For years she was a perfect wife. Then he learned of her arrest in a deadly dating app scheme

William Phelps was at work when he got the call from the FBI that he had to return home at once.

It was December 2023 and his wife, Aurora Phelps, was in big trouble, something to do with a fraud scheme. About a dozen agents turned his apartment upside down looking for evidence in their case, and William Phelps wouldn’t see his wife again.

That is, until this week, when William came to learn the scope of the allegations against his wife. According to federal prosecutors, Aurora was the perpetrator of a deadly romance scam, connecting with older men on the internet, then drugging them and stealing from their bank accounts. One man was left in a coma after his encounter with Aurora and three others died, according to the FBI.

“We’ve known each other for 14 years and she’s never shown a sign or an ounce of this,” said William in an interview with The Times. “If she did do it, damn, she put one over on me.”

Prosecutors unsealed an indictment in Nevada Federal Court this month charging Aurora with more than 20 counts related to the scheme, including charges of wire fraud, bank fraud, kidnapping and kidnapping resulting in death. She is being held in Mexico as she faces extradition to the U.S.

Aurora met her first victim, an elderly man, through an online dating service in July 2021, according to prosecutors. The two went on lunch dates in Las Vegas, and Aurora tried to convince the man to travel with her to Mexico.

In November of that year, Aurora went to the man’s home and had lunch delivered there, then drugged him, causing him to lose consciousness for the better part of five days, prosecutors said in the indictment. She then stole the man’s “iPhone, iPads, driver’s license, and bank cards; gained access to his financial accounts and conducted financial transactions using his financial accounts without his knowledge and consent, including transferring money from his accounts, and using his accounts to make online purchases from retailers,” according to the indictment.

She also sold $3.3 million worth of Apple stock the man owned and unsuccessfully attempted to withdraw the money from his E-Trade account.

In December 2021, Aurora met another man at the Hard Rock hotel in Guadalajara, Mexico.

While prosecutors did not say exactly what happened to the man, they count him among her victims because Aurora allegedly “caused him to disappear.” Over the course of the next year, she made ATM withdrawals from his account and transferred money from his accounts to hers, prosecutors said. She even stole his BMW, according to federal authorities.

In May 2022, she met another man in Guadalajara. When the man’s daughter called him the day after he met Aurora and he did not answer, Mexican police went to the man’s house. He was found dead on the floor, prosecutors said.

“Over the next several days, [Aurora] conducted or attempted to conduct transactions using [the man’s] financial accounts, including using [his] financial account to purchase a gold coin that [Aurora] caused to be mailed to her house,” prosecutors wrote in the indictment.

Months later, in November 2022, Aurora connected with another man in Las Vegas through a dating app. She allegedly drugged him and made numerous purchases on his American Express. Then she took the man, while he was still under the influence of drugs, to Mexico City with her daughter in tow, prosecutors said.

Investigators said she pushed him across the border into Mexico in a wheelchair due to his inebriated state.

She rented a hotel room in Mexico City using the man’s credit card and then returned to Las Vegas several days later, prosecutors said.

The man was found dead in the hotel room. Over the next month Aurora withdrew money and made transfers of money from the man’s bank account to her account and to William’s account. She also used his money to buy plane tickets, hotel rooms and a motorcycle, according to the indictment.

None of the details were known by William, who thought his wife was just a regular housewife who loved to sing and clean the house.

When they first met, she had worked at IHOP as a server and he knew that she had been in a band with her ex-husband, with whom she’d had three children. But beyond that he did not have much information about his own wife, who was a dual citizen of Mexico and the United States.

He knew she grew up partially in Mexico with her parents and partially in America. She only spoke broken English, which made it hard for the two of them to communicate.

But suddenly, when the FBI stormed his apartment, William said, he was a suspect in the case.

Aurora had transferred $64,000 from one of the victims into William’s account, prosecutors said. William said he fought with Aurora over the transfer. She told him it was coming from her savings account in Mexico and he didn’t understand why she needed to put it into his account. But he let her do it anyway.

“She was type of woman that it’s either her way or the highway. You start arguing with her and you’re not going to win,” he said.

The FBI made him take a polygraph test and William said he passed it.

William said he was shocked by the news that his wife might be involved in multiple deaths.

“She’s not that kind of a person to kill somebody or drug somebody, but then again you don’t know who anybody is,” he said.

He remembered coming home from long days at work. Aurora was always on her phone.

Now he wonders what she was doing on it.