The Fake 49er: How a Dating-App Imposter Allegedly Stole $1.3 Million from 26 women

The San Francisco 49ers did not sign Daejon Labrayae Love. The NFL never employed him. That did not stop him from selling the jersey, the helmet, and the lifestyle long enough to take more than a million dollars from women who thought they were dating a player.

Federal prosecutors in Oregon say Love, 35, and 18-year-old Taylor Jamie Chan ran a romance-and-investment scam from February 2022 until their arrest on August 24 at Boise Airport. The charges: wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Investigators have identified 26 victims across California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. The FBI thinks there are more. Financial records put the haul at about $1.3 million.

This is not a locker-room story. It is a con that used the 49ers brand as bait.

Who Prosecutors Say Daejon Labrayae Love Pretended to Be

Love met most of the women on Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and Facebook Dating. He told them he was an undrafted 49ers wide receiver who had worked his way onto the roster. Sometimes he switched costumes and became a wealthy Swiss real estate investor. He used aliases including Jon Love, Avril Lyto Love, and Jordan Love — close enough to the Packers quarterback to blur a Google search. In at least one case, prosecutors say he claimed to be related to Jordan Love to squeeze more cash out of a victim.

Social media did the rest. Instagram photos in 49ers gear. Training clips. Luxury cars. A staged “contract signing” video in which he told the camera he was with “Niner gang.” Prosecutors say he even lifted posts from real NFL players and passed them off as his own. When suspicious women searched his name, search engines and AI tools sometimes spit back that he was a 49ers player — because he had flooded the internet with the lie first. The 49ers and the NFL later told investigators he had never been on a roster.

Chan played the closer. He posed as Love’s financial adviser, jumped on three-way calls, and flashed fake statements that showed investments exploding. In one alleged pitch, Love claimed Chan had grown his net worth from $300,000 to $17 million in a few years. Women who did not have cash on hand were steered into personal loans. When the money ran out or the questions got sharper, Love cut them off and kept what they had sent.

When agents grabbed him in Boise, he still had a 49ers helmet and about $3,000 on him. Chan had flown in from California to meet him. Prosecutors say Love had been bouncing through New Mexico, California, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, and Idaho in the weeks before the arrest — still working the circuit.

How the Dating-App and Fake-Advisor Pitch Worked

NFL fame is a shortcut to trust. A team name does what a stranger on a dating app cannot: it implies money, status, and a public identity that should be easy to check. Love counted on people not checking hard enough, and on the internet being sloppy enough to back him up. That is the ugly part of the modern sports economy. The shield sells. Counterfeiters know it.

The victims were not anonymous marks in a faraway call center. Prosecutors describe middle-class women in their 20s and 30s who thought they were in real relationships. Romance first. Then the “opportunity.” Then the loan. Then the block. That sequence is older than the NFL. The 49ers helmet just made it faster.

Love and Chan are charged, not convicted. They remain in federal custody. The case will be proved in court, not on Instagram. If the affidavit holds, this was not a one-off hustle. It was a four-year operation that treated a franchise’s identity as inventory.

The part that should scare you

Twenty-six names so far. “Many more,” according to the FBI. Anyone who sent money to a man claiming to be a 49ers player, a Swiss investor, or Jordan Love’s cousin should assume they may be in the pile. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oregon is the place that story goes now — not another dating-app chat.

The 49ers did not run this scam. A man in their colors did. That distinction matters. So does this one: if a stranger’s entire personality is a helmet, a highlight reel, and a private banker on FaceTime, you are not dating an NFL player. You are being worked.