Two people charged with participating in an international scheme to rig basketball games for professional gamblers pleaded guilty in Philadelphia’s federal court Wednesday — the latest development in a scandal that shook the sports world when prosecutors unveiled a sprawling set of indictments earlier this year.
The pleas entered by Bradley Ezewiro and Alberto Laureano mean that half the 26 people charged with participating in the scheme have admitted their crimes in court or have signaled in paperwork that they intend to do so before trial.
None of the defendants has been sentenced, and cases remain pending against some of those charged with taking more active roles in the conspiracy — including Shane Hennen, a former Philadelphia resident and prolific sports bettor whom prosecutors have described as a key organizer.
Still, Wednesday’s guilty pleas — which proceeded with little fanfare — served as a notable moment in a case that has attracted widespread attention as federal authorities across the country in recent years have increasingly been unveiling charges in sports gambling-related prosecutions.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced the charges in January, saying it had arrested 26 people, including 20 basketball players, for participating in a multiyear scheme to fix games in the NCAA and the Chinese professional league.
The scam was relatively straightforward, prosecutors said: Professional gamblers and some basketball trainers bribed players to underperform in games, and bettors then wagered against the players’ teams at various sportsbooks. The conspiracy involved dozens of games and millions of dollars in fraudulent bets, prosecutors said.
Some of the bets were placed by Hennen or others in Philadelphia, prosecutors said, including a six-figure wager on a Chinese basketball game at Rivers Casino’s sportsbook in Fishtown.
And some of the NCAA players charged with participating in the scheme spent time in the Philadelphia area, although none was accused of accepting bribes while playing for a local university.
Ezewiro and Laureano each pleaded guilty Wednesday to bribery-related charges. Both were accused in court documents of playing supporting roles in the scheme.
Laureano served as a “fixer” who recruited players into the conspiracy and sometimes delivered them bribe money, prosecutors said.
Ezewiro joined the operation in 2024 while playing for St. Louis University, and also worked with another fixer to identify other players to bribe, prosecutors said.
Their pleas came several days after other accused coconspirators also pleaded guilty.
Over the last week, two former players at the University of New Orleans — Cedquavious Hunter and Dyquavion “Jah” Short — admitted accepting bribes while they played on that team.
And last week, Shawn Fulcher pleaded guilty to taking bribes while playing at two schools, prosecutors said: the State University of New York at Buffalo and Alabama State University.
U.S. District Judge Nitza I. Quiñones Alejandro has scheduled sentencing hearings in the coming months for the people who have pleaded guilty.
A trial for the remaining defendants, meanwhile, is currently scheduled to take place early next year.
A partial eclipse will occur Wednesday, along with a planetary alignment that doesn’t happen all that often.
For star power, however, the annual Perseids meteor shower, which will be peaking late Wednesday night and early Thursday, may outshine them both as the moon gets out of the way to prepare for its big night at the end of the month.
The Perseids should put on quite a decent show this year for those who have access to reasonably dark skies and do not mind staying up a little late.
These things can produce 50 to 100 meteors an hour underultra-dark sky conditions, but you won’t see that many above light-polluted Philly.
Above the darkness-challenged Philadelphia Museum of Art, you might be able to catch 10 an hour, said Bill Cook, NASA’s meteoroid guru at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
The potential spoiler in all this would be the state of the skies, which are expected to be sunny Wednesday. But just how cloud-free they will be at night is not clear just yet, said Patrick O’Hara, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Mount Holly.
The weather service is calling for mostly clear skies late Wednesday night, but some clouds may roll in after midnight, and it says the forecast contains “a frustrating level of uncertainty.”
About the eclipse
The eclipse has been generating media attention, and it is going to be a spectacular show — if you happen to be in Greenland or Iceland or northern Spain, places that will experience the haunting magic of totality, which will occur around 1:45 p.m. Philly time.
Locally?
“Philly just isn’t in the right place for any good eclipse viewing this time around,” said Teddy Kareta, assistant professor of astrophysics and planetary science at Villanova University.
Only about 8% of the sun will be blocked out at Philly’s latitude, said Dwight Dulsky, with the Bucks-Mont Astronomical Association.
Said Kareta, “That’s a small enough change that … I don’t think I’d even notice.”
Dulsky said the Bucks-Mont group “will be doing some safe solar viewing” of the eclipse in the marina parking lot of Nockamixon State Park, in Upper Bucks County.
Early risers (or late stay-uppers) on Wednesday can admire a planet parade in the western sky, or at least some of its participants.
