The version of the con that federal investigators eventually pieced together started, as so many now do, on a dating app. Beginning in February 2022, a man using the name Daejon Labrayae Love presented himself as a San Francisco 49ers player who also happened to be a wealthy Swiss real estate investor — a combination specific enough to sound implausible and vague enough that most people wouldn't know how to check it.
The production values were the point. Love filmed himself signing what appeared to be an NFL contract and built out a social media presence dense enough with the visual signals of wealth and legitimacy that women he met were persuaded they were in real relationships with a real athlete. An 18-year-old associate, Taylor Jamie Chan, played the role of his financial adviser, and the two ran three-way calls that walked victims through investment accounts built to display fabricated balances on command — numbers that existed only inside an app, engineered to look exactly like money actually growing.
By the time federal investigators built their case, they'd identified at least 26 victims across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and California, with losses totaling roughly $1.3 million. The NFL and the 49ers confirmed what investigators already suspected: Love had never played for either. He now faces federal charges for wire fraud conspiracy and wire fraud, and the FBI believes the real number of victims may be higher than what's currently confirmed.
The scheme wasn't even the only one of its kind making news. Separately, a former Division II football player named Uras Agee IV built an online persona claiming stints with the Dallas Cowboys, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Pittsburgh Steelers, plus a Super Bowl LV ring — showing up to a 2023 charity event in Cowboys gear before the team confirmed he'd never been on their roster. Agee monetized the fiction directly, charging for brand deals and appearance fees built entirely on a career that never happened; unlike Love's case, it never triggered a criminal investigation.
Both cases lean on the same mechanic once you strip away the specifics: a costume of legitimacy — a jersey, a contract, a financial adviser on the line — did more persuading than any actual credential would have, because almost nobody thinks to ask an athlete to prove it.
