I’m reading a court story that stops me cold: a man built an entire fake identity as a San Francisco 49ers player, complete with team gear, training footage, and a $30 million fake bank balance, and used it to defraud 26 women out of $1.3 million over several years. What really got me was the detail buried further down: when investigators searched his name on Google, the results actually seemed to confirm he really was a 49ers player.

It wasn’t a deepfake or an AI-generated video that fooled people here, not exactly. It was a man who stole real footage of other NFL players and relabeled it as his own, built a fake financial history with an app, and was convincing enough that even search engines got confused about what was real.

So I looked into it. Here's what I found.

A Man Faked Being an NFL Player to Scam Women Out of $1.3 Million — Even Google Believed Him

FABRICATED IDENTITY — He never played in the NFL. Stolen footage and a fake bank balance made the lie convincing enough to fool search engines too.

Federal prosecutors charged 35-year-old Daejon Labrayae Love and his 18-year-old accomplice, Taylor Jamie Chan, with wire fraud this week, alleging the pair ran a romance scam beginning in February 2022 that targeted women across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and California. Love met most of his victims on dating apps like Hinge, Bumble, and Tinder, presenting himself as either a wealthy 49ers player or a Swiss real estate developer, while Chan posed as his financial advisor on three-way FaceTime calls to help sell the lie.

Love's fake persona relied on more than just claims. According to an FBI affidavit, he took screen-recorded videos of legitimate NFL players, stripped out the original posters' information, and presented the footage as his own, sharing it roughly 185 times, including directly with alleged victims. He also used an app called Fake Bank Account Pro to generate fabricated bank and investment balances, at one point showing a supposed account worth more than $30 million, to convince women he had the money to invest on their behalf.

The deception went far enough to confuse more than just his victims. Court documents show that when investigators searched Love's name on Google in January, the results "did, in fact, sometimes depict Love as a player for the 49ers," pulling information from the team's own roster page alongside his fabricated online presence. His Instagram accounts, built around the fake persona, generated similar misleading search results.

Love went by several aliases throughout the scheme, including Jordan Love, Jon Love, and Avril Lyto Love, on top of his real name. He and Chan were arrested at the Boise Airport and are scheduled to make their first court appearance in Portland.