Fake 49ers Player SCAMS Women Out of $1.3 MILLION

August 27, 2026

The romance scam that federal prosecutors say Daejon Love ran out of Portland did not require a single line of code, a hacked database, or any technical sophistication at all — it required a fake Instagram bio, a dating app account, and a woman willing to believe a stranger’s story. That combination is proving more lucrative for fraudsters than almost any other criminal scheme in America today, and the case against Love shows exactly why.

Key Points

Federal prosecutors charged Daejon Labrayae Love, 35, and Taylor Jamie Chan, 18, with wire fraud and conspiracy after alleging they impersonated an NFL player to defraud more than two dozen women out of over $1.3 million.
The scheme ran from February 2022 through 2025, using dating apps including Tinder, Hinge, and Facebook Dating to reach victims in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and California.
Investigators say fabricated bank statements, fake investment portfolios, and an AI-generated NFL player profile were used to manufacture credibility.
The pair were arrested at the Boise airport; FBI agents say no evidence exists that any victim funds were ever invested or repaid.
The case fits a documented national pattern: the FBI recorded $929.3 million in romance and confidence fraud losses in 2025 alone, the highest annual total on record.

What Prosecutors Allege Happened

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon, Love and Chan “created fictitious investments to defraud numerous women” beginning in February 2022, casting a net across four states before agents caught up with them. The mechanics were straightforward and, prosecutors say, repeatable: Love allegedly presented himself on dating apps as a San Francisco 49ers player, built a relationship with each target, and then pivoted the conversation toward an investment opportunity promising to double or triple whatever money a woman put in. Chan, according to court filings, functioned as a financial adviser figure lending the scheme a second layer of legitimacy — described in iCloud messages cited by investigators as a “vet manipulator”.

The documentation prosecutors point to is granular. Investigators say they recovered screenshots of fabricated bank and investment account statements designed to show growing balances, along with an Instagram story in which Love used an AI tool to generate a fictitious NFL player biography — one he later acknowledged, per court records, was not actually his. When victims asked to withdraw funds or grew suspicious, the pattern prosecutors describe is blunt: Love allegedly blocked them and kept the money. The FBI has stated it found no evidence that any of the funds collected were ever invested on a victim’s behalf, and agents believe additional victims beyond the roughly two dozen already identified may exist. Love and Chan were arrested at the Boise airport and now face wire fraud and conspiracy charges in federal court in Portland.

Why the Playbook Works: Identity, Intimacy, and Urgency

Every element in the alleged Love scheme maps onto a fraud architecture that criminologists and financial regulators have catalogued for more than a decade. First comes a manufactured identity — in this case, athletic celebrity, a status marker that confers instant credibility and discourages scrutiny. Second comes emotional cultivation: sustained, personalized attention over weeks or months that builds the kind of trust normally reserved for an established partner. Third comes the financial ask, framed not as a loan or gift but as an “opportunity” — a distinction that matters legally, because investor psychology tolerates risk in ways it would never tolerate a request for cash. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s investor-education arm explicitly warns that this fusion of romance and investment pitch is now common enough to have its own name: the relationship investment scam.

The reason these schemes so often escape early detection is structural, not accidental. Victims who believe they are in a genuine relationship are reluctant to report suspicions, both from embarrassment and from a lingering hope the relationship is real; the Federal Trade Commission has found that only a fraction of romance scam losses are ever reported at all. And because the money is framed as an investment rather than a gift, victims sometimes believe withdrawal is a matter of process rather than possibility, delaying the moment they recognize the funds are gone for good.

How This Case Fits a Rapidly Growing National Problem

The scale attributed to Love and Chan — 26 women, $1.3 million, four states — is large for an individual case but modest against the national trend line. The FTC tallied $1.14 billion in reported romance scam losses in 2023 across roughly 64,000 reports, with a median loss per victim of $2,000, the highest median loss of any imposter fraud category the agency tracks. More recent FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center data shows the picture worsening rather than stabilizing: 2025 losses attributed to romance and confidence fraud reached $929.3 million, the highest annual figure the bureau has recorded for that category. Corporate risk-intelligence firm Moody’s separately identified a six-year high in newly flagged romance-scam entities in its global screening database in 2024, a 14% year-over-year increase.

What distinguishes the alleged Love scheme from older, cruder romance cons — the ones built on fake overseas soldiers or oil-rig workers — is the sophistication of the supporting documentation. Fabricated brokerage statements and an AI-generated athlete profile represent an evolution in production value that mirrors a broader shift researchers have flagged across the fraud landscape: victims today are less likely to be fooled by a bad photo and more likely to be persuaded by a convincing paper trail. Surveys from cybersecurity firms have found a meaningful share of the public has already encountered AI-altered images or fabricated profiles on dating platforms, suggesting the tools alleged to have been used here are becoming standard equipment rather than novelties.

What Comes Next and Why It Matters Beyond This Case

Love and Chan face federal wire fraud and conspiracy charges, and it is worth remembering that a criminal complaint is an allegation, not a verdict — the matter will proceed through the ordinary course of the federal court in Portland. But regardless of the eventual disposition, the case functions as a case study for anyone assessing risk in modern online relationships: a persuasive profile, a plausible identity, and a promise of outsized returns are the three ingredients regulators say show up again and again. The FTC, the SEC’s investor-protection office, and the FBI all publish the same core guidance — verify identity independently of what a match tells you, be wary of any romantic partner who introduces an investment opportunity, and treat urgency as a warning sign rather than a reason to act quickly. Given that reported losses are still climbing year over year, that advice is not boilerplate; it is the single most effective defense available to the next person who receives a message that sounds too good, and too flattering, to question.