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It was a chance encounter that would prove costly.

When Dr. Mark Sawusch, a wealthy-but-troubled Malibu eye surgeon first met yoga gurus Anthony Flores and Anna Moore at his favorite vegan ice cream parlor in Venice Beach in 2017, the trio quickly forged a spiritual bond while watching the sun set over the waves.

Within weeks, Flores and Moore became Sawsuch’s inseparable companions, moving into his multi-million dollar Malibu beach house and becoming his friends, assistants and confidantes as he struggled with mental illness and alcoholism.

Flores said they did it because of an almost instantaneous attachment he had with the doctor, a man he sensed needed his help.

“When Mark and I met for the first time, I felt a deep soul connection between him and myself, and he felt the same. It’s as if two brothers met for the first time after being separated for lifetimes,” Flores said in a deposition he gave as part of a civil suit brought by the doctor’s family after his untimely death at age 57 in 2018.

But Flores admitted he and Moore only agreed to become Sawusch’s constant helpers and aides without pay after reaching a secret financial agreement — a contract as he described it. The understanding was that the yoga gurus would be added as beneficiaries in Sawusch’s will and could cash if he died.

“I essentially would spend my life being of great service to Mark doing whatever he needed to do in exchange for the promise of a third of the estate and the beach house,” Flores said during the days-long deposition.

Sawusch, a successful ophthalmologist with a prowess for investing, had amassed a fortune worth around $60 million, according to court documents.

Then, after about six months of ministering to Sawusch’s needs, Flores and Moore made another request. In a letter adorned with art drawn by Moore, the pair asked the doctor to transfer $1 million into their bank account, “so we may continue serving you and enjoying our lives together.”

“To avoid interruption in service, this transfer must be completed by Friday, March 30th, 2018,” read the letter, which was entered into the court record during Flores’ deposition. Estranged from his family and increasingly isolated, Sawusch agreed.

Adam Streisand, an attorney representing Sawusch’s family, said the idea that the doctor had signed on to an agreement to give Flores and Moore a third of his estate was absurd.

“There was no such contract. It was a fiction of their criminal imaginations,” Streisand said.

Flores’ lawyer, Ambrosio Rodriguez, said he couldn’t comment as he had yet to receive copies of the deposition for his review.

After years of legal fighting with Sawusch’s family in civil court, Flores, 46, and Moore, 39, have now been charged criminally with fraud, identity theft and money laundering in federal court in Los Angeles for allegedly taking advantage of the unstable doctor to siphon millions of dollars from his accounts.

Prosecutors say Flores and Moore kept Sawusch addled by feeding him a steady stream of marijuana, LSD and ketamine, an animal tranquilizer often used as a recreational drug that some providers have been experimenting with as a treatment for severe depression.

Both Flores and Moore have pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges. They have argued that the drugs Sawusch consumed had been given under the guidance of his doctors and that they were not involved in administering them.

How Sawusch came together with Flores and Moore was more happenstance than anything else. It would ultimately have devastating consequences.

The trio first encountered each other on June 23, 2017 while waiting in line at Kippy’s Ice Cream Shop, a now-defunct organic, raw, non-dairy ice cream parlor in Venice Beach. Flores said Sawusch asked him his opinion about a brand of alkaline water sold by the store.

“Well, I would spend my money on getting the best water you can, because our bodies are made of water, and then it helps our cells to reproduce and make healthy bodies,” Flores recounted in his 2019 deposition testimony.

The off-hand exchange led to a “beautiful conversation about life, business, finances, dreams, goals, electric cars and my various business enterprises,” Flores said. Eventually the three walked down to the beach to watch the sunset.

In the months prior to the meeting, Sawusch’s life had been spiraling out of control, according to court documents. He divorced after only a year of marriage in 2015 and then suffered a serious accident the following year that left his hands badly burned, making it impossible for him to continue practicing medicine. He began heavily abusing alcohol which exacerbated the bipolar disorder he had struggled with his whole life, court documents said.

In search of some direction, Flores and Moore’s spiritual vibe drew him in.

The pair had been together since 2012, after meeting at a vegan potluck dinner in Los Angeles. A pixie-like blond, Moore was trying to make it as an actress in Hollywood. Flores, a guru-like figure with long, flowing hair and a beard, who went mostly by Anton David, had moved from Fresno, California to study hairdressing at the famed Vidal Sassoon Academy in Beverly Hills.

The pair shared a love of yoga and a self-proclaimed hippie spirit and soon fell in love, according to a 2014 profile in the Clovis Roundup, a community newspaper in suburban Fresno. They later moved back to Fresno, where Flores operated a window-cleaning business, and together opened a yoga studio called the Fulton Yoga Collective.

Flores and Moore would frequently travel back and forth between Fresno and LA for her to pursue her acting career and as he got jobs as an on-set hair stylist for film and video shoots.

It was during one of these trips that the pair had their fateful meeting with Sawusch. Taken by his new friends, Sawusch soon offered to give the couple his Tesla TSLA, +3.10% and then invited them back to his home, Flores testified.

Within a week, Flores and Moore had moved in with Sawusch to become his personal assistants and in-house friends.

The newfound connection came during a particularly turbulent period of Sawusch’s life. In the following month, the doctor was arrested three times in just a week — for throwing rocks at cars driving along the Pacific Coast Highway, walking out on a large bar tab and getting into a fist fight with a cyclist on the Santa Monica pier.

At one point, Flores said Sawusch grew enraged while heavily drinking at a dinner party at his home and threw the couple out and called the sheriff. They would later reconcile, as Sawusch’s life unwound further.

During this period, Sawusch was hospitalized several times for psychiatric treatment, court records showed. A key turning point came after his arrest in the rock-throwing incident, in which he was held for 45 days in the psychiatric ward of Los Angeles rough-tumble Twin Towers jail.

At the time, his family — who lived in Florida — refused to post his $40,000 bail in the hopes that he would be safer in the hospital. Sawusch then turned to his new friends, Flores and Moore, and granted them power of attorney so they could access his accounts and pay the bail, according to court filings.

Prosecutors say that decision would ultimately allow Flores and Moore to move nearly $3 million of Sawusch’s money into accounts of their own. The couple has argued that they did this with Sawusch’s permission as part of an effort to protect his money from his estranged mother who he believed was seeking to get conservatorship over him and his fortune.

The family later discovered the missing money after Sawusch had died and filed a civil suit to recoup the cash. Flores and Moore eventually reached a settlement with Sawusch’s family in the civil case, paying back over $2 million, although they were ordered to hand over $1 million more. Flores eventually filed for bankruptcy, saying he didn’t have the money, and the family brought the case to the U.S. attorney’s office which resulted in the filing of the criminal charges.

Flores argued in the civil case deposition that the $1 million cash infusion he and Moore received from Sawusch in March 2018, was justified because they had deeply neglected their own businesses in order to take care of him.

“We were trying to get caught back up for the time lost being away from our business while we were lovingly and dutifully serving our friend Mark,” Flores said. “I worked every single day for him without a regular paycheck, and I loved doing it. And Mark had a good time working with me as well.”

The tragic association came to an end in May 2018, when Sawusch once again threw the pair out of his home during a period of manic instability, prosecutors said. Within days, Sawusch would be dead as the result of a toxic mix of ketamine with alcohol. The coroner ruled his death an accident.

Flores and Moore broke up in 2021 after which she moved to Mexico. Moore was arrested in early February as she stepped off a plane in Houston. She has pleaded not guilty. Flores was arrested on Jan. 31 in Fresno and has pleaded not guilty.