A woman allegedly used online dating apps to lure at least four older men to meet her in person, then drugged them with sedatives and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in a "sinister" romance scheme, FBI officials in Las Vegas said Friday. The AP reports three of the men died, and 43-year-old Aurora Phelps, a dual citizen of Mexico and the US, has been charged in one of their deaths. Phelps, who is in custody in Mexico, faces 21 counts, including wire fraud, identity theft, and one count of kidnapping resulting in death.
"This is a romance scam on steroids," said Spencer Evans, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Las Vegas division. One of the four victims, who were targeted in 2021 and 2022, awoke from a coma after Phelps gave him prescription sedatives over the course of a week, Evans added. In one instance, Phelps is alleged to have kidnapped a victim by heavily sedating him and taking him across the Mexican border in a wheelchair and then to a Mexico City hotel room, where he was later found dead. Evans said that after incapacitating her victims, Phelps stole their cars, withdrew money from their bank accounts, used their credit cards to purchase luxury items and gold, and even tried to access social security and retirement accounts.
According to the indictment, Phelps met one man in July 2021, went on lunch dates with him and that November ordered lunch to his house and slipped him a prescription drug. While he was "mostly unconscious" for about five days, Phelps gained access to his accounts and stole his iPhone, iPads, driver's license, and bank cards, according to the indictment. She also allegedly accessed his E-Trade account and sold Apple stock worth about $3.3 million, though she was unable to withdraw that money.
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Authorities believe Phelps used popular dating apps including Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble to find her targets. The men were lonely and looking for companionship and went on multiple dates with Phelps before she stealthily gave them sedatives, according to Evans. "It's folks that are out looking for love that ran into something far more sinister," he said. The FBI is aware of more alleged victims in the US and Mexico, Evans said, and is making information about the case public, including suspected aliases, in hopes of identifying others who "fell victim to her scams and whose trust in her may have cost them their life." If convicted on every charge, Phelps faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
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