The "Black Widow" of Las Vegas: How Aurora Phelps Allegedly Turned Dating Apps Into a Killing Ground

For three years, federal investigators say, a Las Vegas woman ran one of the most disturbing romance schemes the FBI has encountered — one that blended catfishing, drugging, and identity theft into what one agent called "a romance scam on steroids."

In a February 2025 bulletin, the FBI identified the suspect as Aurora Phelps, a 44-year-old dual U.S.-Mexico citizen who also went by the names Aurora Velasco, Aurora Flores, and Aurora Alvarez. Investigators said Phelps either met victims through online dating apps or exploited people she already knew, using those relationships to steal personal information between roughly 2019 and 2022. She would then allegedly use that stolen information to access victims' bank, Social Security, and retirement accounts — and, according to the FBI, she would sometimes drug her victims without their knowledge in order to obtain it. While elderly men were her primary targets, agents said she was known to target people of all ages, including women.

One of her alleged victims, 67-year-old retiree Robert Erbach, met Phelps on Tinder and dated her for about three months before she was invited to a hotel in Guadalajara, Mexico, in December 2021. Erbach was later found dead near Guadalajara, and roughly $50,000 had been withdrawn from his accounts. Investigators allege a similar pattern with another victim, a man Phelps met via a dating app in November 2022; prosecutors say she heavily sedated him, transported him across the U.S.-Mexico border, and brought him to a Mexico City hotel room, where he was later found dead. Authorities also allege Phelps accessed a separate victim's brokerage account and attempted to liquidate roughly $3.3 million in Apple stock.

At a press conference, FBI officials said Phelps would drug victims with dangerous doses of prescription sedatives and other controlled substances after meeting them online, then, once they were incapacitated, steal their cars, access their bank and brokerage accounts, use their credit cards for luxury purchases, and even attempt to raid their Social Security and retirement funds. Of eleven identified possible victims, three were found dead shortly after encounters with Phelps, and one man reportedly spent five days in a coma after being drugged.

Phelps was indicted by a federal grand jury in Las Vegas on 21 counts, including wire fraud, mail fraud, identity theft, and kidnapping — one kidnapping charge tied directly to a victim's death — and faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted on all counts in the U.S. But American prosecutors have had to wait their turn: Phelps was first arrested and tried in Mexico, where the case centered on the death of Robert Erbach. She was convicted there and, according to a June 2026 Los Angeles Times report, received a 37-year Mexican prison sentence.

She's now expected to be extradited to the United States to face the federal charges, though as of the most recent reporting, no extradition date has been set. Investigators believe there may be additional victims who haven't yet come forward — a detail that keeps this case, unusually, still actively unfolding even after a foreign conviction has already been secured.