NFL Players Were Targeted in a Ponzi Scheme. One of Their Own Helped Pull Them In.

Steve Keim in 2021. Multiple NFL players say that the former general manager’s involvement in an e-commerce business gave them the confidence to invest. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

Steve Keim, a former general manager of the Arizona Cardinals, says he was a victim of an alleged e-commerce scam targeting NFL players. The texts suggest otherwise.

Before he was found dead this past summer at 24, Mohammed Coulibaly had surrounded himself with an impressive network of professional athletes, many of whom invested in his e-commerce business that now looks like a multimillion-dollar scam.

He used social media, e-commerce buzzwords, and a talent for ingratiating himself with the influential to recruit investors. But he also had a secret weapon: a former general manager of the Arizona Cardinals named Steve Keim. His involvement brought Coulibaly instant credibility with National Football League players and executives.

Months after Coulibaly’s venture was exposed as a probable fraud—first in a Barron’s investigation—Keim says he was a victim of the scheme. He says he had portrayed himself to other investors as a tangential player in the business, and that his relationship with Coulibaly collapsed early this year as he became suspicious of the venture’s legitimacy.

But publicly—in since-deleted social media posts—and privately—in text messages viewed by Barron’s —Keim described himself as more deeply involved in the business than he now concedes.

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On multiple occasions, Keim identified himself as Coulibaly’s “partner” and joined meetings where he allowed himself to be advertised as a key executive in the venture, with a broad portfolio of high-level responsibilities.

Keim’s remarks—previously unreported—during the growth and unraveling of Coulibaly’s venture shed new light on the role of the former general manager, who had a career-defining impact on athletes’ lives as a veteran sports executive. Multiple players say his involvement in the venture convinced them to entrust Coulibaly with ever-greater sums.

As promised returns didn’t materialize, Keim relayed Coulibaly’s explanations for the delays. Some of those communications from Keim came as recently as this summer, months after what he now describes as the turning point when he grew doubtful about Coulibaly’s venture.

An attorney for a major investor in Coulibaly’s venture, a retired bank executive, told Barron’s that his client believes he was deceived by Keim and is preparing to sue the former general manager for fraud.

After Barron’s published its investigation on Coulibaly’s apparent online grift, Keim continued coming to its defense. “That article was done by a mad player,” he told one jilted investor in July, referring to Barron’s reporting, which first flagged Keim’s links to the venture.

A week after that exchange, Coulibaly was dead and Keim was publicly downplaying his role, describing himself in an August Philadelphia Inquirer report as having been a figurehead with no decision-making power. “I introduced him to people to sell stores to and that sort of thing,” he told the newspaper.

Keim spoke to Barron’s for this article but ended the interview after Barron’s asked him about investor materials that portrayed him as playing an expansive role at Coulibaly’s company. “I have a TV show to do, sorry,” he said.

Keim and his attorney, Raees Mohamed, who arranged and sat in on the interview, didn’t respond to subsequent messages.

Coulibaly’s death is currently being investigated by local authorities in Gloucester County, N.J., where his body was found in the swimming pool of his part-time home. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is also investigating the alleged scam and has asked for information from current and former NFL players.

Mohamed has told Barron’s that his client spoke with FBI agents who told Keim that he isn’t a subject or a target of any investigation and is regarded as a victim.

Keim met Coulibaly at an Eagles training camp event in July 2025, he said before concluding his recent interview with Barron’s. Coulibaly told Barron’s earlier this year that he frequently visited the Eagles’ athletic complex to spend time with friends on the team.

Keim, at the time, was less than a year into his tenure as general manager for football operations at Klutch Sports, the firm founded by superstar sports agent Rich Paul. Klutch’s post on the X social network announcing the appointment has since been deleted.

Keim said he was at the Eagles facility in his personal capacity as “a former GM,” not on assignment for Klutch. He was joined on the trip to Philadelphia by his 20-year-old son, Carson. A Klutch spokesperson said the firm didn’t immediately know whether Keim was there on the company’s behalf.

During his discussions with Keim and his son, Coulibaly presented his business as a “dropshipping” venture.

Dropshippers are online middlemen whose web stores sell merchandise shipped directly to customers by third-party suppliers, rather than maintaining their own inventory. The technique is often promoted by online influencers as an easy way to get rich through e-commerce.

Based on periodic updates on his store’s performance that Keim received from Carson—who was monitoring the Shopify-powered site’s merchant dashboard for him—the business seemed to be logging healthy sales, portending a windfall from his $350,000 investment in the online shop, Keim told Barron’s.

