Economics/Class Relations

The Parasites of Malibu

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Anthony Flores and his girlfriend, Anna Moore, met Dr. Mark Sawusch, a twice-divorced ophthalmologist who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, at a vegan-ice-cream shop in Malibu in 2017; a week later, they moved into his bungalow on the Pacific Coast Highway; a year later, he was dead and the couple was still living in his house. When Justine Harman pitched us this story a few months ago, she had just come back from Flores’s sentencing after he’d pleaded guilty to wire fraud, mail fraud, and money laundering, among other charges. There, she heard the judge describe the parasitic relationship between the couple and the doctor whose life they quickly, and entirely, took over. Talking with massage therapists, assistants, and various other people whom Flores and Moore had employed to work on the doctor, Justine pieced together this account of what that shared life looked like and found the lines between caretaking and scamming had become very blurry.

—Katy Schneider, features editor, New York

The Parasites of Malibu Anthony Flores and Anna Moore met Dr. Mark Sawusch getting ice cream. Soon, he was dead and they were living in his house.

Photo: Mike Powell/Getty, U.S. District Court, Central District of California
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