Add The New York Post on Google Authorities are investigating the death of Mohamed Coulibaly, who has allegedly scammed many former NFL players with a fake e-commerce scheme, ABC News reported Thursday.
The 24-year-old was found dead in a swimming pool on Friday in Harrison Township, New Jersey. Police were contacted over concerns of his well-being and went over to the home for a welfare check.
The death follows a Barron’s investigation published on July 15 that named Coulibaly as the leader of a scam to get professional athletes to buy stakes in fake Shopify stores.
Former Giants linebacker Tae Crowder was an alleged victim of Coulibaly’s after connecting with him through a friend.
Additionally, three former NFL players admitted they collectively lost over $1 million in investments made through the Philadelphia native.
“The athletes and other investors would buy into these e-commerce shops that seemed to be doing really good business based on the sales logs that they were able to review,” Barron’s magazine reported. “But we were able to determine that those transactions were manually input by somebody with access to the backend of these stores. And the purpose of this was to, to make these athletes think that they had these successful investments in these shops.”
Crowder, who was draft by the Giants in the seventh round in 2020 and played with Big Blue through the 2022 season, said he often saw Coulibaly around people he knew, which made him feel “comfortable.”
The 29-year-old, who last played in the NFL in 2023 for the Titans, threw all of his saving — $500,000 — into one of the fake web stores.
“I would log into the store all the time and just see, like, how it would work and what was going on,” Crowder said. “I feel like the more I told him about that, like, as many times I kept logging in, the number started going up.”
Coulibaly has since denied the allegations to Barron’s.
No criminal charges have been filed in connection to Coulibaly.
“I don’t want anybody else to get involved in anything like this, and whoever has got involved, I just want to come together and make it right,” Crowder said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