Emboldened by that apparent success, Keim invested $300,000 more in additional online stores in mid-September 2025, he said. Keim eventually received two disbursements from Coulibaly totaling $500,000 as payouts from those stores, Keim said.

A few months later, he invested another $750,000 into a deal involving a Middle Eastern firm that Coulibaly said had agreed to buy his e-commerce business, Keim said.

Amid this flurry of investment, Coulibaly proposed in December of last year that Keim join him as an executive at his business, called Motion Ventures, Keim said. Keim had, around this time, left Klutch because he “hated the sports agency business,” he said.

Coulibaly appointed Keim as his chief operating officer and told him that his only responsibility was to tell prospective investors how well his own web stores were performing, earning a commission for each successful sale, Keim said.

“All I have to do is talk about my success in my stores, which on paper was tremendous,” he recalled of the terms of his employment. “Pretty easy.”

The Klutch spokesperson said Keim’s official termination didn’t occur until early this year, but his engagement with the firm effectively ended in December 2025, when he was approached about leaving Klutch in what was characterized as a “mutual parting of ways.”

Keim appeared to mark the transition that month by posting a since-deleted photo of himself seated beside Coulibaly on TikTok in the back seat of a vehicle with the hashtag “#bizpartners.”

The image would have been familiar to Keim’s most dedicated social media followers: It had already appeared as a temporary post four months earlier on his Instagram feed, with a similar caption: “My new Biz Partner.”

Barron’s questions about those posts were among the follow-up queries that went unanswered by Keim and his lawyer in recent weeks.

Former New York Giants linebacker Tae Crowder says an investment he made in a web store in the spring of 2025 was soon due to yield a return when Coulibaly asked to meet him in Las Vegas while Crowder was in town on unrelated business that month.

When they met in August, Coulibaly was accompanied by Keim, who Crowder says didn’t offer any objections when Coulibaly said that the former general manager was soon to begin playing a key managerial role in the e-commerce venture.

“He was super hyped about Steve going in. He was saying he’s going to get more GMs, and stuff like that,” Crowder said. “That’s when I really thought I was investing in something legit.”

Based on those assurances, Crowder said he accepted a proposal from Coulibaly for most of the proceeds from his earlier investment to be rolled into a new one; Crowder invested additional funds in the deal involving the Middle Eastern firm, he said. He now tallies his losses at more than $500,000.

Keim said during the interview with Barron’s that he had “nothing to do with” Crowder’s investments or those of other players who have said they boosted their bets based on Keim’s involvement. Keim said those players’ first investments came before he met Coulibaly.

In another incident, a businessman who became an investor through a social relationship with Keim texted the former general manager in November 2025 to share how pleased he was with the seeming success of his store, based on what now appears to have been bogus merchant dashboard data.

Keim responded to the message, “I’m a partner. You’re gonna kill it.”

The businessman was later among a group of four East Coast investors who said they collectively lost about $3 million they invested in the deal involving the Middle Eastern firm, which had been initially pitched to them by Keim.

Keim also joined a pitch session in October 2025 where he and Coulibaly sought an investment from Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Laquon Treadwell, who is a Klutch client, according to another person who attended the online meeting. Treadwell didn’t become an investor, the person said.

The Klutch spokesperson said the agency had not been aware of any work Keim did with Coulibaly during his time with the firm, which “would have been a violation of numerous provisions of his employment agreement and company policy.”

In the months to come, prospective and existing investors say they saw Keim take what appeared to be an expanded role at Motion Ventures. After one Phoenix investor complained to Keim in a March text about falling traffic to her web store, Keim replied that he had spoken “at length” with Coulibaly. “We are changing up ads and going to take a deep look at your account,” he wrote.

Separately that month, Keim sent an email to former Giants running back Matt Breida, himself an investor, to thank Breida for what appeared to be a lucrative referral. Breida had connected Coulibaly to a friend who was said to have $2 million to invest.

“Thanks again for the connection on this new client, Moh has given me the heads up that they’ll be wiring tonight for us to receive tomorrow,” Keim wrote, according to a screenshot of the message viewed by Barron’s. “I personally want to take care of you, thanks again my man.”

Breida’s friend didn’t, in fact, exist: He was the invention of Barry Minkow, a convicted fraudster turned freelance investigator of financial scams who executed the ruse as part of an effort to have Breida’s investment returned and to gather material for a report that he filed with the FBI and other agencies on several investors’ behalf.

