Authorities in New Jersey are investigating the death of a man accused of running a scam that targeted former NFL players, after his body was found in a swimming pool, according to Eyewitness News ABC7NY. The alleged scammer was identified as Mohamed Koulibaly, who was 24 years old.
Koulibaly's body was discovered on Friday in the swimming pool of a home in Harrison Township, New Jersey. According to police, officers found him while carrying out a welfare check, after family members had called in concerns about his well-being.
Koulibaly is accused of targeting multiple former NFL players with a fake e-commerce scheme. Investors, including the athletes, would buy into online shops that appeared to be doing strong business, based on the sales logs they were able to review, the station reported.
Investigators, however, determined that the transactions driving those apparent sales had been manually entered by someone with access to the back end of the stores, meaning the success the investors believed they were seeing had effectively been fabricated.
Three former NFL players told the outlet that they collectively lost more than 1 million dollars in the investments. Koulibaly, they said, always had a different excuse for why he was not paying them, until they finally realized they were being scammed.
Among them was former New York Giants linebacker Tay Crowder, who said he became a victim after connecting with Koulibaly through a friend. Crowder said he invested all of his savings, totaling 500,000 dollars, into one of Koulibaly's web stores.
Crowder said he would regularly log into the store and watch the numbers climb, but the payout he had been promised never came. He said he did not want anyone else to get caught up in something like this, and called on those affected to come together and make it right.