There is a lot that goes into the story besides Daejon Love just telling people that he played wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers. He walked into barbershops with a custom helmet tucked under his arm, showed up to restaurants and nightclubs in full team gear, and posted beach workout videos meant to pass as pro-level conditioning. FBI records show he spent more than $1,000 at a specialty shop called Green Gridiron just to get that helmet right, then bought prop money for fake stacks of cash for good measure.
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No wonder many are shocked by that mix of nerve and specificity, and that includes Jason Williams. The 2006 NBA champion was on the Hoopin and Hollerin podcast when his co-hosts filled him in on Love’s case.
Federal prosecutors allege the 35-year-old scammed at least 26 women out of roughly $1.3 million by posing as a 49ers receiver. Williams sat in disbelief as they walked through it, from the helmet-everywhere routine down to the shaky beach workout clips Love filmed to sell the act.
“He got the helmet, bro. What you talking about? That’s all I need,” he joked, before landing on the question that’s followed this case since it broke. “I’m saying, can’t they just pull up the motherf—ing roster?”
Williams argued that real players don’t walk out of a practice facility in their own gear, let alone show it off at a nightclub, and the hosts pointed out the workout videos carried none of the explosiveness you’d expect from an actual NFL receiver.
“Nah, how did he trick these ladies, bro?” Williams asked.
It’s a fair question. But what actually happened is far more complicated.
Federal prosecutors in Oregon and the FBI charged Love, full name Daejon Labrayae Love, who also went by “Jon Love,” “Avril Lyto Love,” and “Jordan Love,” along with 18-year-old Taylor Jamie Chan, with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud.
According to FBI documents, the two ran a romance and financial scheme between 2022 and 2026 across California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Love found women on dating platforms and worked slowly, with talk of marriage and a future family, before introducing the version of himself built to close the deal, AKA an NFL receiver with a real estate portfolio, backed by bank statements and investment records generated through apps designed to fake that kind of paperwork.
Once a woman was emotionally invested, Love brought in Chan, introduced as his personal financial adviser, and the two worked together to get her to put money into various investments. When victims ran out of money or began asking too many questions, prosecutors say Love blocked them to move on to the next target. And yes, he also worked the search engines, manipulating results so that people typing his name into Google would sometimes land on pages tying him to the 49ers.
Still, not every woman missed it. One who encountered him in 2021, when he introduced himself as “Jonathan Love” and claimed to come from a wealthy family in Switzerland, grew suspicious early and stopped responding. He kept trying anyway, still claiming NFL status and sending her doctored posts.
She checked the metadata and found that some of the footage had been screen-recorded, which made her suspect Love hadn’t filmed it himself. That was enough for her to block him for good, though she didn’t learn how wide he cast his net until his arrest made news. She told reporters she felt for the women who hadn’t caught it, adding that “if he says that he’s an NFL player, you could have looked him up on the roster to see that he’s not there.”
Retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent Lance Leising, who has worked cases like this one, argued that the psychology matters more than the paperwork ever does. Once someone establishes real emotional trust, he explained, targets become far more willing to hand over money, no matter how thin the cover story looks from the outside.
Love and Chan were arrested by federal agents at the Boise Airport on August 24, 2026, with prosecutors saying he had a 49ers helmet with him and was in Idaho to meet new victims. Both remain in federal custody as the case moves forward.
Williams, for his part, said he can’t picture drawing that kind of attention to himself. He won’t wear his own Heat jersey out in public, and he once sprinted up a staircase inside a Target just to dodge a fan who recognized him.
“Never in my life would I do that,” he said. “I don’t want nobody to know who the f— I am.”