Original subtitles

There are people who have been rock stars in the food health

business over the course of decades.

And Robert Young was one of those people.

I have discovered that the human organism

is alkaline by design.

I was thinking this guy walked on water.

Any expert or research scientist always regards him

as the Nikola Tesla of our time.

This is like the teachings of Jesus

coming through this man.

[Jane] Robert Young said he could cure her cancer

if she did exactly what he said.

[Dessa] Everyone had to drink this green drink.

Have you had your green drink? Are you drinking enough green drink?

-Drink your green drink. -[tense music plays]

Robert said, "If you eat certain things and don't eat

other things, life will be good."

When I went into my client's residence,

everything was green.

Had it been blood, it would have looked like

a murder scene.

Why was everybody getting sicker, not better?

[Matt] You would think, "Wow, the guy that cures cancers

is gonna get brought out as a hero."

Robert Young was energized by watching people get better.

But where does salesmanship end and fraud begin?

My mother-in-law was saved by Dr. Robert Young.

She had fell completely septic.

She was admitted into ICU.

She was going to die.

I asked Dr. Robert Young,

"If this was your mom, what would you do?"

He told us what to do.

Her daughter, my wife, whispered in her ear,

"Mom, I'm gonna save your life."

She basically gave her what is identical to healthy blood

and forced stem cell production.

Fifteen minutes later, she started murmuring.

And within six hours,

my mother-in-law was awake, aware, conscious.

She was dead on every level, man.

And she's still alive now because of Dr. Robert Young.

[phone rings]

[automated voice] You have a prepaid call from...

[Robert] Robert Young.

[automated voice] ...an incarcerated individual

at the California Institution for Men.

[ominous chord strike]

[dramatic cello plays]

[cello rests]

[ethereal music plays]

[Dessa] Energies correspond with our organs,

so when our organs are functioning,

everything else is functioning.

-[ethereal music continues] -[soft ringing]

And the intention is set.

My name is Dessa Ireland and I'm an energy healer.

When I was in my 30s, I was diagnosed with

precancerous cells and they wanted to start radiation

right away. Well, I absolutely knew

that that was not my path.

I went on a road trip with my sister,

and I walk into a beauty supply,

and there was some oils

that you could get for curing cancer.

So I bought the oils,

and I started applying them as instructed.

My dystrophy was on my labia, so I was douching.

And so in the ninth day of my douching,

I was in the shower standing, and literally

a black blob like the size of a softball...

fell out. I heard it splash.

I saw it.

But when I looked down in the shower,

there was nothing.

And I heard, "You are cured."

I went back to the doctor and I was cancer-free.

That...began my journey on alternative healing.

It has been my path ever since.

[ding]

[Dessa] In 2011, I moved down to California

and saw an ad on Craigslist.

And it was housekeeping

position for an alternative healing center.

And I went, "Fantastic, that is the perfect fit for me."

So I responded to the ad.

When I arrived and saw the estate,

I asked the manager what went on here.

And she told me it was the pH Miracle System.

The pH Miracle System is a dietary and lifestyle program

developed by Dr. Robert O. Young.

You know alkaline water?

You've all seen it in the supermarket?

Well, that's popular in part because of Robert Young.

He promotes what he says is

a science-based approach to diet.

And in the early 2000s,

Young was a rising star in the world of wellness.

My name is Matthew Hazen.

My best friend and my mentor is Dr. Robert Young.

The way that me and Dr. Robert Young

became friends is, I was working on a product

that was supposed to remove the toxins

and the environmental pollution

that was affecting everybody's health.

And just like his pH Miracle Diet,

this was minerals and water.

This is truly Robert Young's masterpiece formula.

Dr. Robert Young is from Utah.

Robert, from a very young age, has been taught to be a healthy

skeptic and to critically think things through, not just go

with the status quo,

and to let your food be your medicine

and your medicine be your food.

He's never drank alcohol, never smoked cigarettes.

He eats raw natural foods, not processed foods,

and that is directly related to his Mormon upbringing.

-[phone ringing] -Here we go.

[automated voice] You have a prepaid call from...

[Robert] Robert Young.

Young believes that the human body is naturally alkaline

and that a diet that is rich in alkaline foods

like green vegetables and limits acidic foods

like meat, refined sugar, and processed foods,

will naturally transform someone's health.

Pretty good.

[soft piano plays]

[trampoline squeaks]

How many other 90-year-old people are doing this?

I don't know, but they don't know what they're missing.

I know.

My name is Antonia Adele Hoffman,

and this is my daughter.

My name is Lynne Hoffman, and we have been avid followers

of Dr. Young since the late 1990s.

