Malachi Love-Robinson, the Florida teen arrested earlier this year for allegedly impersonating a doctor, was back in the Palm Beach County Jail for a few hours Monday.
Love-Robinson, 19, was arrested during a scheduled court appearance and is facing charges of larceny between $20,000 and $100,000 and fraud for passing a bad check. He posted an $8,000 bond and was released from the Palm Beach County Jail Monday afternoon seven hours after his arrest.
Love-Robinson was taken into custody earlier in the day immediately after Circuit Judge Krista Marx granted defense attorney Leonard Feuer’s request to withdraw from the case.
Court records regarding the new charges weren’t immediately available Monday, but stem from incidents that occurred before investigators raided Love-Robinson’s West Palm Beach holistic medicine practice in February and charged him with practicing medicine without a license.
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A month later, he was arrested again after prosecutors claim he fraudulently used elderly patient Anita Morrison’s checking account to make nearly $35,000 in car and credit card payments. Before Monday, he faced 10 charges in all, including forgery and grand theft from a person 65 years or older.
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The new charges had nothing to do with Feuer’s request to step down from the case, the attorney said after Monday’s hearing.
Feuer, who had agreed to represent Love-Robinson free of charge and earlier this month revealed plans to explore an insanity defense, said he needed to get off the case due to an ethical issue that he couldn’t disclose.
If the issue became public, Feuer said in a motion to withdraw from the case, it might give prosecutors an unfair advantage against Love-Robinson in the cases that are now set to go to trial in November.
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Feuer in court records said he called the Florida Bar’s Ethics Hotline to tell them about the issue and received confirmation that he had no choice but to ask to step off the case.
“I really wish him the best and hope that eventually he can put this all behind him,” Feuer said of his now former client Monday.
Because Love-Robinson had been previously deemed unable to afford a private attorney, Marx on Monday appointed the public defender’s office to represent him.
The new attorney will mark the third that Love-Robinson has had since his first arrest in February. He was originally represented by defense attorney Andrew Stine, who withdrew from the case in June after he said the two had “irreconcilable differences” and Love-Robinson stopped returning his calls.
Love-Robinson turned down a plea deal earlier this year that would have sent him to prison for three years.
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