Four planets — Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, and Saturn — will be lined up and visible to the unaided eye, said Kareta, though Jupiter and Mercury may be elusive, since they will be close to the horizon.
The line may be slightly less orderly on the 13th, but may not look much different from the perspective of the average earthling, Kareta added.
If you miss the planet show, Kareta advises that these things may be special but are not exactly rare. A similar alignment occurred “about a year ago,” he said.
“As an astronomer,” he said, “I find these planetary alignments more fun and beautiful than I find them super interesting.”
The Perseids are about to peak
Several hours after the moon gets in the sun’s way Wednesday, it will be fortuitously out of the way for the annual Perseid meteor showers.
As many as 50 to 100 meteors per hour may appear at their absolute peak, which this year would be in the early morning hours of Thursday.
Elsewhere in the great Philadelphia city-state, French Creek State Park, bordering Chester and Berks Counties, is a favorite among local sky watchers, and the prime viewing area is open all night.
At least a few watch parties are planned, including one by the Bucks-Mont group from 8 to 11 p.m. at the Nockamixon park, Dulsky said.
The Perseids are so named because they appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus, but they show up all over the sky. They are the most popular among the 30 or so showers visible in the night sky annually.
The Geminids, in December, outnumber the Perseids, but people prefer warmth with their meteor-watching. Plus, NASA reports that the Perseids are by far number one for those spectacular fireballs.
The meteors are the result of debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle, one of the larger meteor-producing comets, having a diameter of about 15 miles.
The earth encounters Swift-Tuttle detritus every year around this time, and those cosmic pebbles become bright streaks as they enter Earth’s atmosphere at 130,000 mph. If they’re big enough, they explode into fireballs.
Cook says that while the moonless skies offer the ideal background, this will not be an especially prolific year for the Perseids. He said the 2028 harvest will be more abundant, when the earth passes through “a denser stream” of the comet’s sheddings.
That once-in-a-blue-moon event
The moon will be returning later in the month, on Aug. 31, as the second full moon of August, thus a “blue moon.” Like those planetary alignments, it is something to expect once in a blue moon.
A teen sought in connection with the killing of a Pennsylvania State University student in South Philadelphia surrendered to police on Tuesday, the U.S. Marshals Service said.
Kadafi Fleming, 19, is also a suspect in the theft of a Philadelphia police officer’s car during a Monday morning robbery that ended in a shootout, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
Fleming surrendered around 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Philadelphia Police Department’s headquarters at 400 N. Broad St., the U.S. Marshals Service said.
Authorities previously charged Azzubair Outen-Fleming, 16, and Kaiseem Smith, 16, with murder, robbery, and related crimes in the killing of 22-year-old William “Billy” Schmidt, who was robbed of his cell phone and shot on June 6 on the 1900 block of Durfor Street. This week, the marshals announced that they were seeking Fleming on a robbery charge in connection with the killing.
Fleming is Outen-Fleming’s older brother, authorities said.
The announcement of the marshals’ manhunt for Fleming came after another crime in South Philadelphia: About 3:15 a.m. Monday on the 6900 block of Grosbeak Place, authorities said, thieves stole a green Dodge Charger belonging to an off-duty police officer.
Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Clark said the officer found the thieves a few blocks from where his car had been stolen and exchanged gunfire with them before they fled.
Fleming has been named a person of interest in that theft, Clark said.
It was unclear Tuesday whether anyone had been injured in the shootout. Philadelphia police did not respond to requests for information about the incident.
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Clark added that he did not expect the search to last long, noting that marshals had captured Fleming’s brother in June more than 1,700 miles away at a home in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Smith, who is accused of being the triggerman in Schmidt’s killing, turned himself in to authorities shortly after Outen-Fleming’s arrest. Outen-Fleming’s stepfather, Donte Abdulmalik, 35, has also been arrested and charged with helping his stepson evade the authorities.
A South Philadelphia babysitter, originally from Argentina, was released from ICE detention Monday after being arrested at Philadelphia International Airport last month.
Iliana Lick’s arrest made national headlines as the Trump administration steps up efforts to increase immigration enforcement at American airports.
Lick, 30, had been in Philadelphia since September 2024. She had a valid work authorization and a pending asylum application, but had overstayed her visa, according to the Department of Homeland Security. She was arrested as she headed to Kansas City to watch Argentina play in the World Cup, transported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico instead.
