Artificial intelligence’s command of online search results played a role in legitimizing the romance scam allegedly perpetrated by phony financial advisor Taylor Chan and Daejon Love, a 35-year-old who pretended to be a wealthy investor and NFL player for the San Francisco 49ers.
At least 26 victimized women were defrauded of more than $1.3 million sent to Chan and Love, who were both arrested in August on wire fraud and conspiracy charges. While their scheme began in 2022 and continued until last month, federal investigators found that the fake presence Love built for himself on social media was presented as truth by AI-powered search results.
“Due to Love’s false social media representations, search engines and artificial intelligence occasionally stated that Love was a bonafide 49ers player. In January 2026, investigators entered Love’s first and last name in search engines and found that results did, in fact, sometimes depict Love as a player for the 49ers,” reads an affidavit from FBI special agent Tyler Esswein.
Love posed in 49ers gear and conducted training videos across his social media alongside other depictions of a lavish lifestyle. Chan, 18, posed as his financial advisor as the duo collected money from women who were pursued by Love and claimed their funds would go into investments as part of their portrayed image of wealth.
Chan and Love’s case is not only a fraud story but also an “AI search story,” says Joe Anthony, president of Gregory, a public relations firm for the financial services industry.
“Federal investigators described something that should worry everyone in financial services: an alleged con artist whose fake identity was so well constructed that search engines and LLMs sometimes presented it as fact,” said Anthony. “Daejon Love allegedly built a fictional life as a San Francisco 49ers player out of the same signals that legitimate advisors use to build a real reputation: social profiles, video content, tags, mentions and the appearance of an audience.”
The federal investigation found that Love also made purchases from Useviral.com and Buzzoid, which are companies that sell followers, likes, and views for social media accounts.
“Buying an audience is a known gray-market tactic across business, including financial services marketing, and for regulated firms it carries serious compliance and reputational risk,” said Anthony, who noted his Gregory PR firm does not encourage or employ those tactics.
A screenshot in the complaint from federal prosecutors includes a January 2026 Google search of “daejon love 49ers” that shows a link to the official San Francisco 49ers player roster in between other results of Love’s social media profile. A TikTok video that tagged the San Francisco 49ers was captioned “Discover who Daejon Love texts the most among his 49ers teammates” and had nearly 100,000 views, according to the court documents.
“If your LinkedIn, your TikTok, and a few tagged posts all tell the same story, the algorithm sees consistency. And consistency is basically the only proxy these systems have for legitimacy,” AdvisorFinder CEO Jason Friedman told InvestmentNews. “Nobody at LinkedIn checks whether you actually play for the NFL before you list it as your job. Nothing anywhere in the pipeline cross-references that claim against a real roster.
Friedman co-founded AdvisorFinder, which maintains a leaderboard to score RIAs on their visibility across AI search engines. “Old-school search gave you ten links and let you judge each one. AI search blends everything into one confident answer,” added Friedman. “So three flimsy fake signals go in, and one authoritative-sounding sentence comes out. These systems don’t always check identity claims against real sources like an official team roster or the SEC’s database.”
Wealthtender's 2025 study of affluent households found that 96% of people who receive a personal referral to a financial advisor still research the advisor online before making contact. That survey also found that one in four affluent Americans are already starting their search for an advisor on ChatGPT or Gemini rather than Google.
“AI search is a corroboration engine, not a verification engine. It doesn't check whether something is true; it checks whether enough sources agree,” said WealthReach CEO and co-founder Michael Barrasso, whose startup launched a tool earlier this year to produce content for advisors that is geared towards improving their discovery by AI search algorithms.
To optimize their visibility on AI search, Barrasso says firms need a website that structures the advisor's name, firm, and CRD number from FINRA tied together in machine-readable data. They should also have a claimed and maintained Google Business Profile, verified client reviews, and the same name, address, and phone number everywhere the firm appears online.
Chan was not registered with FINRA BrokerCheck or the SEC's IAPD database, serving as a poignant reminder for investors to check those databases before assuming a financial advisor is who they say they are.
“Treat AI search as where you start, not where you decide. Anyone claiming to be a financial advisor should appear on BrokerCheck or the SEC's advisor search,” said Barrasso. “The AI companies should treat FINRA and SEC registries as authoritative sources for anyone described as a financial professional.”
Anthony added that “volume matters less than alignment” when it comes to AI search visibility practices. His PR firm launched Gregory Influence Engine last year to audit how financial firms appear on searches across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude or Google's AI overviews.
“The risk for wealth management is a trust gap. The industry's real verification infrastructure, BrokerCheck, IAPD and state regulators, is authoritative, but it is rarely the first thing an AI answer surfaces,” said Anthony. “A fabricated presence does not only hurt the people who lose money. It plants doubt around every legitimate advisor whose reputation must now compete with a well-built fiction that looks identical online.”
“It was a third party scam,” said the attorney representing the claimants.
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