West Palm teen pleads guilty in Va. fraud case

He is also accused of posing as a doctor

A teenager accused of illegally posing as a doctor in South Florida has pleaded guilty to unrelated felony fraud charges in northern Virginia.

Malachi Love-Robinson, now 19, of West Palm Beach, pleaded guilty in Stafford County Circuit Court to making false statements to obtain credit and passing a forged document.

Love-Robinson was arrested Sept. 9 for buying a $35,000 Jaguar from a car dealership about 50 miles south of Washington, D.C., using a 73-year-old woman’s personal information, authorities said.

Love-Robinson was free on bail on fraud- and theftrelated charges in Florida last year when he showed up at a Virginia dealership with his godmother, records show.

Virginia officials say Love-Robinson used his godmother’s name on a car loan application without permission, used her Social Security number, and used her credit card without her knowledge to buy iPads and a cellphone for $1,200.

He told deputies he was in town to buy cars for himself and his godmother, according to the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office. A bystander captured LoveRobinson’s arrest at the dealership on cellphone video.

Love-Robinson will learn his sentencing on May 22, court records show. The charges are punishable by up to 25 years in prison, his Stafford-based attorney, George Marzloff, has said.

Marzloff could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

In Palm Beach County, Love-Robinson is charged with 14 felonies punishable by up to 90 years in state prison. He’s accused of portraying himself as a doctor in a West Palm Beach clinic and on house calls, wearing a white lab coat and stethoscope and holding fraudulent diplomas.

Prosecutors say he also stole personal checks from a sick woman, among other offenses dating to spring 2015.

Love-Robinson has pleaded not guilty to charges that include practicing naturopathy without a license, fraudulent use of personal identification information and grand theft.

Leonard Feuer, his former lawyer, had informed Circuit Judge Krista Marx about the possibility of an insanity defense; LoveRobinson had been undergoing mental health treatments since his initial arrest in February 2016.

In media interviews last year, Love-Robinson denied any wrongdoing, calling himself a doctor of homeopathic medicine and a health care practitioner specializing in natural treatments.

A status hearing on the Palm Beach County cases is set for March 24.

One of the allegations is that Love-Robinson stole personal checks from an 86-year-old West Palm Beach woman he was seeing about her severe intestinal pain. Prosecutors say Love-Robinson drained the woman’s checking account to make $34,504 in payments — for his credit cards and Nissan car loans.

Love-Robinson is also accused of writing a $1,500 bad check as a down payment to West Palm Nissan on May 23, 2015, and making $42,970 in fraudulent charges from the business account of a Boynton Beach addiction treatment center where he worked last year, court records show.

The payments included $28,067 toward a 2015 Nissan Rogue, an arrest report states.

Love-Robinson was free on bail on fraud- and theft-related charges in Florida last year when he showed up at a Virginia dealership with his godmother, records show.