The FBI has asked a television crime program to help hunt for potential victims of a Las Vegas woman they describe as a “predator without comparison,” accused of drugging elderly men with lethal doses of sedatives, stealing their life savings, and in some cases, allegedly leaving them dead.
Federal authorities say 43-year-old Aurora Phelps ran an international dating scheme that turned deadly, targeting older, vulnerable men across the United States and Mexico. The investigation has identified at least 11 victims, but agents believe this may only be the tip of the iceberg.
“After she got what she wanted, their assets, we believe she killed some of these subjects,” a federal agent said. “Someone could argue that she is a serial killer.”
The extraordinary request for public assistance marks an extremely rare collaboration between the FBI and a true-crime television program. The case is so unusual that investigators are breaking protocol to appeal directly to viewers who may have encountered Phelps under different aliases.
Phelps, who also went by the names Aurora Alvarez and Aurora Flores Velasco, used social media nicknames including Sissy, Boreas, Bori, and Laura to lure her targets. She is described as charming, polite, and easy to talk to, with an uncanny ability to shape her personality to match what each victim was seeking.
“She has the ability to turn on and off these different parts of her personality,” one investigator said. “It’s almost like there’s 10 different people in that one person.”
The alleged scheme was deceptively simple. Phelps would create dating profiles indicating interest in older men, respond quickly to their messages, and arrange in-person meetings. Once the relationship progressed, she would 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 her victims with dangerous amounts of sedatives.
“They would meet in person on lunch dates,” one family member recounted. “At one point they ordered food and left food unattended, came back and began to eat and then passed out.”
The investigation began with a missing persons report. In 2022, the son of John Weens, a retired engineer living in Las Vegas, reported his father missing after the family struggled to reach him by phone.
“We called the police to do a welfare check on him and they went in and said it looked like the place had been left in a hurry,” said Mike Weens, John’s son.
When Mike flew to Las Vegas two weeks later to investigate, he found a stack of old driver’s licenses on his father’s desk and a laptop open with odd purchases already being made. His father’s credit cards showed charges for designer goods from Dior and other luxury brands.
“My father would never buy these things,” he said.
John Weens had recently told his family he was tired of being lonely and was using dating apps. He was excited about meeting a woman he had connected with online.
“He was confident that he knew what he was doing,” his son said.
That woman was Aurora Phelps.
As agents began digging into the case, they discovered a history that stretched back years. Phelps was born in California but grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico. She moved to Arkansas as a young adult, where she married and later divorced her first husband, Alejandro Alvarez.
When Alvarez was granted custody of their three children, Phelps allegedly turned on him viciously. Investigators say she coached her brother in Mexico on how to spoof phone calls and send threatening texts to make it appear her ex-husband was harassing her.
“I can only hypothesize that she just wanted some revenge on her husband for having her children,” an investigator said.
Police saw through the alleged scheme and issued a warrant for Phelps’ arrest. Instead of facing charges, she skipped town and moved to Las Vegas, where she reinvented herself.
Former roommate Sergio Herrera described living with Phelps as a turbulent experience. Their arrangement ended when Phelps allegedly changed the locks on their shared apartment while Herrera was at work, requiring police intervention.
“She’s crazy,” said Blanca Jimenez, who knew Phelps from childhood and received warnings from friends about her behavior.
It was during this time that Phelps allegedly developed her method. Before targeting men, she reportedly drugged and robbed a female friend in Arkansas.
“She had met that lady in a hotel room and potentially drugged her,” an agent said. “The lady woke up from being unconscious alone in the hotel room to find her wallet gone and then saw charges on her credit card.”
That woman survived. But the alleged attack appears to have been a test case.
“She started moving into the dating world and using romance scams to lure in gentlemen that have a lot more money,” the investigator explained.
One of the first known victims was a retired film industry professional in his 60s living near Las Vegas. He matched with Phelps on a dating website and began meeting her for lunch dates about a year and a half before John Weens disappeared.
She insisted on coming to his home with food. He passed out after eating. For five days, he was held captive and repeatedly drugged.
“He recalled waking up briefly to her shoving more pills down his mouth,” Mike Weens said after speaking with the victim.
The man eventually regained consciousness, found a spare set of car keys, and crashed his car while trying to reach a hospital. He survived but suffered enormous financial losses. Phelps allegedly attempted to liquidate $3.
3 million from his E-Trade account and transferred $65,000 from his USAA account.
“He said that she tried to steal from his Apple account,” investigators said. “She was changing passwords and trying. She wasn’t successful on that, which is why I think she made sure the next people died.”
The next known victim was a retired stagehand named Robert “Bo” Erbaugh. A 44-year veteran of the entertainment industry who had worked with legends including Muddy Waters, Dolly Parton, U2, Guns N’ Roses, Ozzy Osbourne, Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, Genesis, and David Bowie, Erbaugh was living a peaceful retirement in Mexico.
Phelps allegedly approached him on the dating app Tinder, using the username “Sissy.” They arranged to meet at a restaurant in the Hard Rock Hotel.
When Bo’s family couldn’t reach him, they grew concerned. They received a text message written in broken English claiming Bo was moving to Ecuador and to stop looking for him. His family reported him missing anyway.
