Daejon Love did not just tell women he played for the San Francisco 49ers. According to the FBI affidavit in his federal fraud case, he told them he was born into one of the richest families in Switzerland, that he served as vice president of international affairs for his father’s company, and that his family held majority ownership in three Gucci stores in the United States. He said the money paid for three bodyguards and a personal chef. In one video he walked a woman through a home he called his, showed off designer clothes and bags, opened a safe he said held about $200,000 in cash, held up a watch he presented as a real Richard Mille, and pulled up a phone screen showing balances totaling more than $30 million.
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Prosecutors say those balances were made with apps. Investigators identified software including one called Fake Bank Account Pro, which lets anyone type in whatever number they want and display it like a real account. In at least one instance, according to the government, Daejon Love showed a woman the demo version of a trading platform, meaning practice money that does not exist, and presented it as his live portfolio.
The corporate story he told was just as detailed. He described a job where he handled hiring and firing for senior positions, managed relocations, renovations, permits and petitions, and personally authorized loans of a million dollars or more to established companies. He said his family were majority shareholders in Gucci locations in Dallas, South Beach and Manhattan, and claimed 65 percent equity in Calabasas and Belvedere. He said that once his father retired, he would take over the family’s domestic affairs and hire someone new to run the international side.
Almost none of that is structurally possible. Gucci stores are not sold off as individual investments to outside shareholders. The Gucci family itself has not owned the brand since 1993, when the last family shares went to the investment firm Investcorp, and the company today sits under the French luxury group Kering. There is no ownership stake in a Dallas Gucci store to buy. Calabasas and Belvedere are cities in California, not businesses, so there is no equity in them to hold at any percentage. The empire Daejon Love described falls apart on a single web search, and it still ran for more than four years.
Part of why it held up is that the internet backed him up. Court documents say his own social media posts were feeding search engines, and that Google’s AI results occasionally returned him as a real 49ers player. He then screenshotted those results and used them as proof.
Federal prosecutors in Oregon charged Love, 35, and 18-year-old Taylor Jamie Chan with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud. Wire fraud simply means using phones, texts, apps or the internet to trick someone out of money, and conspiracy means agreeing with someone else to do it. The FBI arrested both men in Boise, Idaho, on August 24. Prosecutors say the scheme started in February 2022 and ran until the day they were taken into custody.
The government says Chan played the role of Daejon Love’s financial adviser, messaging with him about investment opportunities so Love could screenshot the exchanges and forward them to women as proof the deals were real. Twenty six identified women across Oregon, Washington, Idaho and California sent roughly $1.3 million between them. Most met him on dating apps. When a woman said she did not have money to invest, prosecutors say he pushed her to take out a personal loan and promised to pay it back. None of the identified victims got a dollar back. When someone ran out of money or started asking too many questions, he blocked her.
One woman who met him in 2021, when he was going by Jonathan, told CBS News he claimed a private chef and a Swiss fortune back then too. She pulled away because it sounded too good to be true. He circled back for years anyway, reaching out again in 2024 to tell her he was in the NFL now.
Both men are charged, not convicted, and are presumed innocent until the case is proven. The 49ers and the NFL have both confirmed to investigators that Daejon Love was never employed by either one. Court filings say his financial records showed no legitimate income at all, and no payroll from the team he spent years claiming.