I tried Weight Watchers, Atkins diet,

the banana diet, fasting, the grapefruit diet,

whatever diet was out there, I tried it.

And once I was introduced to Robert Young's program,

oh, my God, I experienced a miracle.

I went full-force into drinking the greens.

I could eat as much as I wanted to without counting calories.

Now, I just turned 90 years old,

and I still do what I always did when I was younger.

I owe everything to Dr. Young and his program.

[Lynne] So Dr. Young had a ranch in Valley Center,

a magnificent place.

It was almost like God opened the door and brought him

this ranch to come here and teach the truth

about how to maintain vibrant health and vitality.

[Beth] Look, I have a very open mind for wellness, right?

I actually had been diagnosed with a thyroid problem

a few years ago, and I was like, "Before taking traditional

medicine, let me try a few things out."

And I went to a nutritionist and kind of

rebuilt my thyroid, and I'm 100% normal,

and have been for the last few years.

I did it through diet and supplements, but I wouldn't

hesitate to get traditional treatment if I needed it.

I didn't really know very much

about Robert Young, but I had some

friends that actually did the pH Miracle Diet,

and they lost weight.

So I thought, well, great, this ought to be really nice.

One thing I love about the horses is that they just

bring me a lot of peace.

They just calm me down.

My name is Jane Bodily, and my sister-in-law,

Tracie Cole was a patient of Robert Young.

Tracie was a single mom and went to school to be

an environmental engineer.

Tracie was in her last semester, and she was diagnosed with

leiomyosarcoma, which is cancer of the soft tissue.

She was a stage four case,

and this is an incurable cancer.

They said, "We could operate, take out the tumors,

but inevitably this will take you."

When that news hit,

Tracie's mother had heard about Dr. Young from someone,

and we were at the ranch two days later.

To me, it sounded legit.

Dr. Young was very personable,

and he was pricking her finger and doing microscopy

underneath his microscope, and he's showing us her blood

on the screen, and then he kind of points out that

she had candida and mold and fungus and cancer.

Robert Young said he could cure her cancer

if she did exactly what he said.

This was going to save our sister.

[Dessa] When I came to work at the ranch, you drive through

the gates and there's tennis courts

and there's a beautiful studio.

And there was a three-car, four-car garage that they had

converted to a kitchen and dining room.

We were getting the avocados off the avocado trees.

And then...

you start seeing the underbelly of the beast.

The brochure for the pH Miracle Ranch

was showing Robert Young's

personal residence.

These people were looking at the brochure of his home,

his pool, his water walkway to his massive,

beautiful estate doors.

Not the mobile trailer that was also the colonics room.

Mind you, I think he was charging $1,900 a night.

So I started feeling like,

"Hmm, that feels a little strange."

One of the "rooms" was their family RV.

And before somebody checked in, I would always go in

and do a pre-check.

And I kept having this smell in there,

and I recognized the smell.

And when I opened up the oven,

there were two inches of rat droppings

in the bottom of this oven that these people

were sleeping in.

And so I cleaned it out.

I did my job because that's what you do.

And I told him...

this place should not have anyone in it,

but he would never address the issues.

Just clean it up the best you can.

I went into this position knowing that I would be

cleaning five guest residence.

And then it comes to pass that now I'm doing Robert Young's

personal residence.

The amount of dishes that I would clean on a daily basis

made me feel like I was cleaning up after...

seven people.

There was no concept of picking up after yourself.

None.

I went into the master bathroom.

I don't think the toilet...

had been running for months,

yet he was still using it.

So you can imagine what it looked like.

It was like a porta potty,

but in the master living quarters.

No flushing.

No running water!

What the [bleep]?!

Like, what pigs!

I mean, you know,

and the laundry and their Mormon underwear that

you would just -- and it's like,

"Oh, my God!" It's...

[groaning laughter]

He was kind of like a frat boy, right?

And he had -- he was bringing a patient in there

into this non-sterile environment to live

and be treated. It's like, what...

like, I don't understand how he can hold himself out as

a medical professional and have such a non-sterile environment.

[Dessa] I was there Monday through Friday.

I was not there on the weekend.

Friday, I left one of the patients

that I had a relationship with.

He was extremely ill.

So ill that I thought, "Wow, I may not see him."

When I came back Monday morning, the nurse

and her daughter-in-law were sitting on the curb

outside this client's residence, crying.

She was so upset because...

they put this client in the back of the Suburban,

not the back seat,

the back of the Suburban,

and took him to Orange County to a hospital

so that he did not die at the ranch.

They did not want that on their property.