“After nearly a month in custody, countless phone calls, legal proceedings, and several transfers across different states, this is a moment we have been praying and hoping for,” her boyfriend, Steven Melchiorre, 35, wrote in an update to supporters on Facebook and a GoFundMe page that has raised more than $18,000 for legal fees.
Though Lick’s release is a victory, the fight to stay in the country is far from over.
As a condition of her release on $10,000 bond, Lick had to surrender her passport and has to wear an ankle monitor.
Immigration advocates keeping track of those being arrested at the Philadelphia airport have said at least 10 people have been detained since mid-July. Of those, Lick is only the second to be released from custody.
Immigration advocate Vivian Chang, executive director of Asian Americans United, said the release of people arrested by ICE, whether at airports or during immigration check-ins, can be a crapshoot.
“You need like a CNN story and so many news articles, so much fundraising, all of that,” Chang said. “The vast majority of people can’t access that. They don’t get coverage, and that’s what the Trump administration is counting on.”
The Inquirer wrote about Lick’s case, and her story was most recently featured on CNN.
For its part, the Department of Homeland Security has said it is making sure undocumented immigrants are flying only to self-deport, offering them a $2,600 payment and a free flight home as an alternative to detention.
A New York Times report found instances of immigration arrests in at least 15 airports, with many of the cases getting follow-ups in local media markets.
Britni Zahodnick, who with her husband, Zane Schultz, has employed Lick as a babysitter for their two young children, ages 4 and 1, for more than a year, said she is grateful for the media attention.
When Zahodnick first learned of the arrest, she said, she was not seeing people talking about the issue on social media platforms. That changed in recent weeks.
In Philadelphia, people have rallied behind Lick, she said.
Donations have helped her to retain counsel, post bond, and pay fortransportation back to her South Philly home.
Zahodnick hopes attention to cases like Lick’s highlights how immigration enforcement is affecting people who have deep roots within their communities.
“A lot of the campaigning on this increased enforcement of immigration was really around criminals, and it just hasn’t panned out that way,” she said.
The 56-year-old was arrested in 2022 and accused of using his position for years to lure girls, often targeting victims who had run away, been arrested, or struggled with addiction.
The women’s lawsuit accused the city of “reckless disregard for the safety of the public” by allowing a “morally corrupt sexual predator” to remain on the force and victimize at least 48 women and girls,despite years of sustained complaints of misconduct against him starting shortly after he joined the department in 1995.
The department even began the process to terminate Heron in 2008, the complaint says, following sustained allegations that included “associating with known criminals,” “little to no regard for his position as a police officer,” and having been detained by police officers for soliciting a sex worker in Kensington.
But Heron maintained his badge and went on to assault the two girls, among other victims.
“Instead of just firing him, they were moving him around different districts,” said Joshua Van Naarden of VSCP Law, the firm representing the two plaintiffs.
Heron eventually resigned in 2019 following an internal affairs investigation into an allegation that a uniformed Heron was caught by a CVS surveillance camera attempting to steal a phone charger.
Heron assaulted one of the two women in 2016 when she was 9 years old. He held her captive in his bedroom, took 22 illicit photographs while she was unconscious, and sexually assaulted her, according to the complaint.
The former officer sent her a Facebook message in 2021, when the victim was 15, and solicited photos from her as well as sex for money, the suit says.
And when the teen accused him of acting inappropriately, Heron threatened to have her arrested.
Heron assaulted the second women in 2016 while on duty. He picked her up from Temple University Hospital’s emergency department when she was 11 years old,after responding to a report that she had run away from home.
After she was discharged from the hospital to Heron while he was on duty, with instructions to take her home, Heron gave her a laced drink and took photos of the unconscious child.
Two days later, Heron picked up the 11-year-old from her house and again took illicit photographs of her.
Both women were involved in Heron’s prosecution, the complaint says, and he pleaded guilty to counts resulting from his crimes against them.
The woman who was victimized as an 11-year-old did not know about the abuse, which took place while she was unconscious, until law enforcement found photos of her on Heron’s devices, Van Naarden said.
“There are tons of other victims out there that may not even be aware that they were victimized by him,” Van Naarden said.
The city deserves credit for settling the lawsuit, which was filed in December 2024, relatively quickly to prevent the women from having to relive their trauma through depositions, testimony, and court hearings, the attorney said.
The lawsuit was settled in April and the city paid $1.3 million on July 31 to the woman Heron assaulted when she was 9 and $1 million to the woman assaulted when she was 11, a spokesperson for the city’s law department said. There were no other conditions as part of the agreement.
