William Phelps was at work when he received a call from the FBI saying he had to go home immediately.
It was December 2023 and his wife, Aurora Phelps, had a major problem and had something to do with the fraud scheme. Around 12 agents turn his apartment upside down and search for evidence in their case, William Phelps will not see his wife again.
That is, until this week, when William came to learn the scope of allegations against his wife. According to federal prosecutors, Aurora was the perpetrator of a deadly romance scam, connecting with older men on the internet, and then stole them from their bank accounts. According to the FBI, one man was left in coma after meeting Aurora and three other people died.
“We’ve known each other for 14 years, but she’s never shown any signs or ounces of this,” William said in an interview with the Times. “If she did that, damn, she put it on me.”
Prosecutors held charges this month in Nevada Federal Court, and this month they charged Aurora with accusations that more than 20 counts of office fraud, bank fraud, temptation and temptation led to death. . She is being held in Mexico in the face of extradition to the US
According to prosecutors, Aurora met her first victim, an elderly man, through an online dating service in July 2021. The two have lunch in Las Vegas, and Aurora tries to convince them to travel to Mexico with the man.
That November, Aurora went to the man’s house, where he had lunch there, gave him drugs, and lost consciousness for most of the five days, prosecutors said in the charges. She then stole the man’s “iPhone, iPad, driver’s license and bank card. According to the accusations, he gained access to a financial account and without his knowledge and consent. He carried out financial transactions made without his knowledge and consent.
She also tried to sell $3.3 million worth of Apple stock owned by the man and withdraw money from his electronic trade account.
In December 2021, Aurora met another man at the Hard Rock Hotel in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Prosecutors did not tell the man exactly what happened, but Aurora was said to have “disappeared him,” so they counted him among her victims. Over the next year, she withdrawn the ATM from his account and transferred money from his account to her, prosecutors said. She even stole his BMW, according to federal authorities.
In May 2022, she met another man in Guadalajara. The day after the boy met Aurora, when he called him and he didn’t answer, Mexican police went to the man’s house. He was found dead on the floor, prosecutors said.
“The next few days, [Aurora] You attempted to use or execute a transaction [the man’s] Financial accounts including usage [his] Financial account to buy gold coins [Aurora] It was now mailed to her house,” the prosecutor wrote in the indictment.
A few months later, in November 2022, Aurora connected with another man in Las Vegas through a dating app. She is said to have given him medicine and made numerous purchases at his American Express. She then said he was still under the influence of drugs and led his daughter to Mexico City.
Investigators said she pushed him across the border into Mexico in a wheelchair due to his drunkenness.
She used the man’s credit card to rent a hotel room in Mexico City and returned to Las Vegas a few days later, prosecutors said.
The man was found dead in his hotel room. Next month, Aurora withdraws the money and transfers it from the man’s bank account to her and William’s account. She also used his money to buy plane tickets, hotel rooms and motorcycles, according to the accusations.
His wife was unknown to him by William, who thought she was a normal housewife who loved cleaning songs and cleaning the house.
When they first met, she worked at IHOP as a server, so he knew she was in the band with her ex-husband. But beyond that, he had no information about his own wife, who was a double citizen of Mexico and the United States.
He knew that she grew up in Mexico with her parents, partly in America. She spoke only broken English, which made it difficult for the two to communicate.
However, suddenly, when the FBI attacked his apartment, he said he was a suspect in the incident.
Aurora has transferred $64,000 from one of the victims to William’s account, prosecutors said. William said he fought Aurora on the transfer. She told him it came from a savings account in Mexico, but he didn’t understand why she needed to put it in his account. But he let her do it anyway.
“She was the type of woman that was either her way or the highway. You start an argument with her and you’re not going to win,” he said.
The FBI let him take the polygraph test and William said he passed it.
William said he was shocked by the news that his wife may have been involved in multiple deaths.
“She’s not the one who kills someone or kills someone, but then she doesn’t know who is who,” he said.
He remembered that he had returned from a long day at work. Aurora was always on the phone.
Now he wonders what she was doing about it.
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