The FBI is on the lookout for extra attainable victims of Aurora Phelps, a girl indicted in Nevada for allegedly luring a number of males on relationship apps to Mexico, drugging them and stealing their monetary data.
Aurora Phelps as seen in United States of America v. Aurora Phelps court docket doc, quantity 2:23-cr-0167-CDS-DJA, in U.S. District Court docket for the District of Nevada.
U.S. District Court docket for the District of Nevada.
In keeping with court docket paperwork filed in October 2023, 43-year-old Phelps, who’s also referred to as Aurora Flores, Aurora Velasco and Aurora Alvarez, is linked to not less than two deaths and one disappearance. She is accused of befriending older males she met in individual or on-line and having access to their financial institution, social safety or retirement accounts by typically drugging them.
FBI asks victims of alleged romance rip-off to return ahead
Investigators posted a number of pictures of Phelps, together with a screenshot of the relationship app Tinder exhibiting the long-, brown-haired girl with a brief blurb that stated, partly, “I am looking for friends. No fake people.”
Aurora Phelps Tinder profile, in accordance with the FBI.
FBI
The unsealed indictment by a grand jury in Nevada charged Phelps with wire fraud, mail fraud, financial institution fraud, identification theft and kidnapping. Phelps was taken into custody in September 2023 in Mexico, in accordance with the movement to unseal, the place she remained pending extradition to the U.S.
FBI Particular Agent In Cost Spencer Evans described the allegations as “romance scam on steroids,” CBS affiliate KLAS reported.
Aurora Phelps’ alleged victims
In keeping with a 21-count superseding indictment, Phelps allegedly met one sufferer in July 2021 on an internet relationship service, happening dates with him over the following two months as she “attempted to persuade him to travel with her to Mexico.”
In November 2021, Phelps met him at his home, the place they ordered lunch for supply, and he or she allegedly “caused him to consume a prescription drug without his knowledge and consent,” the indictment learn. She then allegedly left the aged man principally unconscious for the following 5 or so days, stealing his iPhone, iPad, driver’s license and financial institution playing cards and utilizing the data to promote his Apple inventory — value roughly $3.3 million — on E-Commerce. Nonetheless, she was unable to take away the cash from his account, the indictment stated.
Aurora Phelps
FBI
In 2022, Phelps met one other aged man on-line. This man then met Phelps in individual at a Las Vegas restaurant the place she allegedly gave him remedy and different substances that “caused him to become lethargic and confused,” the indictment stated.
She is once more accused of having access to the person’s monetary accounts, utilizing his American Categorical bank card, influencing him to fly along with her to Mexico Metropolis and utilizing his Wells Fargo card to lease a lodge room. A number of days later, Phelps returned to the U.S. with out the second sufferer, who had died within the lodge, prosecutors alleged.
Along with the bank card utilization, Phelps additionally allegedly transferred $7,000 from the sufferer’s Capital One account to purchase a motorbike and made two different wire transfers of roughly $1,530 and $2,319 into her personal account and her husband’s. The sufferer’s Social Safety account password had additionally been modified allegedly by Phelps.
In December 2021, the alleged scammer met a 3rd sufferer on the Onerous Rock Resort in Guadalajara, Mexico, the place she additionally resided, the court docket doc detailed.
“She left the hotel with him, and caused him to disappear,” the indictment learn, void of further particulars.
All through the next 12 months, Phelps would switch the third sufferer’s month-to-month social safety funds to herself and steadily took cash from the sufferer’s checking account by making purchases and withdrawals from ATMs, prosecutors alleged. She can also be accused of taking his BMW and allegedly tried to make herself a beneficiary on the sufferer’s union retirement account.
The final sufferer listed within the federal indictment was discovered lifeless on his lavatory ground in Guadalajara, Mexico, a day after prosecutors declare he went on a date with Phelps on or about Could 30, 2022.
If convicted on all counts, Phelps faces a most statutory penalty of life in jail, in accordance with prosecutors.
Extra from CBS Information