The city declined to comment further on the settlement or on the ongoing lawsuit.
A second lawsuit from an alleged victim of Heron was filed in April in the Philadelphia court and tells of similarly harrowing abuse.
The victim was a 16-year-old mother of a newborn when she met Heron in a courthouse in 2014, the suit says.
“She was, by every measure, among the most vulnerable individuals Defendant Heron could have encountered in his capacity as a uniformed Philadelphia Police Officer,” the complaint says.
Heron groomed her, the suit says, and starting in 2015 assaulted at least once a month for a period of four years, often drugging her “to prevent her from accurately recounting or reporting what had been done to her.” The assault included rape, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit says Heron threatened the girl to secure her silence.
“He repeatedly reminded her of his status as a police officer and his ability to weaponize that status against her, her child, and her incarcerated family member,” the lawsuit says.
Ashley Garland, an Anapol Weiss attorney representing the unnamed victim, said her client deserves the same accountability as the two victims who received payment.
“We are continuing to pursue justice on her behalf,” Garland said in a statement, “and we hope the city changes how it handles officers with sustained misconduct records, preventing them from harming the residents they are supposed to protect and serve.”
Janet Klein, 96, of Rydal, Montgomery County, former member of the Philadelphia Historical Commission, historic program director for the Fairmount Park Commission, regional project coordinator for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, chair of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, volunteer, and philanthropist, died Tuesday, Aug. 4, of age-associated decline at her home.
Born in Philadelphia, Mrs. Klein earned degrees at Philadelphia High School for Girls and the University of Pennsylvania. She and her husband, Lewis, traveled the world after they married in 1952, and she told The Inquirer in 1973 that she became interested in local historic preservation after returning from abroad in 1964.
“I felt something was lacking here,” she said. “There was no pride nor a thorough knowledge of what we really have in Philadelphia to share with visitors.”
So she joined the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s tour guide program, rose to chair of guides for the Fairmount Park house tours, and conducted hundreds of tours for thousands of visitors to the eight historic houses in the park. “The guides,” she said in 1973, “can’t help but sense that somehow they have passed on to the visitors the continuing life of historic Philadelphia.”
Eventually, Mrs. Klein became historic program director for the Fairmount Park Commission, was appointed to the Philadelphia Historical Commission by then-Mayor Wilson Goode in the 1980s, and served as chair of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission from 1997 to 2003. Friends called her “formidable” and compared her to the Energizer Bunny.
Keen to spark public interest in historic sites, Mrs. Klein forged partnerships between site officials and schools, community groups, businesses, and the media. In 1997, she oversaw filmmakers as they shot scenes for the movie Beloved at the Landis Valley Museum in Manheim Township.
She appeared often in The Inquirer and said in 1989: “We often find that people who live just around the corner from a house museum don’t know it existed.”
At Fairmount Park, she redefined the commission’s operating procedures and enlisted students as volunteers at its public mansions. At the city historical commission, she led walking tours of Old City and helped determine the historic designation of the old Lit Bros. building, the Boyd Theatre, the Dilworth house, and other significant structures.
This story and photo of Mrs. Klein (right) was published in The Inquirer in 1973.Newspapers.com
With the state historical and museum commission, she erected historical markers across the state, helped designate the Art Museum as a Commonwealth Treasure in 2002, and directed the commission’s public relations, tourist promotions, and preservation efforts.
“History doesn’t have to be dead,” she said in 1998. “Historical markers represent the people and their interests. They are a way for young people to learn about their heritage and gain a personal respect for the past.”
She also led the Comprehensive Historic Assistance Program for the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the 1980s, helped create the Liberty Trail near Independence Hall, and directed the restoration of the first historic home in the Lukens National Historic District of Coatesville.
She served on the board of visitors at Temple University’s Ambler campus and Klein College of Media and Communications, on the collections committee at the Union League, and as a guide at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. She was active with the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the Museum Council of Philadelphia, and other groups.
This story and photo of Mrs. Klein appeared in The Inquirer in 1998.Temple University
She was honored for her service by the Women’s Center of Montgomery County in 1999 and by the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia in 2001, and was named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania in 2000. In 2018, she earned an award for service and philanthropy from Coatesville’s National Iron and Steel Heritage Museum.
As philanthropists, Mrs. Klein and her husband supported what became, named after them, the Klein College at Temple, the National Association of Television Program Executives, the Police Athletic League, the American Heart Association, and other organizations dedicated to education, healthcare, youth development, and social service. They created the Janet and Lew Klein Making A Difference Award for the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters and donated his professional papers to Temple.
