Authorities in New Jersey are investigating the death of Mohamed Coulibaly after police found the 24-year-old in the swimming pool of a home in Harrison Township, New Jersey, on Friday. Officers were making a welfare check after family members raised concerns about his well-being.
The death comes weeks after a Barron's investigation identified Coulibaly as the organizer of a purported scheme that sought to sell professional athletes stakes in bogus web stores. Three former NFL players said they collectively lost more than $1 million, and former New York Giants linebacker Tae Crowder said he put in all of his savings, or $500,000, after connecting with Coulibaly through a friend.
Harrison Township pool discovery
Police said the body was found on Friday in Harrison Township, and authorities in New Jersey are now handling the case as a death investigation. The finding adds a new, separate question to the allegations that had already gathered around Coulibaly: what happened in the hours before the welfare check ended at the pool.
Earlier this year, Coulibaly denied to Barron's that he was behind any kind of scam. He said the reporting reflected a misunderstanding of the technology and said investors had not received returns because he had not received expected funds from a planned acquisition of his venture.
Tae Crowder and the alleged losses
Crowder described how the connection started in ordinary conversation. “We was just, every day, talking about different investments and different things we could possibly get into. I saw him hanging out with a bunch of different guys that I know, which you know made me feel comfortable,” he said.
He also described repeatedly checking the online store he said he had backed. “I would log into the store all the time and just see, like, how it would work and what was going on. I feel like the more I told him about that, like, as many times I kept logging in, the number started going up,” Crowder said.
Barron's account of the web stores
Jacob Adelman said the athletes and other investors would buy into e-commerce shops that seemed to be doing really good business based on the sales logs they were able to review. “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,” Adelman said.
No criminal charges have been filed connected to the alleged scheme. Crowder said, “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,” leaving the investigation of Coulibaly's death and the financial claims on separate tracks for now.
