorney. McGill, he said, became the dental chain's “fall guy”—until June 14 when a Whitfield County jury, after a weeklong trial, acquitted her of stealing $112,000 in company funds that the lawyer said McGill had turned into company incentives.