Dr. Mark Sawusch’s turbulent life took a fateful turn on a summer night in 2017, when he was arrested for throwing rocks and construction cones at cars on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Calif. It was the brilliant-but-troubled eye doctor’s third encounter with police that July week, following arrests for skipping out on a large bar tab at celebrity hotspot Moonshadows Malibu, and for getting into a fist fight on the Santa Monica pier.
Sawusch had struggled for years with bipolar disorder, but that summer he had spiraled dangerously out of control. What followed would prove more pivotal, resulting in the seemingly irreparable fracturing of a long-strained relationship with his mother, and leading him to grant access to his vast fortune to two yoga gurus, Anthony David Flores and Anna Moore, he had recently befriended. Sawusch was charged with malicious mischief and placed under court-ordered psychiatric evaluation on $40,000 bail. The money should have been no problem — he was worth an estimated $60 million — but his family, who lived in Florida, refused to post the bail. They hoped time in a mental-health facility would help keep him out of danger, court documents show. Sawusch would spend the next 45 day …