‘DR. LOVE’ PLEADS OUT, HEADED TO PRISON
He pleads guilty to grand theft and practicing medicine without a license.
WEST PALM BEACH — The saga of the West Palm Beach teenager who made headlines after he was caught impersonating a doctor two years ago came to an abrupt end Thursday after he accepted a plea deal that will send him to prison for the next three years.
Malachi Love-Robinson, now 20, abruptly pleaded guilty to grand theft, practicing medicine without a license and other charges before
Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath as part of what appears to be a quickly arranged plea agreement just two weeks before his case was scheduled for trial.
Colbath sentenced Love-Robinson to 42 months in prison with credit for more than a year he’s already spent behind bars. The three-minute hearing closed the criminal part of the bizarre tale that also included allegations that Love-Robinson stole money from his elderly clients, used a Boynton Beach treatment center’s business account to buy himself a Nissan and pay credit card bills and landed in a Virginia jail after he nearly scammed a car dealership up there into letting him buy another car using fraudulent information.
Love-Robinson first gained public attention in February 2016, when police arrested him at the end of an undercover investigation sparked by a tip to the Crime Stoppers hotline that he was illegally practicing medicine in an office he named New Birth New Life Medical Center at the West Palm Medical Plaza, near JFK Medical Center North. His arrest came after he gave medical advice and a
physical exam to an undercover officer.
He was also accused of stealing nearly $43,000 from the business account of a Boynton Beach addiction treatment center where he worked as a program director before he launched his clinic. The treatment center’s owner linked him to the thefts through emails on his company-issued computer and told investigators he wrote her two checks in an attempt to reimburse her. One check bounced, and she found out the payment had been stopped on the other.
In a separate case, authorities said he defrauded an elderly woman of nearly $35,000 after examining her for stomach pain.
Two months after his arrest, Assistant State Attorney Michael Rachel offered Love-Robinson a plea deal for three years in prison to be followed by five years’ probation, telling a judge that the then-18-year-old faced a minimum of 18 years in prison if convicted of all his charges at the time.
Love-Robinson rejected that deal. In an interview with The Palm Beach Post shortly after his arrest, Love-Robinson said he never passed himself off as a medical doctor and only referred to himself as “Doctor” because he had a Ph.D.
“You mean to tell me that opening up a practice at the age of 18 years old and studying holistic and alternative medicine is fraud? That is not so,” Love-Robinson said back then, later adding: “Every person I met knew that my practice was for holistic medicine.”
Love-Robinson’s Ph.D. was from Universal Life Church Seminary, an online institution, according to documents released by the Florida Department of Health. According to the seminary’s website, anyone can buy a doctorate in divinity for $29.95, the same price as bachelor’s or a master’s of divinity degree.
Hundreds of pages of documents prosecutors released after his arrest showed several people who spoke to investigators about Love-Robinson’s behavior. A teller at a bank he frequented remarked it as odd that he always came in wearing a stethoscope and a full name badge — something the teller had never seen from other doctors who were customers.
In a matter of months after his arrest, Love-Robinson went through two attorneys before he landed behind bars again in September 2016 — this time in Stafford, Va.
According to an arrest report in that case, Love-Robinson provided fraudulent information while trying to purchase a car. He reportedly claimed that an elderly woman accompanying him was a relative who was there to co-sign for him. However, the woman told authorities she knew nothing about being a co-signer.
Last year, a Virginia judge sentenced him to a year in prison. He was returned to the Palm Beach County Jail several months ago after he finished his sentence, which also included a nine-year suspended sentence.
His Palm Beach County cases appeared headed for a trial this month, but Assistant Public Defender Ilana Marcus, in a notice to Colbath Wednesday, said she’d spoken to Rachel and the two had completed the terms of a plea deal that Love-Robinson wanted to accept in open court Thursday.
In exchange for Love-Robinson’s guilty pleas, Rachel on Thursday agreed to drop several related charges, including forgery and practicing naturopathy without a license.
As part of the agreement in the Palm Beach County case, Love-Robinson will have two years from his release in prison to pay several hundreds of dollars in court costs.