“She was an inspirational community leader,” said David Boardman, dean of Temple’s Klein College, “who inspired others through her generosity, her brilliance, and her warmth.”
Janet Surman was born March 3, 1930. She grew up in Oak Lane and earned a bachelor’s degree at Penn.
Mrs. Klein (left) appeared with others in 2007 to celebrate a historical marker at the corner of 9th and Christian Streets.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
She met Lewis Klein in college, and they married in 1952. They had a son, Stephen, and a daughter, Ellen, and lived in Melrose Park and Rydal. Her husband, a pioneering TV broadcaster and cofounder of Gateway Communications, died in 2019.
Mrs. Klein and her husband traveled the world for decades and attended dozens of galas and fundraising events. She enjoyed gardening, was an avid reader, and liked to play Scrabble.
In 1993, Inquirer columnist Clark DeLeon called her “a wonderful, funny, vivacious lady.” Temple’s Boardman said: “She was truly one of the best human beings I’ve ever had the privilege to know.”
In addition to her children, Mrs. Klein is survived by a granddaughter, two great-grandchildren, and other relatives.
Angela McDonald caught her breath on the sidewalk at the intersection of South 58th and Delancey Streets in Cobbs Creek, a few feet from where her son, Mark Ringgold, was killed last year in a hit-and-run crash by a speeding driver in a Jeep Cherokee.
She wants someone to answer for her son’s death and for the city to install speed bumps on the streets and other road-design changes to slow drivers down. And surveillance cameras.
“This is what my purpose is now,“ McDonald said Friday, a year after the crash. ”I will fight until God calls me home.“
Ringgold, 33, was crossing Delancey Street after leaving a friend’s house shortly before 3 a.m., when he was hit and left in the street. The family calls it a blessing they were able to say goodbye to him in the hospital before he died.
Last year, 28 pedestrians were killed in hit-and-run crashes in Philadelphia, according to the city’s count.
“Don’t wait for it to come to your door before you do something. Nobody knows what’s coming. Make change now,” said McDonald, 62, a retired Philadelphia police officer.
Angela McDonald and other traffic-safety advocates held a community walk in memory of her son Mark, who was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
A group of family, neighbors, and traffic safety advocates walked the streets Friday in heat brushing triple digits as thunderstorms rolled in.
Cobbs Creek Parkway, a state-designated highway not far away, is listed on the High Injury Network, one of the 12% of city roads where 80% of traffic crashes have occurred. Many of those streets are thoroughfares or state highways, like Broad Street (Route 611).
South 58th Street is not on the map, though there are speed bumps near a recreation center at South 58th and Spruce Streets.
And the city is working on a Neighborhood Slow Zone nearby, about five square blocks bounded by 52nd Street, 57th Street, Spruce Street, and Baltimore Avenue. The program imposes a 20 mph speed limit on residential streets and adds traffic-calming infrastructure such as speed cushions, narrower pedestrian crossings at intersections, and other elements.
“We have a lot of traffic violence on streets in regular Philadelphia gridded neighborhoods, not just on the High Injury Network or thoroughfares,” said Andrew Goodman, director of equitable development in the office of Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who is working on getting some safety treatments for South 58th Street and Delancey Street.
“We get calls from people asking for speed bumps consistently,” Goodman said. “There are so many needs, so much demand. Driver behavior seems to be getting worse by the day.”
McDonald wants the neighborhood to get consideration. Speed-enforcement cameras are limited, with installations requiring specific authorization by the state legislature.
But she wonders about police surveillance cameras. If there is a hit-and-run crash, they might be able to capture the image of the driver. Police have recoveredthe car that hit her son, but there is no footage of the driver and there has been no arrest.
“As long as I have been traveling this road, since I was a young girl, 58thStreet has always been a racetrack,” McDonald said.
“Speed bumps aredefinitely going to slow people down, because if you don’t, you’re going to tear your car up,” she said. “You may flip yourself over.”
One year after a fatal hit-and-run took the life of Angela McDonald’s son, Mark, she and other traffic-safety advocates are pushing for traffic-calming improvements.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
An I-95 ramp in Northeast Philly is set to close for good next week.
The ramp from Bridge Street to I-95 North is slated to shut down at 8 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 21, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation announced Monday.
The closure will make way for construction of a new I-95 entrance from Tacony Street and the Delaware Avenue extension, which the agency expects to open in late 2027.
