A yoga instructor was sentenced Monday to 7 1/2 years in federal prison for stealing more than $2.7 million from a Malibu ophthalmologist before the doctor’s death, then attempting to siphon millions more from the estate. Anna Rene Moore, 41, was also ordered by U.
S. District Judge Percy Anderson to pay $1 million in restitution, according to the U.S.
Attorney’s Office. Moore pleaded guilty in August 2023 to seven federal criminal counts, including conspiracy to commit mail fraud, conspiracy to engage in money laundering and engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity. Her ex-boyfriend, Anthony David Flores, 48, was sentenced in June to nearly 16 years in federal prison for defrauding the mentally ill physician.
Flores pleaded guilty last year in Los Angeles federal court to nine felonies, including conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to engage in money laundering. The couple were living in Fresno, where they operated a window cleaning business and yoga studio when they first met Dr. Mark Sawusch by chance at a Los Angeles-area ice cream parlor in June 2017.
Sawusch was a physician and successful investor who was worth more than $60 million, but who suffered from mental illness and had lost the ability to care for himself. He had recently been released from the hospital after several involuntary psychiatric stays, court papers show. Within days of meeting Sawusch, Flores and Moore moved into his beachfront .