A 24-year-old Philadelphia entrepreneur allegedly persuaded former NFL players to invest more than $1 million in Shopify stores the dashboards of which appeared to show fabricated sales, according to a report.
Philadelphia Eagles stars Nakobe Dean and Jalen Carter, rapper YG and US men’s soccer national team defender Mark McKenzie were among the people listed as clients in a pitch deck reviewed by Barron’s.
It was unclear whether these athletes knew they had been included, the publication said. An agent for Dean declined to comment, while representatives for Carter, Terrell Edmunds, McKenzie and YG did not respond to messages.
None of the athletes have been accused of wrongdoing.
Mohamed Coulibaly offered athletes the opportunity to own ready-made e-commerce sites in exchange for investments of at least $50,000, guaranteeing the return of their principal after six months, plus 80% of any profits from the sites, according to contracts reviewed by Barron’s.
The outlet found evidence suggesting many orders were manually entered into Shopify dashboards, creating the appearance of successful online stores despite little customer traffic.
One site, Dailyprodtrend, recorded a $5,000 order from a purported customer in Luxembourg for 100 desktop humidifiers and 120 USB-powered cup warmers.
The person living at the shipping address listed on the order told Barron’s he had never made the purchase.
“Who needs 100 humidifiers and 120 cup warmers?” he said.
Dailyprodtrend logged more than 360 orders between March 2025 and February of this year, according to Barron’s.
The site received just 90 visitors during that period. Each transaction was manually entered and marked paid minutes later, the report said.
Emails to multiple listed customers bounced back as undeliverable, according to Barron’s.
‘People are scared’
Three former NFL players told Barron’s they collectively lost more than $1 million through separate investments tied to Coulibaly. They were not named in the article. One of those players owned a now-defunct Shopify site called LuxeLane.
“Everybody doesn’t know if they’re going to get their money back,” he told Barron’s. “People are scared.”
The stores’ apparent success later helped Coulibaly pitch investors on a purported $215 million sale of his company, Motion Ventures, to Dubai-based Middle East Venture Partners, according to the report.
As evidence of that deal, Coulibaly allegedly showed one investor a contract naming a JPMorgan Chase wealth adviser as escrow agent. Chase told Barron’s the agreement did not come from the bank and that the signature did not match the adviser’s.
Coulibaly told Barron’s the expected payouts had not arrived because he had not received money from the Dubai firm, which did not respond to Barron’s requests for comment.
Investors became suspicious after promised payouts repeatedly failed to arrive.
The owner of Dailyprodtrend and a friend told Barron’s they invested $925,000 — including cash and returns they believed they were owed — to establish 18 additional stores.
They later sought help from Barry Minkow, a convicted fraudster turned freelance financial fraud investigator, who submitted reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FBI’s Philadelphia office and the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities, according to Barron’s.
The agencies declined to comment.
Trappings of wealth
Coulibaly’s social media feeds projected an aura of wealth and access — private jets, yachts, a limited-edition Maybach — along with photos of him posing with Eagles stars Dean and Carter, both members of Philadelphia’s 2026 Super Bowl championship team, as well as McKenzie, who played for the US in this year’s FIFA World Cup.
The pitch targeted a group that financial advisers say can be especially vulnerable to questionable opportunities.
“I strongly dispute a number of the factual assertions and characterizations contained in the Barron’s article and any follow-up reporting that relies upon them,” Coulibaly told The Post.
“In my view, the article contains significant inaccuracies, omits important context, and presents disputed allegations as established fact.”
Coulibaly said he “categorically den[ies] engaging in any fraudulent scheme or intentionally misleading investors,” adding that “there are documents and communications that provide important context not reflected in the article.”
“It is not accurate to describe the stores as being ‘filled with fake orders’,” he told The Post via email.
Coulibaly said clients were given access to Shopify to monitor their stores, while other parts of the business — including payment processing and fulfillment — were handled through separate third-party platforms.
He also said the Barron’s article’s characterization of a disputed deal was “missing context” and “very misleading,” arguing it involved a bulk sale of white-label brands that was never completed because a former athlete failed to provide agreed-upon funding and the purchasing company has yet to pay Vent Motion.
He added that his company wired the investor $25,000 after the investor ran into financial trouble.
“The alleged mechanics are fairly straightforward: create manual Shopify orders to make a store appear profitable, use those numbers to build credibility with athletes, and then leverage that credibility to raise money for a much larger deal,” Todd Spodek, a criminal defense attorney and managing partner at Spodek Law Group, told The Post.
“From a criminal defense standpoint, the key questions are who entered the fake orders, who prepared or circulated the allegedly forged documents, and whether each person involved actually knew the representations were false.”
“That distinction matters because a questionable business model or failed investment is not the same as an intentional fraud scheme.”
The Post has sought comment from the Eagles, Dean, Carter, YG and McKenzie.
