Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the arrests of two men in Portland, Oregon. A 35-year-old man named Daejon Love and an 18-year-old man named Taylor Jamie Chan were charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Those charges stem from Love and Chan running an alleged scam operation that involved defrauding various women through Love (unconvincingly) pretending to be a wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers.
Prosecutors say Love and Chan stole a total of $1.3 million from several women between 2022 and 2026. Love would meet the women on dating apps, Chan would pose as his financial advisor, and then they would convince the women to send them money to be used in investment strategies. From the DoJ's press release:
Love and Chan also exchanged investment-related electronic communications in which Chan pretended to be Love’s investment adviser. Chan sent Love messages purportedly encouraging Love to invest in new opportunities. Love then sent screenshots of those messages to numerous victims to further convince them to send money to either Love or Chan. Chan and Love also hosted three-way FaceTime calls in which they showed victims falsified investment gains and encouraged victims to part with their money. Victims sent Love and Chan money due to their belief that their money would be invested in legitimate investment vehicles on the victims’ behalf. Some victims also loaned Love large amounts of money, if victims did not have cash to invest, Love sometimes instructed them to take out personal loans in both scenarios Love assured the victims that they would quickly be repaid.
While this was going on, Love was also busy creating a false online persona for himself in which he was portrayed as a wealthy real estate investor and a member of the San Francisco 49ers. His now-deleted Instagram account was full of videos showing him living a lavish lifestyle and training to get ready for the NFL season. With all due respect to Love's alleged victims, the videos are extremely funny. Many of them consist of Love simply wearing 49ers gear while working out in a public space. The best of the bunch is a clip of him wearing a 49ers helmet at the beach, running an absolutely awful route, and then catching a pass lobbed from a few yards away.
Let this be a lesson about how much good a little ball knowledge can do you. Anyone who has watched a few quarters of an NFL game would be able to tell you that professional wide receivers do not look or move like that. Also that NFL rosters are publicly available.
Ever since news of Love's arrest broke, a series of videos of him trying to convince women that they should send him money because he's a rich NFL player have been posted online. In a personal favorite, he gives a tour of one of the several million-dollar homes he claims to own, which consists of him panning the camera towards an empty and unglamorous bedroom while saying, "This is about an $8,000 bed. Here's my TV, this TV is about eight fucking thousand." He then shows off a few Chucky dolls in boxes, saying, "I love horror shit. These dolls about $2K."
Here is one in which he responds to "fans" who want to know more about how he got into the NFL. It starts with him splicing in two screenshots of a Google AI search result saying that he is a wide receiver for the 49ers. "That's Google, that's not me, that's Google," he says.
OK, wait, sorry, I have to share one more video:
As we all know, NFL players are constantly signing their contracts on a coffee table inside a weird house, and then announcing their height and weight before the ink is dry.