But what was even worse...

is that when I went into my client's residence...

and saw the condition of the way

he expelled his colonic...

happened on the bed, a trail to

the bathroom, happened on the toilet.

It was green, everything of green, green juice,

green colonic, green everything.

Had it been blood, it would have looked like

a murder scene.

I cleaned up,

I sanitized, I did everything.

I went up to the office and I told the manager that I quit.

I never spoke to Robert Young again.

Dr. Young was -- he was cagey, he was crafty, and he would say

to his potential patients, "You must follow my protocol

and then you will be cured." And if they went off

his protocols, then they would die.

If they left, they would die.

But meanwhile, these people are deteriorating

in front of their loved one's eyes.

His language was enough to always divert blame

away from him, and onto the patient.

[Jim] Robert Young was caring for this woman

who was stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

So she comes to the ranch

and Robert Young starts pumping her full of fluids.

One day on the ranch, the woman suddenly died.

However, I believe she didn't die from pancreatic cancer.

I think she died from congestive heart failure,

from being pumped with too much fluid.

Robert Young went into a panic.

"Oh, my God, I've got a dead body on my ranch --

what do I do now?"

He didn't want anything that would bring the authorities

to the ranch.

[oldies music plays over record static]

[Moe] I'm 80 years old.

Chronologically, I'm an old fart,

but in my mind I don't feel that way,

and in my heart I don't feel that way.

My name is Moe Felix.

My wife Vicki Felix was a patient of Robert Young.

In 2010, she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.

They said, "We can't cure it."

Then a friend of Vicki's introduced

Vicki to the teachings of Robert Young.

Once we were at the ranch, Robert Young said, "I've been

"doing this for years, and I can cure you from cancer.

"You have to push the traditional medicine aside.

"The body will heal itself

if you do the right things for it."

[Jane] The very first day of the ranch,

you start your protocols.

Robert Young believes that through

respiration, defecation, urination,

and perspiration, that you can eliminate the toxins

out of your body.

Hello? Are you kidding me?

Urination, defecation, perspiration, respiration.

That is what we all live, okay?

That is how we eliminate toxins from our bodies.

We all do it.

[Jane] A lot of his program was based on colonics,

lymph massages, green juices,

alkalined water,

and you get really,

really sick. And Tracie did.

According to Dr. Robert Young, she was detoxing from all

the acid in her body.

[Moe] When Vicki started her treatments,

I started noticing that she was losing weight.

Her legs were swelling up.

But Dr. Robert Young says it's working.

Now, let's analogize this to somebody who's sick

going into the ER and be given green smoothies

and colonics, one-stop shopping,

regardless of the disease, really.

Can you imagine, like, a cure-all, an elixir?

It's not 1910 here. So he bamboozled people.

At one point, all these patients were up

in the swimming pool,

and the ladies brought over some shakes for them to drink

and Robert Young happened to be there,

and Vicki said, "I'd love to have a sandwich."

He said, "You can't have a sandwich, Vicki.

Sandwich is the worst thing for you."

So the bill started adding up, and so I asked if I could just

work in the kitchen.

He told me that I could,

and he said he would deduct from my bill.

When you go into the kitchen, there was...

four fridges there, and the fourth fridge

was where he stored his secret stash of his eclairs

and donuts and sandwiches.

He would buy sandwiches

and then eat them later in the day

when we were kind of all settling.

[Moe] Some of the ladies caught him

eating sandwiches at Trader Joe's,

eating it with potato chips. That doesn't gel.

It goes against what he's teaching everybody to do.

Now, you know, okay, maybe he feels like he doesn't need it,

but if he truly believes that these green drinks

and whatever else will keep the body healthy,

he should not have at least the processed foods

and the sweets anywhere near his house, right?

I mean, he's kind of being two-faced.

He's being hypocritical here.

[Moe] The only time I started questioning him is when

I started physically seeing Vicki...

deteriorate... become emaciated.

And I said, "Vicki, this is not working."

And she shared my thoughts with Robert Young,

and he said to her,

"You need to have some IV infusions

that I can do for you."

He never told us that the infusion was baking soda.

I have read that sodium bicarbonate, baking soda,

is not going to hurt you, really.

But what can be harmful,

depending upon what you're suffering from,

is all that fluid going into you

that you may not be able to eliminate very quickly,

and it's just gonna build up,

and that can be dangerous to your organs.

[Moe] So we both sat down with him and said, "Dr. Young, this is

"gonna be the last day that we're going to be here.

We're going back to the traditional medicine."

And very callous,

his response was, "If you leave, Vicki,

you are going to be dead in a week."

