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Happy U.S. Open to all who celebrate.
If you haven’t read my interview with Hard Court’s Jessica Schiffer, I recommend you do that ASAP.
Today’s newsletter isn’t dedicated to the tournament. Instead, we’re focusing on one of the craziest off-the-field stories in sports that I’ve heard in a long time.
And this is coming from someone who is a Sports Gossip Expert!
The NFL season hasn’t even started yet and we’re already getting so much mess. For some reason, a lot of this mess is coming from the San Francisco 49ers.
Their coach got in a car crash (that wasn’t disclosed for 11 days by the team) and their owner was arrested on suspicion of engaging in prostitution, but the biggest story from the 49ers’ organization has to do with a man named Daejon Love who claimed to be a player on the team, but was actually just scamming innocent victims out of over $1 million and was just arrested by the FBI.
I spoke with one of Love’s alleged victims who has been running an anonymous Instagram account dedicated to spreading awareness about his behavior since 2024.
Before we get to that interview, let me catch you up on what you need to know about this wildddd story that is primed for a Netflix/30 For 30/Inside Edition crossover unlike anything anyone has ever seen.
U.S. Attorney's office in the District of Oregon, Love and his co-conspirator, Taylor Chan, were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud after they reportedly created fake investments to defraud dozens of women.
Chan acted as Love’s financial advisor to solicit money from women that Love met mostly online via dating apps.
Love often pretended to be an NFL player or a real estate investor, according to the FBI.
Love posted videos of him working out in full 49ers gear, despite the fact that his footwork looks like how I would warm up when I played volleyball as a teenager and not the footwork of a professional athlete.
Love would also pose with 49ers fans, pretend to sign an NFL contract, and even celebrated his birthday with a 49ers-themed cake.
I feel like I am being served a new photo, video, or voice note from this man every two seconds on my feed.
While the FBI has identified 26 victims, they believe there are many more victims.
Based on what one of the alleged victims told me, there almost certainly are.
This story has so many layers and I feel like what we know so far is just scratching the surface…
An Interview With One Of The 49ers Scammer’s Alleged Victims
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
To get a better grasp of this saga that keeps unfolding by the day, I reached out to the woman who has been running an Instagram account warning other potential victims of Love’s behavior since 2024.
She spoke with me anonymously over DMs and shared how she first met Love in 2023, how Love allegedly tried to get money from her, how she’s feeling since the arrests, and more.
What led you to start the account in the first place? I saw the first post is from August 2024. Was that when you created the account?
Yes, I created the account in August 2024, but the investigating started in 2023.
There was another account ran by another woman in 2023, she reached me and multiple other women with her account that was dedicated to exposing him.
We worked together to get more info on Daejon. Eventually, Daejon managed to get her account removed.
She didn’t want to continue after that, so I started up the page again on my own and started fresh reaching as many potential victims as possible.
Were you also a victim of Daejon's?
Yes, I am a victim myself.
Is that how you were connected to the woman who ran the other account in 2023?
We connected over the shared experience, another lady helped us, so it was us three.
We lived in the same area at the time and we managed to go to the police to see if we could report Daejon.
They couldn’t do much about it at the time. They had only given us a link to report it to the FBI, because they said his actions were being committed in other states, so it would be a bigger process (the link that’s still in my bio is what they gave us back then to share).
I continued to share it throughout the years and, eventually, many more women came forward and started submitting their reports.
I saw that many of his victims he found on dating apps. Was that also the case with you?
We didn’t meet on a dating app like a lot of the other women did.