Malachi Love-Robinson, the teenage scammer imprisoned for impersonating a doctor and defrauding an elderly patient, is now a free man.
Once known as “Dr. Love,” the 22-year-old Florida (where else?) man was released from custody on Monday after serving 20 months of a 3.5-year sentence, NBC News writes.
Love-Robinson made headlines—and, as these things go, inspired memes—for impersonating a doctor multiple times as a teenager. He was arrested in 2016 for illegally practicing medicine out of an office in West Palm Beach, where he treated an undercover officer. Love-Robinson was 18 at the time.
He also defrauded one of his patients, 86-year-old Anita Morrison, who came to him complaining of stomach pains, according to an earlier NBC News report. He sold her natural vitamins and treated her on at least five separate occasions, at his office and in her home, before she noticed her personal checks had gone missing.
Morrison later said Love-Robinson stole her identity, racking up $35,000 in expenses in her name.
But that wasn’t all. Authorities said Love-Robinson masqueraded as a doctor in 2015, though in that instance, he “only wandered a hospital in doctor garb,” according to NBC News. Around the time of his arrest, the young con man, who has no medical training, said he never meant to imply he was a doctor of medicine. He told reporters he was a licensed minister and “took examinations to get certified in holistic health.”
That being said, this is the same young dude who managed, through successfully soliciting investors, to open his own practice. Talk about hustle:
His now-defunct website featured stock images of people and a simple promise: “We work together to serve your entire family for all of your medical needs in all stages of life.”
Love-Robinson’s online biography referred to him as a “well rounded professional” who utilizes “physiological, psychological, and mechanical methods” to treat patients. Those methods range from air to water to phototherapy to “nature’s remedies.”
The biography made no mention of a formal education.
I guess I’m not supposed to root for this man—defrauding the elderly and vulnerable is no joke, after all. But if we wanted to consider the sense of scale a bit, it’s worth remembering that the world’s greatest living con man is none other than the president of the United States, who is, for now, also a free man. With that in mind, a free Dr. Love in 2019 feels just about right.