18-year-old Malachi Love-Robinson was arrested after opening a medical office in West Palm Beach and presenting himself as a doctor, said Florida Health Department spokesman Brad Dalton.
He had previously been cited by authorities for practicing medicine without a license in October 2015.
via NY Daily News:
State health officials and local police received a Crime Stoppers tip earlier this month about Love-Robinson and the New Birth New Life Medical Center & Urgent Care, Dalton said. The New Birth New Life website lists Love-Robinson as its president, CEO and founder next to a picture of him in a white lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck.
“He has his website and other websites he’s put together saying he’s a doctor, but he doesn’t have a license with the Department of Health,” Dalton told the Daily News.
The trickster’s schtick was reminiscent of famed master of deception Frank Abagnale, Jr., the inspiration behind the Steven Speilberg movie “Catch Me If You Can.”
New Birth New Life did not return requests for comment Tuesday. Love-Robinson’s bio claims he is “a well-rounded professional that treats, and cares for patients, using a system of practice that bases treatment of physiological functions and abnormal conditions on natural laws governing the human body.”
The bio continues, “Dr. Love-Robinson utilizes physiological, psychological, and mechanical methods, such as air, water, light, heat, earth, phototherapy, food and herb therapy, psychotherapy, electrotherapy, physiotherapy, mechanotherapy, naturopathic corrections and manipulation, and natural methods or modalities, together with natural medicines, natural processed foods, and herbs and nature’s remedies.”
The state agency said in a cease-and-desist letter that Authorities said Love-Robinson falsely posed as a doctor on his personal Facebook page and two New Birth New Life pages, as well as on a listing on the women’s health website Lifescript.
The Lifescript entry says he is a “general practitioner,” and another one on Healthgrades claims he is a 25-year-old named “Dr. Malachi A. Love-Robinson, PHD.”
The unqualified quack’s grandfather claimed his grandson never claimed to be a medical doctor, only a holistic doctor.
“He’s not out doing drugs, he’s not out trying to rob nobody,” Robinson told the Sun Sentinel. “He’s trying to do something constructive, and if he did do something and the paperwork wasn’t right — he can get ahead of himself sometimes and he may have been trying too hard, but he had good intentions.”
Health officials had investigated and cited Love-Robinson in October, according to arrest records cited by the Palm Beach Post. Police said he gave a Palm Beach Narcotics Task Force agent posing as a patient a physical exam Tuesday.
Malachi now faces charges of fraudulently practicing medicine, a third-degree felony. Well, you can’t say the boy didn’t have a strong sense of ambition!
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