From Arkansas mom to suspect in Las Vegas ‘romance scam’ case 12%
By Doug Kari15%
7/24/2026, 6:00:20 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 22 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Authority, and Confirmation Bias, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 12.5% saturation with 123 hits. Analysis detected 1,008 faulty-reasoning hits from 986 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 28.7% and a BS Rank of 12% (19,342 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 88.40% of the article peer group.
BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Before Las Vegas resident Aurora Phelps allegedly began a deadly crime spree of seducing, drugging and robbing older men, she was living in Arkansas and raising her three boys.
How Phelps evolved from an Arkansas mom to a crime suspect in two countries is a key question arising from the September 2023 indictment by a federal grand jury in Las Vegas.
The indictment, unsealed last year, charges her with fraud, identity theft and kidnapping — including kidnapping leading to death.
Authorities claim at least three victims died in what one official described as a “romance scam on steroids.”
Records in four court cases in Arkansas reveal possible motives: financial woes, a failed marriage and a custody dispute.
In a 2015 letter to the court in her divorce case, she also shared her thoughts on morality: “Sometimes people who think that they are right, could be wrong.
… Bad people do good things, and good people do bad things.”
She sang, he played guitar
Born Aurora Flores in Los Angeles in June 1981, she and her brother, Abraham Flores, grew up across the border in Guadalajara.
Blanca Jimenez, a friend of Aurora’s when they were teenagers, told the Los Angeles Times that she met Aurora at a karaoke club in Guadalajara and that they began cowriting songs.
Jimenez didn’t respond to interview requests for this story.
Records in the divorce case establish that in 2006, Aurora married Alejandro Alvarez in Guadalajara.
In her 2015 letter to the court, she wrote that “Alejandro wanted to come to United States and live there to follow his music career dream.”
Alejandro Alvarez declined to be interviewed for this story.
The musical couple relocated to Benton County, Arkansas.
In 2007, Aurora gave birth to her first son, and over the next five years, she and Alejandro had two more boys.
Meanwhile, the couple bought a home on a suburban street in Rogers.
But their family life soon fell into disarray.
‘We lost our house’
Phelps’ LinkedIn page reveals that she worked various service jobs, including as a pharmacy technician at Walmart.
In her 2015 letter to the divorce court, she said she quit working to take care of the boys.
“Alejandro was getting frustrated,” she wrote.
“He had no time to work on his music because of his job.”
Then financial disaster struck.
“We lost our house,” the letter further stated.
“Our situation got worse as in our marriage, and as a family in whole, we could barely talk to each other.”
In 2012, the couple filed a petition for bankruptcy, listing more than $30,000 in consumer debts for purchases such as a Fender Stratocaster Guitar and Gibson amplifier, and stating that their home was worth less than the debts secured against it.
Move to Las Vegas
As her marriage crumbled, the troubled mom left her three sons with their father and moved to Las Vegas.
“I had no options but to move to Las Vegas,” she said in her letter to the divorce court.
“For not only a new life for me, but a brighter future for my children.”
Records in the divorce case indicate that in Las Vegas, she worked for West Gate Resorts, Wyndham Resorts, and as a server and cashier at an IHOP.
After the divorce became final in 2016, she remarried in Las Vegas and soon gave birth to a daughter.
But in 2017, around the time that Alvarez became engaged to marry another woman, Phelps returned to Arkansas with her new husband.
In a petition to the divorce court seeking joint custody of her sons instead of visitation, Phelps said she moved from Las Vegas “for the sole purpose of being able to spend time with” her children.
Alleged attempt to frame Alvarez
In June 2017, Phelps filed an emergency petition with the divorce court seeking immediate custody, claiming that during a visitation her sons had disclosed that they had been “physically and psychologically abused” by their father.
After holding a hearing and weighing the evidence, the judge ruled in Alvarez’s favor.
Five weeks later, Phelps allegedly tried to frame him.
The affidavit also alleged that Phelps had enlisted her brother to spoof Alvarez’s phone number and leave threatening messages on her cellphone, so she could claim that Alvarez was terrorizing her.
In 2018, Phelps pleaded guilty to filing a false police report and was sentenced to three years’ probation.
After that, she returned to Las Vegas, allegedly violating the terms of her probation.
Charged with victimizing her friend
In June 2019, Phelps returned to Arkansas for a visit.
According to an affidavit filed by the Rogers Police Department in a second criminal case against her, she checked into the Hilton Garden Inn in Bentonville and invited her friend Juana Sandoval to drop by.
Per the affidavit, after Sandoval began drinking a beer, she suddenly passed out and awoke hours later “unable to move her body off the floor.”
The next day, hotel staff “wheeled her out in a wheelchair.”
Meanwhile, Sandoval’s credit card went missing.
The affidavit alleges that Phelps used the credit card to buy an Allegiant Air ticket to Las Vegas and to run up thousands of dollars in unauthorized charges.
Convicted in Mexico
Phelps was charged in Arkansas with credit card fraud and separately with probation violations in the false police report case.
Both cases remain pending.
In 2021, while on the lam in Las Vegas, Phelps allegedly began preying on older men by drugging them and looting their assets.
Last month, Phelps was convicted in Mexico of charges arising from the disappearance of a victim she allegedly targeted there — a retired American expat.
She is currently in custody in Guadalajara and, following legal proceedings there, is expected to be extradited to the U.S.
Doug Kari is an author and journalist who writes about true crime.
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