Who Is Ashlee Janae's Fiancé? Joe McCann Probed Over Influencer's Death

The fiancé of a lifestyle influencer known as Ashlee Jenae is being questioned by investigators following her death during a “dream” vacation in Africa, authorities said.

Joe McCann, a Miami-based entrepreneur and founder of crypto investment management firm Asymmetric Financial, is speaking with police detectives amid an ongoing investigation into the April 9 death of Ashly Robinson, a 31-year-old content creator who had more than 130,000 followers on Instagram.

Police in Zanzibar are also withholding McCann’s passport as the probe continues, investigators said Monday. No arrests have been made and the 45-year-old is speaking to investigators as a witness, BBC reported.

A website for Asymmetric Financial identifies McCann as a CEO with more than 25 years of experience on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, with previous roles at Microsoft, Passport Capital and NodeSource, a venture-backed startup that exited in 2019.

“Joe has been investing in web3 startups and trading crypto since 2016 and is an adviser to dozens of crypto-related startups,” McCann’s bio reads.

Newsweek reached out to McCann’s team, including general partner Dan Held, early Wednesday.

McCann bills himself as “just your average Joe” on GitHub, a developer platform where he lists prior appearance at industry conferences, including summits in Abu Dhabi, Singapore and Spain. The page also includes citations for several hedge fund performance awards.

On X, where McCann has more than 100,000 followers, he proudly cites a quote attributed to notorious pimp Iceberg Slim.

“Only a fool trips on what’s behind them,” McCann’s page reads.

McCann’s X profile primarily consists of crypto or finance-related posts, although other users have been peppering his accounts with replies asking for more details about Robinson’s suspicious death. He shared another “AI success story” in a post early on April 8-just hours before he found his fiancée unconscious and a day before she was pronounced dead at a hospital.

“You doing this when you murdered your girlfriend is insane btw,” one reply reads.

In a statement released Sunday, Robinson’s family confirmed she and McCann had gotten engaged just days earlier during the trip to celebrate her 31st birthday.

“Surrounded by beauty, love and wildlife, she became engaged during a safari, an unforgettable moment that marker the start of a future she was so excited to build,” the statement read. “She and her fiancé, Joe McCann, were staying in a luxury villa at the Zuri Zanzibar, continuing what we believed was her dream trip. But just days later, that dream turned into our family’s worst nightmare. Ashley was found unconscious in her villa and was rushed to a local hospital, where her death was confirmed hours later.”

Robinson’s parents, Yolanda Denise Endres and Harry Robinson, are considering traveling to Zanzibar in search of answers, WPVI reported.

“My daughter Ashly, she’s no longer here with us, and we’re trying to find out why,” Endres told the station.

Robinson called her mother on April 8 to say she and McCann had an argument and were moved to separate rooms. McCann called Endres the following day, she said.

“He told me that Ashly did something to herself and she was being taken to the hospital, and he told me she was stable,” Endres said. “I said what happened, and he told me, it had been 11 hours prior.”

Hours later, hotel staff notified Robinson’s family that she had died, Endres recalled. The influencer had an unidentified mark around her neck and died at a second hospital, which listed her cause of death as cerebral hypoxia by strangulation and suffocation, WPVI reported.

McCann “found she hung herself on the door,” according to the report.

“She’s never done anything that would ever, ever lead me to believe that she would do something to harm herself like that,” Endres said. “She was happy.”

Just days before she was found lifeless in her hotel room, Robinson shared photographs of herself alongside a lion, as well as another with McCann and a zebra. She also posted video of McCann’s proposal.

“If this a dream, no one wake me up,” she wrote on Instagram.

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This story was originally published April 15, 2026 at 8:25 AM.