Until then, drivers will be detoured to Tacony Street and State Road/New State Road, where they can get on I-95 North via the Milnor Street ramp.
The rerouting is part of a larger I-95 rehabilitation, which includes nearly $268 million of Northeast Philly improvements, including the reconstruction of the viaduct over Bridge and Tacony Streets.
In addition to the ramp closure, I-95 North drivers will experience a traffic shift from 8 p.m. Aug. 21 to 5 a.m. Aug 22. They will be temporarily rerouted to southbound lanes as northbound reconstruction begins at the Bridge Street Interchange. PennDot expects to complete that project in 2028.
The agency advises drivers in the area to allow for extra time, as backups and delays are expected due to the ramp closure.
Hours before Mohamed Coulibaly was found dead in his Gloucester County home, one of his alleged victims said, the 23-year-old entrepreneur had been desperately seeking a $75,000 loan.
A recent Barron’s investigation alleged Coulibaly defrauded three former NFL players out of $1 million in an e-commerce scheme involving fake Shopify stores. Now others who invested in the venture or lent Coulibaly money were blowing up his phone. They wanted to know if Jalen Carter and several former members of the Eagles, including Nakobe Dean and Terrell Edmunds, were even real clients, a claim Coulibaly made on promotional materials.
Above all, these people wanted their money back.
The morning of his death, July 31, Coulibaly solicited money from a New York man, who agreed to speak with The Inquirer on the condition of anonymity to protect his family’s privacy. He is one of at least 10 people, including the three former NFL players, alleging Coulibaly scammed them out of more than $5 million through phony investments over the last year.
Coulibaly, who lived in Mullica Hill, a section of Harrison Township, promised to send a Lamborghini, two gold Rolexes, and a signed Lionel Messi cleat as collateral for what was to be a weeklong loan.
Coulibaly still owed the man $1 million for a bridge loan due in March. Yet he insisted the additional loan somehow would make it possible to return the initial money owed. His alleged victim said he figured he could only gain from the arrangement — if the collateral proved to be real.
But a driver — not in a Lamborghini — arrived at his doorstep with two fake watches, an unauthenticated signed cleat, along with an insurance card and a bill of sale for the promised luxe car, according to the man.
The man called off the loan.
“[Coulibaly] then started to cry hysterical on the phone,” the victim said. “He said, ‘I’ve lost it all, please help me here, please help me here.’”
Coulibaly was found dead later that day.
Mohamed Coulibaly attends Milan Fashion Week on Jan. 19 in Milan, Italy.Dave Benett/Getty Images
The Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office is leading the investigation into Coulibaly’s death and declined to comment. No charges have been filed in connection to the alleged scams Coulibaly is accused of spearheading.
Coulibaly’s death has only added a layer of uncertainty for his allegedly defrauded clients, who now believe they were unwitting participants in a Ponzi scheme. New so-called investments went toward paying off other clients. But the chain could not be sustained.
“In terms of his death, it sounds rather brash or harsh, but the only reason I’m upset for his passing is that he’s not able to go to jail and suffer,” the bridge loan investor said.
The Inquirer spoke with four victims, all but one of whom asked to remain anonymous citing lingering shame, privacy concerns, and, in one case, safety considerations. They provided alleged contracts Coulibaly gave them, text messages, screenshots of their purported Shopify store sales, and a whistleblower report sent to federal and Pennsylvania financial regulators.
In hindsight, the business always seemed too good to be true. The young entrepreneur convinced them they could rake in millions each month selling vacuums, printers, desktop humidifiers, and silicone trays on Shopify, an e-commerce platform similar to Amazon.
At first, investors said they had no reason to question Vent Motion LLC, also known as Motion Venture. Shopify alerted the victims to a steady stream of sales through their phone apps.
But at least two Shopify stores victims bought into were fake, full of transactions a Barron’s analysis suggests are also a sham. Shopify did not respond to requests for comment.
The alleged victims say Coulibaly lured them in by highlighting purported investor relationships with wealthy and connected people. His pitch deck listed several former members of the Eagles and the NBA as clients. Representatives for the current and former Eagles declined to comment or could not be reached.
“A selling point [Coulibaly] gave me was, ‘Hey, we only have about 90 to 100 people in this,’ insinuating you can make it behind the velvet rope because everybody involved is celebrities or athletes, and this is just a venture they do,” said another of the defrauded investors, requesting anonymity because family and friends do not know about the scam.
Yet as more victims have found one another in the wake of Coulibaly’s death, it has become clearer the scheme was not limited to targeting NFL players.
