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Shares of Medical Properties Trust plummeted after the real estate investment trust said it is ramping up efforts to recover uncollected rent and outstanding loans from its largest tenant.
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SmileDirectClub Inc. said late Friday it was winding down operations, effective immediately, seeming to cast its millions of customers adrift — except when it comes to their bills.
SmileDirectClub
SDCCQ,
said in a statement that its aligner treatment is not available to new customers. For existing customers, the company said, “we apologize for the inconvenience, but customer care support is no longer available” through its telehealth program, including periodic check-ins.
The company did not immediately return a request for comment.
People on the company’s SmilePay plan will need to make all payments until paid in full, the company said. SmileDirect also ended its lifetime guarantee.
For those seeking refunds, the company said that “there will be more information to come once the bankruptcy process determines next steps and additional measures customers can take.”
The company in late September filed for bankruptcy protection, saying it was seeking to find investors for a “comprehensive recapitalization.” In January, it laid off workers and ended a few international operations in a bid to become profitable.
The company has long attracted criticism for its teledentistry model, which it has said aims to disrupt the orthodontics industry. There were allegations a few years ago that it had harmed customers by breaking teeth and causing nerve damage, which the company denied.
Setbacks also include a scathing report from a short seller; regulatory action in California, Alabama and Georgia; and opposition to the company’s business practices from medical organizations including the American Dental Association and the American Association of Orthodontists.
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Their shared hippie spirit brought them together over a vegan potluck dinner, but the prospect of years in federal prison for allegedly stealing millions from a mentally-ill Malibu doctor, has driven a wedge between them.
A federal fraud prosecution against a pair of yoga gurus accused of siphoning cash from Dr. Mark Sawusch’s $60 million fortune took a significant turn at the end of August when one pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against the other, her ex-boyfriend, according to court documents and people familiar with the matter.
Anna Moore’s guilty plea before a federal judge in Los Angeles on Aug. 28 represents a serious legal challenge to her longtime partner, Anthony Flores, who faces decades behind bars if convicted in the case. Flores pleaded not guilty after his arrest in January.
Details of Moore’s agreement with federal prosecutors remain under seal, but people familiar with the matter say her ultimate sentence in the case will largely be determined after her level of cooperation is evaluated. A sentencing hearing for Moore was set for Nov. 6.
“We are aware of Ms. Moore’s decision to plead guilty. Obviously this changes Mr. Flores’ legal situation in the case, and we are currently reviewing our options,” Flores’ attorney Ambrosio Rodriguez said.
Messages left with Moore’s attorney weren’t immediately returned. A spokesman for the U.S attorney’s office for the central district of California declined to comment.
The tragic end to Sawusch’s life began on June 23, 2017, when the brilliant, but troubled, ophthalmologist met Flores and Moore in a chance encounter at a vegan ice cream parlor in Venice Beach, Calif.
Flores, who went by Anton David, was a guru-esque figure with long, flowing hair and a beard. He worked as a hair stylist on film shoots. Moore, a pixie-like blond, was an actress and singer. The couple had met years earlier at a vegan potluck dinner and had fallen in love over what they described as a shared hippie spirit. Together, they ran a yoga center in Fresno, Calif., while going back-and-forth to L.A.
Their spiritual vibe cast a spell on Sawusch, who had just days earlier been released from a mental health facility, where he had been committed after suffering a breakdown, court filings said. Within a week, Flores and Moore had moved into Sawusch’s multi-million dollar beachfront home in Malibu, Calif., federal prosecutors said.
Over the next year, the pair gained increasingly firm control over the doctor’s life and finances, with Flores establishing power of attorney over Sawusch’s vast fortune while plying him with a steady diet of marijuana and LSD as he also underwent experimental ketamine treatments for his bipolar disorder that left him addled, investigators said.
Sawusch later died in May 2018 of a lethal mixture of ketamine and alcohol, according to a coroner’s report. The Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office ruled the death an accident.
In her guilty plea, Moore said she was not immediately aware of the scope of Flores’ alleged efforts to steal the doctor’s money, but admitted that following Sawusch’s death she participated in a later effort in probate court to keep the stolen money. Prosecutors have alleged that this was a separate fraud.
When Sawusch’s family sought to take control of his estate, they discovered that almost $3 million had been transferred from his accounts to ones controlled by Flores in the days before and after the doctor’s death, federal prosecutors said.
Sawusch’s family launched a civil lawsuit against the yogi couple and convinced a California state judge to issue a restraining order freezing Flores’ and Moores’ accounts, and order they return the money. Instead, federal prosecutors say, the two engaged in a second fraud by making false claims in probate court that Sawusch had verbally told them he would give them a third of his fortune plus his Malibu beach house.
The couple claimed that the doctor had given them the money in return for them taking care of him and as part of an effort to protect his fortune from his family, from whom he was estranged. The family said those claims were untrue and that the pair had kept Sawusch isolated from his friends and family.
Eventually, the couple returned around $2 million of the doctor’s money, but around $1 million remained unaccounted for, according to federal prosecutors.
Flores and Moore broke up during the pandemic after nearly a decade together. Moore moved to Mexico while Flores remained in Fresno, where he was arrested in late January. Moore was arrested at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston upon her return to the U.S. around the same time. Both have been held without bail since.
Read the series:
Part 4: Money, mania and LSD: A Malibu doctor’s tragic final weeks under yoga gurus’ sway
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The pandemic opened the floodgates to telehealth. Now, many patients and doctors are curbing their enthusiasm for virtual care.
Four out of five primary-care doctors who had video visits with patients during the pandemic would prefer to provide just a small portion of care or no care at all via telemedicine in the future, according to a survey designed and analyzed by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and published last month in Health Affairs, a peer-reviewed journal. And 60% of the doctors surveyed…
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