A man calling himself Daejon Love presented himself online as a wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers. He was not on the team. Over roughly four to five years, he used that false identity, along with a second persona as a wealthy Swiss banker, to meet women on dating apps and persuade them to hand over their savings. By late August 2026, when the FBI detained him at an airport in Boise, Idaho, investigators had tied him to at least 26 victims and about $1.3 million in losses.
The videos that drew attention
The scheme began to come apart because of a video. Love posted footage of himself running pass routes on a beach in San Francisco while wearing a 49ers helmet, headband, and shirt. Football fans who watched it flagged a long list of problems. Equipment managers do not let players walk off with their helmets, and no professional carries one to the beach. The routes looked wrong, the catching was awkward, and the man throwing the ball produced loose, wobbling passes. At one point the thrower pulled Love aside and drew a route on the football itself, something a real teammate would never do, since routes have established names.
The beach setting may have been deliberate. Running in sand makes anyone’s footwork look labored, which could have masked the fact that Love did not move or look like a conditioned professional athlete. His center of gravity was high and his form did not match years of training.
Once the video spread, people began combing through his social media accounts. They found more images of him in 49ers gear posing near expensive cars, along with a separate stream of posts promoting himself as an investor who could help others with their finances.
Building a fake career online
The false identity was supported by a careful trail of online material. A quick search for Daejon Love returned results describing him as a Y receiver for the San Francisco 49ers, with details about his position and supposed contract. His LinkedIn listed his job simply as “Receiver at National Football League.” Automated search summaries repeated the claim and even referenced a viral post about his “teammate texting habits.”
Much of the supporting content was stolen. Love posted point-of-view videos of walking into Levi’s Stadium and footage from inside locker rooms, presenting them as his own. He also claimed a dramatic backstory: born in Switzerland to one of the country’s wealthiest banking families, he said he had moved to the United States at age eight.
The technical groundwork was handled by an accomplice named Taylor Chan, who was 18 at the time of the arrest. Chan managed the search-engine work that made the 49ers claims surface so readily. When real game or facility footage was needed, they used clips of other players, betting that no one would look closely enough to notice the face behind a helmet. To explain inconsistencies, Love spun stories about jersey numbers, saying he had been bought out of number seven or had lost number four to injury.
The dating-app pitch
The actual fraud worked through dating apps, usually Tinder. Love would match with a woman, go on a few dates, and establish trust, sometimes staging displays of wealth such as a private chef at dinner. One woman, Ayana Velasquez, met him in 2021 when he was using the name Jonathan. She found him suspicious from the start, in part because the chef he produced did not seem professional. She cut off contact. In 2024 he reached out again, this time claiming he had made it to the NFL and sending her photos and screen recordings as proof. When she examined the metadata on the files, she found they were screen recordings of other people’s content. She blocked him a second time.
Between July 15 and August 24 of 2026, Love traveled through New Mexico, California, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, and Idaho, meeting women and introducing them to his “financial planner,” Taylor Chan. The pair pitched investment products and pressured the women to deposit as much money as possible, encouraging them to drain savings or even take out loans.
To make the opportunity look legitimate, they relied on an Android app called Fake Bank Account Pro, which generates convincing screens mimicking banks such as Bank of America or Chase. They used it to display accounts holding tens of millions of dollars and supposed investment returns, then directed victims to transfer real money into accounts the two men controlled.
The arrest
The tour ended at the airport in Boise, Idaho, on August 24, 2026, where the FBI detained both Love and Chan as they walked through the terminal. The FBI’s statement said Love had run the scheme for about five or six years, alternating between the Swiss banker and professional football player personas. The agency recorded 26 women and roughly $1.3 million in combined losses, and said it believed additional victims had not yet been identified.
As the story circulated, some observers questioned how anyone could have believed the football claims, pointing to the obvious errors visible to any fan. Those errors were only obvious to people who follow the sport. To someone outside that world, a man carrying a helmet or running an odd-looking route offered no clear warning. The search results, the stolen locker-room footage, and the roster listing all pointed the same direction for anyone who did not dig past the first page.
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