A handsome Newport Beach surgeon who once appeared on a cable-network reality show pleaded not guilty Wednesday, along with his good-looking girlfriend, to charges of drugging and sexually assaulting multiple women in attacks that were allegedly recorded on cell phone video.
Dr. Grant Robicheaux, 38, and Cerissa Laura Riley, 31, had been free on $100,000 bail since their Sept. 12 arrests in connection with alleged assaults of two women, but prosecutors on Wednesday filed new charges involving five additional alleged victims and asked that their bail be increased to $3 million.
A judge instead set bail at $1 million and ordered both defendants to surrender their passports. Both defendants planned to post the increased bail Wednesday and will remain out of custody, their attorneys said.
Robicheaux was charged Wednesday in connection with all five alleged new victims, while Riley was charged with just three of the new alleged attacks, prosecutors said.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Walker said prosecutors have identified three or four other women who allege they were victimized outside of Orange County, and their allegations would be used to establish a pattern of abuse. Evidence from those cases was forwarded to the appropriate law-enforcement agencies, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said.
Prosecutors contend the pair would take advantage of their good looks to meet women in restaurants or bars, then drug them and lure them back to Robicheaux’s apartment, where they were sexually assaulted. Rackauckas said last month investigators discovered more than 1,000 cell phone videos of alleged assaults, indicating that hundreds of other women may have been victimized.
It was unclear how deep the investigation of those videos went. Walker said investigators came across data that appeared to be protected by doctor-patient or attorney-client privilege, so the detectives stopped viewing the videos.
The pair were initially charged with alleged assaults involving two women, but Rackauckas said his office quickly received dozens of calls from other potential victims — leading to the additional charges filed Wednesday.
In the two cases that resulted in the original charges, prosecutors contended the pair met one victim at a Newport Beach bar and another at a restaurant.
One woman said she met Robicheaux on April 3, 2016, and they exchanged numbers, according to a search warrant affidavit. On April 10, 2016, she met with the Robicheaux and Riley at a boat dock in Newport Beach and they began drinking, according to the affidavit.
She told investigators she soon felt “very intoxicated, as if she consumed `10 beers,”’ the affidavit states. Then she said she saw Riley pour liquid from a contact lens case into a beer bottle cap and drink it. She said she rode in a golf cart to Robicheaux’s residence but needed help getting in because she was “unable to walk straight,” police said in the affidavit.
The other alleged initial victim said she became intoxicated and passed out at a bar on Oct. 2, 2016, and was taken to Robicheaux’s apartment, where she woke up screaming, prompting calls to police, according to the affidavit. She told investigators she woke up with a stranger on top of her, but she did not believe he was trying to rape her, the document states. She said the unknown male was hitting her in the face and that she was kicked in the head by a second person, while a third person videotaped it with a phone, police said.
Robicheaux told officers he and his girlfriend fell asleep in his bed and that he woke up to the woman screaming, saying he did not know her and did not hit her, according to the affidavit.
The court document states that one of the new alleged victims — after having consensual sex with the defendants on July 1, 2017, at Robicheaux’s home — went to a concert and did drugs with the doctor the next day then went back to his apartment with Riley. She said “everyone was doing lines of `blow’ and `K,”’ or ketamine, at the apartment, according to the affidavit. She said at one point she accepted a drink from Riley, then “blacked out” and later woke up in bed with Robicheaux, the document states. She told police she “believed they worked together as a team to engage in sexual activities with other women.”
According to prosecutors, the other alleged victims are:
— a woman who was in her mid-20s who says she dated Robicheaux in 2009 and alleges he raped her at his home when she said she did not want to have sex with him;
— a woman, also in her mid-20s, who claims she was drugged and sexually assaulted by the two on March 14, 2015;
— a woman in her mid-30s who says she met the two at a Newport Beach Halloween party on Oct. 29, 2016, was subdued by GHB in her drink and sexually assaulted, but she woke up during the attack; and
— a woman in her early 20s who says she met Robicheaux through a dating app and went to a restaurant with him on April 16, 2017, only to have Riley show up pretending to be a platonic friend. The woman says she became drunk and was “kidnapped” to his home and awoke to the pair sexually assaulting her, prosecutors said.
The two are not believed to have used medical anesthetic-type of drugs, prosecutors said.
Robicheaux appeared on a Bravo reality TV series called “Online Dating Rituals of the American Male” in 2014, in an episode titled “Three’s a Crowd.” Robicheaux was employed as a surgeon at NewportCare Medical Group, but was removed from the company’s website when the criminal charges were announced.
Riley is an aspiring educator who worked occasionally as a substitute teacher in Fullerton, Senior Deputy District Attorney Michael Carroll said. Her attorney, Scott Borthwick, said she works for a bus company and has a part-time job as a dance instructor.
Robicheaux attorney, Philip Cohen, told reporters the two deny all of the allegations and insist they never had non-consensual sex with anyone.
Cohen argued in court that his client was not a flight risk, noting that he had multiple chances since the dawn of the police investigation to flee. He said Robicheaux went on a business trip to Canada in February and prosecutors allowed him to use his passport to take the trip, Cohen said.
The two defendants also went on vacation to two countries in Europe in May and returned as promised — again with the permission of police and prosecutors, Cohen said.
Cohen also said his client took a polygraph test and passed, but police and prosecutors refused to meet with him to discuss that and other possible defenses.
The charges against the pair include rape by use of drugs, oral copulation by a controlled substance, assault with the intent to commit a sex offense, kidnapping and possession of a controlled substance for sale. Robicheaux is also charged with two counts of possession of an assault weapon.
Robicheaux faces a maximum sentence of roughly 82 years to life in prison, while Riley faces 63 years to life.