Romance scams are as old as the love letter. What is new about this one is the notary. Federal prosecutors say Daejon Labrayae Love spent four years pretending to be a wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers — a man who never played a single professional down — and that at least 26 women across four states handed him roughly $1.3 million for the privilege. When some of those women got suspicious and did the one smart thing a person can do, they searched his name. The search engine’s artificial intelligence looked at the fiction he had planted online and handed it back to them as fact. The machine did not fall for the con. It testified for it.
The arrest landed at Boise Airport on August 24, where FBI agents took Love, 35, and his alleged accomplice Taylor Jamie Chan, 18, into custody as they arrived to meet new victims, according to federal court documents. The next day the Justice Department charged both men in Portland, Oregon, with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud. Prosecutors say the scheme ran from February 2022 through the arrests — four years in which a man who was never employed by the NFL or the team, a fact both the league and the 49ers confirmed to investigators, built an entire professional football career out of nothing but a phone and a lie.
Daejon Love — The Fake Receiver Who Never Played a Down
Love’s fiction was not subtle, and that was the point. He posted photos in 49ers gear, posed with a custom replica helmet that cost $1,160, filmed himself signing a contract while telling a cameraman “Niners, you already know, Niner gang,” and presented himself on Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn as an active — but conveniently injured — receiver. He flashed fake bank balances through an app called Fake Bank Account Pro, at one point showing more than $30 million on screen. None of it was real. Investigators found no legitimate income, no payroll from the 49ers, and no sign he had ever been near a roster. The detail that matters most is not the helmet. It is the age of the accomplice who was allegedly selling the story alongside him. ESPN lays out the full indictment.
Taylor Jamie Chan — The ‘Financial Adviser’ Who Was 14 When It Started
Chan is 18 now, but the complaint’s timeline runs back to February 2022 — which would make him 13 or 14 years old when the alleged scheme began. In that telling, a middle-schooler was playing the role of a wealth manager. Prosecutors say Chan posed as Love’s financial adviser, exchanged messages with him about fictitious investments, and joined FaceTime calls where women were shown falsified gains. When the victims ran out of cash, Love allegedly helped them take out personal loans, leveraging their own credit to keep the grift alive. This was not a master criminal enterprise. It was a teenager and a con man, and it worked for four years. The Justice Department’s statement walks the charges.
The 26 Women — They Checked His Name, and the Machine Cosigned the Lie
Here is the detail that makes this case feel less like 2022 and more like the future nobody signed up for. The women were not reckless. When they got suspicious, they did exactly what a diligent person does: they Googled him. And the search engine sometimes backed him up. Court documents put it in plain language — “search engines and artificial intelligence occasionally stated that Love was a bonafide 49ers player.” The victims did their homework, and the homework lied to them. That is the part worth sitting with: 26 women lost $1.3 million not because they failed to check, but because the check itself was corrupted. Futurism breaks down how the con poisoned the AI that was supposed to catch it.
Google’s AI Overview — The Notary That Read Fiction and Called It Fact
Love’s best defense was not a fake jersey or a rented car. It was an AI answer box. He posted a screenshot of a Google AI Overview that declared, in the confident tone of a search result, that “Daejon Love is a wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers.” Then he told viewers the only honest thing in the whole story: “That’s Google. That’s not me, that’s Google.” Prosecutors found no evidence that he hacked anything or manipulated Google directly. He simply polluted the internet with enough fake evidence that the machine drank from the well and read his own fiction back as independent fact. He did not break the search engine. He weaponized it by accident, and it did the vouching for him. The Los Angeles Times first reported the AI Overview screenshots.
There is a comfortable way to read all this, and it is the wrong one. The comfortable reading says this is a story about a scammer and 26 gullible women. But the women were not gullible — they were diligent. They checked, and the most trusted search engine on earth overruled their doubts. The machine did not lie to Daejon Love. It lied for him, and 26 women paid $1.3 million to be told their instincts were wrong by an AI that had never watched a single down of football. Romance scams will always find people who want to believe. What changed this year is that the machine that was supposed to be the referee is now, occasionally, the accomplice.
Sources: U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Oregon, Los Angeles Times, Futurism, ESPN, The Guardian.