California couple charged with attempt to steal $20M from mentally ill man they befriended
A couple with connections to Fresno have been charged with stealing almost $3 million from a man nearing the end of his life, and then attempting to take $20 million more after he died, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Authorities arrested Anthony David Flores, 46, of Fresno last week and Anna Rene Moore, 39, was arrested Tuesday after a plane flight into Houston from Monterrey, Mexico, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Central District of California.
Flores, who also goes by Anton David, pleaded not guilty last week in California and Moore appeared in court in Texas but did not enter a plea, according to prosecutors.
Both are expected to appear in a Los Angeles court in the coming weeks.
They were indicted by a grand jury Dec. 15. It wasn’t immediately clear whether they had attorneys to speak for them.
Flores, a hairstylist, and Moore, who owned the defunct Fulton Yoga Collective in Fresno, in 2017 met an ophthalmologist and investor who had a mental illness that gradually left him unable to care for himself, prosecutors said.
Flores also owned a window cleaning business and Moore was an actress, the statement says.
“Within days of meeting the victim, Flores and Moore moved into the victim’s beachfront Malibu home — rent free — and slowly took control of his life by pretending to be his new ‘best friends’ and caregivers,” the statement said.
Flores told the victim’s elderly mother, who lived in Florida, they were caring for him and “had the victim’s best interests in mind,” according to the indictment, which didn’t identify the victim by name.
Flores later got the victim to sign over power of attorney and opened bank accounts in the victim’s name, according to prosecutors.
For months, Flores and Moore diverted the man’s money into their own bank accounts, “isolated the victim from his family and longtime friends and provided the victim with drugs, including marijuana and LSD,” the U.S. attorney’s office statement said.
In the final days of his life, the two allegedly gave the physician LSD that caused his mental condition to deteriorate, prosecutors said.
Flores also allegedly changed the phone number and security settings on the physician’s $60 million online brokerage account to access it and wired $2 million to his own bank account.
By this time, the man had evicted the pair from his home, but they had installed cameras in the beach house and watched his deteriorating condition from a luxury hotel, prosecutors said.
After the victim died in May 2018 at age 57, Flores and Moore moved back into his home and began taking out large amounts of money from his account, prosecutors said.
The indictment didn’t indicate how he died.
Flores and Moore are each charged with felonies, including conspiracy, identity theft, mail fraud and money laundering.
They could face decades in prison if convicted on all counts.
