Actress sentenced for swindling mentally ill doctor

LOS ANGELES (CN) — An actress was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in federal prison on Monday for, together with her then-boyfriend, defrauding a wealthy, mentally ill ophthalmologist out of $2.7 million by pretending to be his friends, moving into his Malibu beachfront home, providing him with drugs and stealing his money.

U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson rejected the government and the defense’s bid for a more lenient sentence, as contemplated in the plea agreement, saying that it would send the wrong message to “morally corrupt financial predators” who think that they can plead their way out of prison.

“There comes a time when you have to be held accountable,” Anderson said. “When you have to stop blaming your boyfriend.”

Anna Moore, 41, pleaded guilty in August 2023 to multiple charges including mail fraud and money laundering. Her plea agreement and both her and the government’s sentencing memoranda were filed under seal in Los Angeles federal court.

According to the judge’s discussion of the sentencing guidelines, which he rejected as insufficient punishment, prosecutors had sought a significant reduction for her cooperation.

Moore apologized to Mark Sawusch, who died six years ago, alone and in distress as she and her boyfriend watched from a hotel room over surveillance cameras they had installed in his home. She also apologized to Sawusch’s family whom the couple fought in court as they tried to steal another $20 million from the dead man’s estate.

“I’m absolutely ashamed of myself,” Moore told the judge. “Thinking back on that part of my life makes my skin crawl.”

Moore was arrested early last year in Houston as she arrived on a flight from Mexico where she was living at the time. She has been in custody since.

Her former boyfriend, Anthony Flores, a hairstylist from Fresno, California, was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to his part in the scheme.

The couple was living in Fresno, where they operated a window cleaning business and a yoga studio, when they first met Sawusch by chance at an ice cream shop on a visit to LA in June 2017 and befriended him. Sawusch was a wealthy investor who suffered from bipolar disorder, and he had recently been released from the hospital after several involuntary psychiatric hospitalizations.

The couple briefly stayed with Sawusch the following month, after he had been arrested and hospitalized for engaging in manic and erratic behavior, and Flores sent the physician’s mother a bill for purportedly providing care for him.

When Sawusch was again in jail in September 2017, his mother reached out to Flores to locate her son, believing he was a new friend and caregiver. Flores then persuaded the jailed physician to give him power of attorney over his finances to bail him out.

Flores subsequently opened bank accounts in Sawusch’s name with himself as an authorized user and started to try to access Sawusch’s $60-million investment account. The couple also used Sawusch’s funds to hire staff to work on their own ventures, claiming that the physician was an investor.

Meanwhile, Flores and Moore were living full-time in the Malibu home and took complete control over Sawusch’s life. They spent $600,000 of his money in six month, while providing him with ketamine to treat his depression, but also with marijuana and psilocybin mushrooms.

In May 2018, the couple provided Sawusch with LSD on multiple occasions, which sent him into a manic state. Worried that they might get evicted from the Malibu house, they initiated two $1 million transactions from Sawusch’s accounts.

The two then left the beach house and rented a room at a luxury hotel in nearby Santa Monica from which they watched Sawusch’s deteriorating condition on a computer. Sawusch was 57 years old when he died.

“You simply stood by and watched a man die,” the judge said, as he determined that the federal sentencing guidelines didn’t reflect Moore’s deliberate indifference and cruelty.

After Sawusch’s death, Flores and Moore moved back into the Malibu house and falsely claimed that Sawusch had promised them $20 million. They fought Sawusch’s family in civil court proceedings when the estate sought to recover the stolen money. Some of the funds are still not accounted for, according to the judge.

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