Darjean Love’s scam worked incredibly well. Until it didn’t.
Via Kalyn Kahler of ESPN, the FBI has identified 35 more potential victims of the fraud allegedly perpetrated by Love and Taylor Chan. The total number of possible victims now exceeds 60.
“We were surprised how many people were victimized in such a short period of time and then to have that many more come forward,” FBI agent Doug Olson said at a news conference, per Kahler. “It’s a large volume for just a couple of subjects. Our concern is that this fraud could be replicated by other individuals that are out there victimizing other people in similar schemes.”
The FBI believes even more potential victims could be identified.
“We don’t want anyone to be fearful of coming forward,” Olson said, “certainly not for fear of embarrassment or anything like that, because we want to help them and we want to make sure that this doesn’t happen to anybody else.”
Love, 35, and Chan, 18, allegedly stole more than $1.3 million, with Love posing as a 49ers player. Chan posed as Love’s financial adviser.
“The victims in this case were targeted precisely because they were trusting, responsible people who they believed were building genuine relationships and legitimate financial futures,” Olson said. “They were deliberately manipulated through an extremely sophisticated scheme that blended fake personas, fabricated investment accounts, staged video calls and AI-reinforced false identities.”
A 49ers source told Kahler that the team was not aware of Love, and that it had not received any reports about him before learning about the situation from the FBI in August.
And while most realize that anything that seems too good to be true probably is, our nature can make us susceptible to getting scammed. Hopefully, the potential victims won’t fear ridicule for seeking justice — that alone could cause them and other victims of other scams to say nothing for fear of being embarrassed.
They’re the victims. They deserve no scrutiny for being on the wrong side of a criminal enterprise that was very successful. Until, again, it wasn’t.
