An actress and a hairdresser befriended an affluent Malibu doctor, who suffered from mental illnesses, moved into his home, and pretended to be his caregivers as they stole millions of dollars from him, according to a federal indictment unsealed this week.
Anthony David Flores, 46, of Fresno, and his co-defendant, 39-year-old Anna R. Moore, who lives in Monterrey, Mexico, face multiple charges. Flores is a hairdresser and ran a window-cleaning business. Moore owned a yoga studio owner and played an extra in “The Life Before Her Eyes,” a film starring Uma Thurman, according to IMDb.
According to court documents, Flores and Moore met the victim in June 2017 and befriend him under false pretenses. The victim was a physician and successful investor in Southern California and was worth more than $60 million. But he suffered from mental illness and could not take care of himself.
Shortly after meeting the victim, who is not named in the indictment, Flores and Moore moved into his beachfront Malibu home living there rent-free, and slowly took control of his life by pretending to be his new “best friends” and caregivers.
A few months later, in September 2017, the victim had a mental breakdown and was arrested and detained in the Los Angeles County Jail. Court documents allege that Flores fraudulently induced the victim to sign powers of attorney granting Flores control over the victim’s finances. Flores told the victim he would immediately rescind those rights once the doctor was freed from jail but failed to do so when the victim was out of custody.
Flores used the power of attorney rights to open up bank accounts in the victim’s name and gave himself and Moore access to the victim’s wealth. The pair continued to send money to themselves from the victim’s accounts from September 2017 through May 2018.
In the final days of the victim’s life, Flores and Moore drugged the doctor as they gave him LSD, which caused his mental state to deteriorate severely, according to the DOJ.
While the victim was under the influence of LSD and suffered from mental illnesses, court documents say Flores allegedly changed the two-step authentication feature on the victim’s $60-million online brokerage account after changing the phone number listed on the account from the victim’s phone number to his own phone number.
Just four days before the victim died and was still being drugged by the pair, Flores allegedly initiated two $1 million wires from the victim’s brokerage account to accounts that Flores controlled, including Flores’ personal bank account.
While in mental distress, the victim evicted the two from his home. However, Flores and Moore stayed in a luxury hotel they paid for with the victim’s money. They allegedly watched his deteriorating mental condition on the video cameras installed throughout the Malibu beach house.
Even after the victim died in May 2018, Flores and Moore continued to steal from him. Court documents say the two moved back into the victim’s home after he died and withdrew large sums of money from his accounts.
The victim had two surviving family members, a mother, and a sister, who both lived in Florida. But Flores and Moore kept information about the late victim’s finances from them, which prompted them to file a lawsuit – which brought the fraud to light.
If convicted on all counts, Flores and Moore would face statutory maximum sentences of 20 years in prison for each fraud count, 20 years on the conspiracy to commit money laundering and laundering of monetary instruments counts, 10 years on transactional money laundering count, and a mandatory two-year prison sentence for the aggravated identity theft count.