It involved everyday investors from Arizona, Pennsylvania, and New York who now want to know if any of it was real.
A ‘magnetic’ man with the digital footprint of a business phenom
Coulibaly knew how to sell the image of a successful entrepreneur.
His story always hit the same beats: Coulibaly was a professional soccer player. He made $4 million reselling rare sneakers before he turned 21. His success was largely attributed to “building connections” with athletes and influencers. Grinding was the key to success.
But much of that was embellished.
A database for American high school sports coverage noted Coulibaly played soccer for Roxborough High School.
Coulibaly said he began his professional career with the New York Red Bulls soccer team, but a spokesperson said Coulibaly never had a contract.
A friend from Coulibaly’s days at Temple University said the sneaker venture Heatkickcity was also a scam that swindled students out of thousands. He asked not to be named out of safety concerns, saying Coulibaly often touted relationships with gang-affiliated people.
While Coulibaly told publications he was born in Mali, West Africa, and immigrated to the United States at a young age, while in college, he often intimated that he was a trust fund child and that his parents worked for the French government, the Temple friend said.
He added that may have helped induce so many of their peers to pay a $1,200 membership for monthly access to rare sneakers that ultimately never came.
“He’d be like, ‘It’s stuck in shipping,’ or ‘my assistant forgot to order them,’ or ‘my assistant’s slacking,’ and then he would just keep on extending it, extending it,” said the friend. “If you questioned him in any way, shape, or form about the product that you paid for, then he would switch to angry mode.”
The friend eventually got his money back after pressuring him for weeks but said Coulibaly continued his self-proclaimed pursuit of becoming a billionaire.
“He scammed his best friends,” the friend said. “Nobody was off-limits.”
Coulibaly’s next venture was fashion line Motion Apparelz. It was profiled in Forbes last year, where the author describes Coulibaly’s energy as “magnetic.” In the piece, Coulibaly name-drops artist friends, including rapper YG, who was later listed as an investor in Motion Venture promotional materials.
Rapper YG performs at the Coachella Music & Arts Festival in 2019.Amy Harris
YG’s agent could not be reached for comment.
Outside of the glowing profiles, a now-defunct Instagram account also detailed a lavish lifestyle full of run-ins with celebrities, boat jaunts on luxury yachts with city skylines in the background, and snapshots of Coulibaly in or in front of private planes. Often, Coulibaly could be seen wearing gold watches, what appear to be Van Cleef & Arpels bracelets, and diamond-studded chains.
Coulibaly’s digital footprint set the stage for an even bigger business pitch.
A business promising exorbitant returns
When it came to Vent Motion LLC, Coulibaly told clients he operated “factories in China and India with a combined team of 125 full-time employees,” according to a pitch deck he showed investors that was obtained by The Inquirer.
This allowed stores to operate without keeping any inventory and reducing overhead — a model known as drop-shipping.
The savings from eliminating the middlemen, he said, could then be reinvested into artificial intelligence-driven ads and “influencer amplification” to drum up more customers. Coulibaly’s company would set up and manage the Shopify stores on behalf of investors, pushing out additional advertising or swapping out products if sales slowed.
Clients would be charged a 20% to 25% service fee for that work, and even so, Coulibaly dangled extraordinary returns for those who joined the venture.
One Shopify store that began with a $550,000 investment in January 2024 had allegedly generated $2 million in revenue in April and a whopping $23 million in July of that year. By August, this particular store had generated a total of $84 million in revenue, according to the company’s unsubstantiated pitch deck.
Further sweetening the deal was an initial investment “protection” guarantee if their store did not generate profit within six months.
Former Arizona Cardinals General Manager Steve Keim says he was just as much of victim of Mohammed Coulibaly’s alleged scam.Darryl Webb
It’s what got Steve Keim, former general manager of the Arizona Cardinals, into the business.
Keim said he met Coulibaly through mutual Eagles acquaintances and by August 2025 he had bought his first Shopify store, which was recording sales at a pace that had him on track totriple his investment over six months. Keim bought into six more stores the following month, he said. His son and ex-wife would also buy into the business for at least a $1 million investment between all three.
Keim said he was soon offered the role of chief operating officer/chief growth officer, which he now sees as a way for Coulibaly to “legitimize his business.”
“I introduced him to people to sell stores to and that sort of thing,” said Keim, who describes fulfilling a figurehead role with no decision-making power. “He called me the COO but he also made promises to give me health insurance and to have some kind of bonus structure.”
