The most important word in Daejon Love‘s alleged four-year con was one of the smallest on his Instagram page.
Undrafted.
He did not claim to be a star. He claimed to be the kind of player nobody would recognize, and prosecutors say that is exactly how it worked. Love, 35, was arrested by the FBI on Aug. 24 at the Boise airport and charged in Portland, Oregon, with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud. Federal prosecutors allege he posed as a San Francisco 49ers wide receiver and a wealthy investor to defraud at least 26 women across four states out of more than $1.3 million. A criminal complaint is an accusation only, and Love is presumed innocent.
The props tell part of it. A woman told investigators he wore a 49ers jersey to their first date. Another said he kept a team helmet in his car. He had spent more than $1,160 at a custom-helmet vendor to get it. He filmed himself signing what looked like a 49ers employment contract, draped in jewelry, promising he would play wide receiver.
But look at the persona the other way, and something colder comes into focus. Almost every piece of it was built to answer a question before anyone could ask it.
The man who allegedly faked an entire career as a 49ers player and then defrauded 26 women out of more than $1.3 million might be the craziest NFL story of the year 😭 pic.twitter.com/C9FhRpeqgJ
— NFL Retweet (@NFLRT) August 28, 2026
A résumé with no loose ends
Start with the doubts a normal person would have, and watch how each one already had a reply waiting.
No draft history, no college stats anyone could find? He went undrafted, and fought his way onto the roster. His Instagram bio said as much: NFL wide receiver, 49ers, undrafted.
Never seen him play on television? He was injured, then navigating free agency. His page even had an “NFL Journey” section, with entries labeled Free Agency, Year 1 and Super Bowl.
How does a man nobody has heard of have NFL connections at all? Prosecutors say he told one woman he was related to Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love. It was a name he also used as one of his aliases, alongside Jon Love and Avril Lyto Love.
That last claim is the tell. He did not say he was a famous player. Anyone can disprove that in ten seconds. He said he was related to one, and there is no page you can open to check whether a stranger is somebody’s cousin. It is the rare claim the internet cannot fact-check, and it did precisely one job: it explained the connections without offering anything to verify.
Where he did need proof of the game itself, prosecutors say he borrowed it. Investigators found screen-recordings of real NFL players lifted from those players’ own accounts, sometimes with the original poster’s name stripped off, which Love allegedly passed around as footage of himself. The evidence of a career came from careers that belonged to other men.
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Every rung of the fake career worked the same way. Undrafted explained the missing stats. Injured explained the missing games. Free agency explained the missing team. A vague family tie explained the connections. The story never claimed the kind of fame that leaves a paper trail, so there was no paper trail to come up empty.
Daejon Love posed as an 49ers player and staged a fake NFL contract signing, using it to scam over 26 women out of $1.3 million pic.twitter.com/gmUbOMSyfR
— Daily Loud (@DailyLoud) August 28, 2026
The second man
The football was only the opening. Prosecutors say the real machine was money.
Once a woman believed in the player, Love allegedly introduced a second character: an 18-year-old named Taylor Jamie Chan, who posed as his financial adviser. Over three-way FaceTime calls, Chan would present new investment opportunities, and Love would show victims their supposed gains climbing on a trading app.
According to prosecutors, the app was running its demo mode, the practice setting where users trade fake money to learn. The numbers going up were numbers that did not exist. When a woman had no more to give, prosecutors say, Love would stop answering. Some had taken out personal loans to invest. Not one, authorities said, ever saw a return.
Chan is also charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud, and is presumed innocent.
What the story was really selling
It is easy to read the helmet and the cake and decide 26 women simply missed the obvious. The allegations suggest something harder to sit with.
They were not asked to believe in a superstar. They were asked to believe in a grinder. An undrafted guy, dinged up, waiting on his shot, building something real with them along the way. That version does not trip the alarm that a Christian McCaffrey claim would. It sounds like a man being humble about a modest career, and humility reads as honesty.
The FBI says there are likely more victims who have not come forward, and has asked anyone with information to contact 1-800-CALL-FBI.
The lie that worked was not that he was somebody. It was that he was almost nobody, which is a much easier thing to be.
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