For over a year, there were no answers. Then the FBI, which had begun connecting the dots between Phelps and multiple missing elderly men, found a match.
“We were able to locate his body in a morgue in Mexico,” one agent said. “Mexico doesn’t hold on to all their bodies in a morgue all the time, and this was a John Doe to them. We were able to find his body and return it to the family.”
For investigators, finding Erbaugh became deeply personal. One night, Zach Franklin woke from a nightmare.
“I woke up from having a dream of victim three telling me, ‘Help me. Help me,'” he said. “I think everyone wrote off we’ll never find victim three’s body ever.
I guess that helped me hold on to hope that no, there’s something more here. We need to keep digging.”
The fourth known victim was Manuel “GG” Gus, a legendary figure loved by many in the expat community in Ajijic, Mexico. He was tall, handsome, well-spoken, and ran a food trailer business and a local ride-share service.
Gus spoke fluent Spanish and was well-known in his adopted community. He called his daughter religiously, every single day. When the calls stopped, she knew something was wrong.
“She tried calling him, no response, tried texting him, no response,” investigators said. “She became very concerned and called the local police in Mexico. The police entered the house to do a well-being check and found him deceased on the bathroom floor.”
Investigators found a charge to American Precious Metals Exchange for a gold coin shipped to Phelps’ address after Gus was already dead.
Gus had told friends he was dating a Mexican woman who spoke good English and was leaving her husband. Friends warned him to be careful.
“You are a target,” one friend told him. “No, I got this,” Gus replied.
Phelps allegedly had another victim who survived. A retired chiropractor living in Mexico met her on a dating application. When he returned home with her, she allegedly began rifling through his drawers while he was semi-conscious.
A housekeeper was present and became alarmed. Phelps claimed the man was drunk and needed to be submerged in water to wake up. The housekeeper called an ambulance and police.
“The victim says he doesn’t drink at all,” an agent said. “So he wouldn’t have been drunk. It would have had to be some other influence.”
That victim survived but lost $25,000 worth of jewelry, cash, and electronics.
John Weens, the man whose disappearance triggered the entire investigation, was actually the last known victim. Surveillance footage shows him at the Las Vegas airport, heading to Mexico, dressed in old sweats and without his glasses.
“He wasn’t dressed the way you would dress to go on a trip,” his son said. “He didn’t have his glasses.”
When he got off the plane, video showed him in a wheelchair. He was in such a state that he had to be wheelchaired off the aircraft.
“She did take him across the border in a wheelchair to the Tijuana airport through the tunnel that crosses the border,” investigators said.
Phelps checked into a hotel in Mexico City with Weens. He was found dead in the bathtub within days.
“Can you imagine someone who would 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 a victim, put him in a wheelchair, bring him across the border in the wheelchair?” one investigator said. “That’s just insanely audacious.”
Weens’ body was eventually found in a morgue in Mexico. DNA testing confirmed his identity, and his remains were returned to his family.
“This is where we would go fishing out here,” Mike Weens said, scattering flowers and saying prayers as he laid his father to rest at sea.
Phelps was arrested on March 20, 2023, in Mexico on charges connected to the death of Robert Erbaugh. She was indicted federally on September 13, 2023, on 21 counts including wire fraud, mail fraud, bank fraud, identity theft, and two counts of kidnapping, one resulting in death.
In Mexico, she was sentenced to 37 years and six months following her trial in the Erbaugh case. The FBI confirmed she will be extradited to the United States to face the federal indictment once proceedings in Mexico are complete.
“She’s looking at in the United States life in prison,” investigators said. “She’s going to spend the rest of her life in jail.”
The charges were unsealed February 20, 2025, to allow the FBI to appeal directly to the public. Investigators believe there may be additional victims who have not come forward due to embarrassment or fear.
“You’ve not just got, hey, I lost my money, but now I’ve got this fear of reporting it,” one agent said. “Do I really want to tell my daughter, my grandchildren, that I went onto a dating website and got scammed by somebody half my age?”
The FBI is asking anyone who may have encountered Phelps between approximately 2019 and 2022 to come forward. Red flags include unexplained fraudulent charges, purchases of luxury goods the victim would never buy, packages shipped to Las Vegas addresses, drugs found in a loved one’s system, or accident victims who didn’t drink.
“The public is our eyes and our ears,” an investigator said. “We can’t do what we do without the public’s cooperation.”
For the families of the known victims, the investigation has brought a measure of closure. But for the FBI, the hunt for unknown victims continues.
“This case is remarkable for a couple of different reasons,” one agent said. “One, how long she got away with this. Two, the fact that she was able to exploit these men at this level, and just the audacious nature.
She doesn’t care. She’ll do anything to anyone to get what she wants. She was an addict.
She was addicted to the hunt, the thrill of the hunt, perhaps even more than what she was gaining from the hunt. And that’s truly frightening.”
The FBI is asking anyone with information about Aurora Phelps or potential victims to contact them. A spokesperson emphasized that every piece of information, no matter how small, could be critical.
“It’s not just a story. It’s not just an investigation. It’s not just a prosecution,” one agent said.
“Real lives are involved here. And it matters.”
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