The health insurance, bonuses, and exorbitant returns never materialized. Keim said he never had access to bank records and was never made aware of how many people gave money to Motion Venture. But by the start of the year, Keim claims, a flood of disgruntled investors were asking him for help getting their money back. Around this time, Keim said, he asked Coulibaly to stop using his name in promotional materials and told him he no longer wanted to be COO.
Keim contended he was as much of a victim as anyone else, holding onto hope that he could recover his money until Coulibaly’s death.
“This went downhill fast,” he said. “Not only did I get my name drug through the mud, I lost a lot of money since I was an investor.”
A Dubai deal
As more investors were demanding access to their Shopify funds in the fall, Coulibaly was telling them that the Dubai firm Middle East Venture Partners was interested in buying the operation for $215 million.
All they had to do was reach 175 online stores and meet other benchmarks by Aug. 1.
To back his claim Coulibaly produced a letter of intent dated Aug. 14, 2024.
Troubling for investors: The letter was dated more than a month before the company was registered in Pennsylvania.
The discrepancy was the biggest red flag for Barry Minkow, a convicted fraudster who now investigates scams on behalf of fraud victims. He started poking around the company at the start of the year for an investor who had put up $150,000.
“So here you are looking at a private equity company saying they’re going to buy up this company that doesn’t even exist for $200 million?” Minkow said in disbelief.
Middle East Venture Partners did not respond to an email to asking if a relationship existed with Coulibaly’s Vent Motion LLC.
With the permission of three of the alleged victims, Minkow submitted a 23-page whistleblower report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, FBI, and Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities. The report laid out victim accounts and flagged glaring issues with Motion Venture’s business model.
Minkow warned regulators in February thatintervention was essential to “halt ongoing solicitations, trace misallocated funds,” and stressed the importance of doing so “before the scheme inflicts further, irreparable harm.”
Minkow would prove to be right. Motion Venture was still actively recruiting new investors that month.
Picking up the pieces
Coulibaly’s college friend thinks he might have been one of the first victims of the Shopify sometime about three years ago. It involved less paperwork back then, more of a handshake deal. The friend put in $5,000 in a store with an investment protection promise in place, he said. Unlike that time in college, however, the friend only got half his money back.
The friendship with Coulibaly cooled after that.
“People just keep on saying he scammed NFL players,” said Coulibaly’s college friend. “No, anybody with money could be scammed, no matter how small.”
Coulibaly would insist money issues were the Dubai firm’s fault until his death, according to his alleged victims who shared screenshots and voice memos of conversations.
He ricocheted from distraught, lamenting the financial ruin that awaited him if he did not acquire more investors, to defiant, celebrating the Philadelphia 76ers’ LeBron James trade on X as he dodged investors.
When Keim and another investor flew into Philadelphia to meet with Coulibaly in late July, they spent a day and a half trying to figure out how much money was left, to no avail.
It was around that time that Coulibaly was soliciting the New York man for the $75,000 loan.
Coulibaly’s last post on X was a reshare a day before his death. “Trying to be everyone’s friend is a foolish behavior,” it read.
Whether any investor money remains is unclear. A now-defunct GoFundMe page put together by a man claiming to be Coulibaly’s brother raised more than $12,000 for the body’s “international transportation arrangements.”
Investors are also trying to figure out what legal recourse they might have, if any.
Coulibaly’s death has shattered any last remaining hope some victims had that a Dubai firm was to blame for cash-flow issues, and they are now seeking legal help.
It also left them feeling cheated one last time.
Staff writer Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.
The parents of a 7-week-old girl were charged with aggravated assault and related offenses after an examination at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia revealed the infant had been seriously injured, police said Monday.
Secret McCleve-Sar, 21, and Tyrone Jones, 22, both of the 2500 block of North Front Street, were arrested on Sunday and also charged with kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, endangering the welfare of a child, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, and obstructing justice, police said.
Bail for each was set at 10% of $1 million and both were still in custody on Monday, court records show.
A court-appointed lawyer for McCleve-Sar declined to comment on the case. The Defender Association of Philadelphia, which is representing Jones, also could not be reached for comment.
On Saturday shortly after 6:30 a.m. police responded to CHOP for a report of a prior assault involving the infant girl.
The girl had initially been taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital by her parents and then was transferred to CHOP, police said. The parents allegedly left the hospital with their infant prior to receiving the results of the medical evaluation.
The investigation remains ongoing by the Special Victims Unit.
