Aurora Phelps, 43, a Las Vegas woman with dual citizenship in the US and Mexico, has been charged in a count indictment for her alleged romance scheme, where investigators say she used online dating apps to lure and drug mainly older men to gain access to their banks, cars, social security and retirement accounts. Phelps, who is in custody in Mexico, has been charged with seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of mail fraud, six counts of bank fraud, three counts of identity theft, one count of kidnapping and one count of kidnapping resulting in death, according to the federal indictment.
The charges can carry a sentence of up to life in prison. US prosecutors say they are working on extraditing her back to the US to face these charges. Three of the four victims identified in the indictment are dead, the FBI said, though the charges implicate Phelps in only one of the deaths. One elderly Nevada man allegedly fell victim to Phelps in early November when he met her on an online dating service.
When the purchases were declined, she prompted him to authorize them by talking to American Express. Prosecutors say Phelps then allegedly coaxed the drugged man to travel with her, pushed him across the US-Mexico border in a wheelchair and transported him to a hotel room in Mexico City, with her daughter tagging along, according to the FBI and the indictment. Authorities did not immediately explain how the group traveled hundreds of miles between the US border and Mexico City.
The man was found dead in the hotel room a few hours later, Evans said. The one living victim mentioned in the indictment survived and emerged from a five-day coma after Phelps allegedly administered large amounts of prescription sedatives to him over the course of a week, Evans said.
The FBI is seeking help in identifying other potential victims, who may have interacted with or been taken advantage of by Phelps, who, it says, used a long list of aliases over the years.