[Moe] When we left the ranch, I looked at Vicki.

I said, "We'll never come back here."

That's when we started traditional medicine.

She started improving.

She was walking.

She regained her color. She gained weight.

I was happy.

Towards the middle of January 2013,

Vicki said, "I'm not feeling that well."

I said, "Let's go to the hospital."

And they said, "Vicki, we can't do anything

more for you."

And...on 4th of February at 7:03 in the morning,

she took her last breath in my arms.

And there was a tremendous sadness.

But there's also...

a big relief that she wasn't suffering anymore.

I do believe Dr. Young shortened her life.

[Linda] How cute mom is with all her sisters, right?

Little Dolores with her jet-black hair.

And the looker.

Absolutely smoking.

-[indistinct speaking] -She was gorgeous.

-My name is Kellie Despotakis. -My name is Linda Shaw.

Our mother, Dolores McCullough, was a follower of Robert Young.

Our mother, she was never well.

She had gotten Hepatitis B from a dirty needle when

Linda and I were very little, either at our birth

or soon after.

We discovered in the early 2000s that she had cirrhosis

of the liver. -Non-alcohol-related.

-It was the hepatitis -- -From...the hepatitis that

she got from the dirty needle when we were little.

We cried in the doctor's office.

It was devastating. It's a death sentence.

[Kellie] It is a death sentence, and we knew that.

So our mom had this...

absolutely wacky friend, Catherine.

She went to visit her friend for tea.

-And on Catherine's coffee table was "The pH Miracle." -"The pH Miracle."

-Dr. Robert...O. Young. -Young.

[Kellie] And my mom picked it up and read it.

[Linda] Well, she was fascinated by it.

She was fascinated. She thought, wow,

there's some things in here that she could get behind.

So, April of 2008, she called Dr. Young

and he suggested that she come out to the Ranch.

This is the file we prepared --

Linda prepared for her to take to show --

Twenty years of her medical history.

[Kellie] Twenty years of her medical history.

So he was fully versed in what her condition was.

Basically, take care of her.

This is what she's out here for.

Take care of her.

Our mom came back in mid-April 2008.

My mom was walking down the hallway towards me.

And I just, I remember just like covering my face,

like grabbing my face saying, what did you do?

She probably had 50 pounds of fluid on her.

And come to find out that Robert Young had ramped up

her salt intake.

Robert Young kept basically saying, you have to get sicker

before you get better. -Before you get better.

And then to be honest, after speaking to him,

we can understand why our mom was so convinced

he would help her.

We would hang up the phone and look at each other like...

"What just happened? I guess she's staying."

So she went back to the ranch.

[Kellie] When she was there that second time, the first four days,

she only had water and salt.

Salt and cirrhosis...

-They don't -- -...do not jive.

So this is when, for us,

things started going a little bit south.

-Our...yes. -Our spidey senses were going off.

We just said, "Mom, you need to come home."

But she was in such bad shape that Linda had to fly

from New York to San Diego to get her.

So this is insane. You ready?

I couldn't get my mother on the plane to New York

until I paid her balance for the ranch.

-Which was...over $14,000. -[Linda] $14,000.

Was not allowed to take my mother.

This is literally her ransom, $14,000.

And the memo line is "for Mom," "to get Mom."

This is all he cared about,

was getting his money that was due him.

So, waiting at the curb for my mother, here she comes from

an employee at the ranch who was driving her,

puts her in a wheelchair, and all I saw, my mother was

skin and bones, literally,

sucking on green juice.

I tell you, I [bleep] saw red.

I walked up, didn't even say hello to my mother, who I was

desperate to hug.

Grabbed it out of her hand and just saw this woman

and just whipped it at this lady.

Hit her, didn't care. I wanted to hurt her.

I wanted to hurt her.

And I said, "Here's your [bleep] check.

Give me my mother."

Got my mother and off we went.

So, once she got over her embarrassment...

-She got pissed. -...she got really angry,

and she said... -[Linda] "We need to stop him."

And then we got to work.

Okay, so Linda and Kellie start looking into

Young's background, his education,

and his training.

And what they find is really alarming.

-He's not a medical doctor. -We said, "What?"

We know about the IVs.

We know about the small amounts of food.

But we thought our mother was under the care of a doctor.

-He went by "Dr. Robert Young." -A medical doctor.

We trusted him.

And we said, "Oh my gosh, who is this human being?"

Like, who is this person?

So, Dr. -- do I have to call him doctor?

He got an undergraduate, master's, and PhD

in two and a half years.

It was a diploma mill in Alabama.

They've since closed it, but he bought his diplomas.

I mean, the guy was a total fraud.

So you're wearing a white coat. You were called Dr. Young.

Did you portray yourself as a medical doctor?

You know what boat stands for, right?

Break out another thousand.

Robert Young is a lot like a fisherman.

He'll keep you on the line for as long as he can,

and then when he's done with you, he'll throw you back.

My name is Jim Clark.

I am an investigator with the San Diego County

District Attorney's Office.

Dolores' daughters contacted the Medical Board of California

and reported what was happening.

So our office decided to investigate this further.

We talked to the patient's families about

what was going on there at the ranch

and how their family member was being treated

and what treatments they were receiving.

And we found out that IVs were being administered, and lots of

the times it was Robert Young giving them directly.

Mistake number one was when Dr. Young expanded his business

from the wellness and his diet and supplement world

to treating people with diseases.

That was a big mistake because he's diagnosing people,

treating them, and making promises about a cure.

Mistake number two is when he starts the IV treatments

because he's breaking the skin with a needle of patients.

And in California, that is illegal unless you are a doctor

or, say, a nurse working under a doctor.

That wasn't happening.

[Jim] In 2013, we served the search warrant at

three different locations.

The bulk of the evidence we got were medical records.

We found that the IV equipment and IVs stored in a shed

over in one of his employees' residence.

And on the boxes that these IVs came in, they were labeled with

"pH Miracle Center."

For Robert Young, these IVs were an important part

of his protocols.

And when I say important part, I'm not talking about

medically speaking.

I'm talking about financially speaking.

He's probably paying $9 or $10 per IV,

but he's charging $500 a bag to the patient.

During the search warrant of the ranch,

we found documentation that had a fee-splitting agreement

between Robert Young and this doctor for IVs.

So, at 500 bucks a pop, this doctor was receiving 40%

of the cost of the IVs.

Robert Young wasn't in this to cure people.

He knew he couldn't cure people, right?

This was all about money.

This is all about the con.

For every patient that we were able to identify that

he personally gave IVs to or diagnosed,

we charged a single charge of practicing medicine

without a license.

And then we also charged grand theft based on the amount of

money taken from these people.

[Beth] He knew what he was doing was wrong

because he was covering it up.

That's consciousness of guilt.

That's actually a term that jurors are instructed on before

they deliberate, that they can consider

whatever conduct y'know, the judge tells them.

It shows evidence that he knew what he was doing was wrong,

and the jurors can accept it or not.

Going into this trial,

we were hopeful that we would convict on everything.

However, to Robert Young's credit,

he hired Paul Pfingst.

Everybody knows who Paul Pfingst is -- San Diego County.

[Paul] I mean, I've been doing this almost 50 years.

And this is uh... this was a one-of-a-kind.

The assistant district attorney said that she was

gonna prove that he had murdered 15 people.

His attorney at the time said, "This isn't a murder case.

This is practicing medicine without a license."

The prosecution's idea was, he overpromised to desperate

people that their cancer could be cured.

The defense was, no, there was no overpromising.

Sometimes people who are very sick hear

what they want to hear.

People want to believe that this was a cure.

Robert Young's position is, this diet is beneficial,

but he does not promise that cancer will be cured.

The question has always been,

where does salesmanship end and fraud begin?

In the end, there was a hung jury or mistrial on

the grand theft charges, but Young later pled guilty

to those charges.

The jury did convict him of two counts of practicing medicine

without a license.

He was sentenced to three years and eight months in prison,

but only served 40 days in a county jail.

[Matt] We live in a country where big pharma is big business,

and big pharma's number one cash cow, which

is a trillion-dollar-a-year industry, is cancer.

You would think, wow, the guy that cures cancer is

gonna get paraded around the world

and brought out as a hero.

But the reality is you get character-assassinated,

and you lose your freedom so that you can't speak out.

So, Robert, why are you sitting in prison?

But what do you say about the people you did treat

who are no longer with us? Are they victims, too?

Robert Young is a shyster. He's a liar.

He's a narcissist. He's a criminal.

He takes advantage of people.

If more people would listen and follow

Dr. Young's protocol...

The world would be a healthier place.

[Lynne] Yes.

When Tracie got home, she had been diagnosed

14 months earlier, and she passed away shortly thereafter,

in October of 2012.

Time -- that is your most valuable asset you own.

She lost all that time with her family, with her kids.

We are so proud to be...

[together] Dolores McCullough's daughters.

Because we feel like she crumbled his empire.

It was her letter that brought him to the attention

of the authorities. -Brought him to his knees.

And it is a satisfying feeling.