Multiple people solicited to invest with Coulibaly tell Barron’s that Keim was copied on emails with pitch decks that asserted a key role for him in the organization. In some cases, Keim participated in calls where those decks—which have been viewed by Barron’s —were presented.

One version of the document refers to Keim as one of Motion Venture’s “Partners.” Another identifies him as “Chief Operation/Growth Officer” and says he supports “leadership across divisions by navigating high-stakes decision-making, managing large budgets, and leading multidisciplinary teams.”

Asked about the description during his interview with Barron’s, Keim said, “I don’t even know what that means.”

“I had no access to any bank records, any login information, I didn’t know who even invested with him,” he said. Keim added during that interview that he had asked Coulibaly to stop telling prospective investors that he held a meaningful role in the company.

“All I did was I talked to people about stores,” he said.

Keim told Barron’s and other media outlets that he brought 10 investors in total to the business, including his son and ex-wife. He hasn’t publicly specified the payoff he expected from Coulibaly.

It was substantial. In text messages with the investor in Phoenix—viewed by Barron’s —Keim mentioned that he was waiting on payments from Coulibaly that included $5 million in “bonus money for bringing people in.”

A few weeks after Coulibaly’s death, sports broadcaster Trey Wingo spoke with Keim in an interview posted to YouTube. Wingo said he wanted to “set the record straight about what is and isn’t true.”

Keim told Wingo, with whom he hosts a football podcast, that Coulibaly had brought him into the venture “to legitimize his business and to continually drag people along.”

Things changed by March and April of this year, Keim said. He was no longer receiving payouts he was expecting from his own investments with Coulibaly and learned that investors whom he had introduced to the venture weren’t receiving their returns either.

“Long story short, we were scammed,” Keim told Wingo. “Things got extremely toxic. I got very very animated and let him know that this is unacceptable.”

In his interactions with investors, Keim appeared much less equivocal about the situation.

“Mo is getting the Shopify stuff fixed today and getting wires out this week,” he said in a June 1 message to the Phoenix investor, who hasn’t recovered any of the $75,000 she invested after being introduced to the venture through her personal relationship with Keim. “I’m on top of it.”

A month later, when the payout still hadn’t arrived, the investor lamented to Keim that she should have heeded the warnings of two mutual acquaintances who advised her not to invest with Coulibaly.

“I’m sorry if you’re mad at me but no one guaranteed anything and the advice your getting from the people you mentioned I would love to tell you what I know about them,” Keim answered. “I have receipts be careful.”

Later in that same exchange, Keim dismissed Barron’s reporting as “done by a mad player.”

In another text exchange, which came in May with former NFL linebacker Crowder, there is also little hint that Keim harbored doubts about Coulibaly.

When Crowder began asking about an overdue payment, Keim relayed a message from Coulibaly that Crowder’s store wasn’t yet due for payment.

Crowder accused Keim and Coulibaly of trying to steal his money, prompting an expletive-ridden response from Keim.

“Don’t f—with me or talk like that to someone who’s isn’t involved in your business play boy,” he wrote. “Be a grown ass man and fix it with Mo who is your guy.”

The largest known investor in Coulibaly’s venture appears to have been Gregory Kruger, the retired banker who now says he was defrauded by Keim. Kruger, who served as chairman of a prominent family-owned regional bank until its sale in 2007, was a member of Keim’s Phoenix-area social circle, according to multiple people familiar with the relationship. Keim had persuaded him to invest.

Kruger invested $3.5 million with Coulibaly, according to a text from Keim viewed by Barron’s, in which Keim refers to a “former bank owner in Az” named Greg.

Kruger continued funding the venture until as recently as May 27, when he made the second of two bank transfers that month totaling $650,000 into Coulibaly’s account, according to banking records viewed by Barron’s.

“Greg Kruger is in the process of filing a civil lawsuit against Steve Keim and other defendants for fraud and multiple other causes of action,” Kruger attorney Lee Wood said in a statement to Barron’s. “He was given both written and oral actionable personal guarantees to protect his investments, loans and other cash wired and delivered to the defendants.”

Days before Coulibaly’s death, Keim traveled to Philadelphia with Kruger to confirm with Coulibaly’s bankers that his accounts contained sufficient funds to honor his payout agreements, according to text exchanges with investors.

“Here is what we saw,” Keim wrote to one investor on July 29. “There is around 6.7m in funds being held by BOA,” Separately, he and Kruger met with Wells Fargo, which “printed out statements and confirmed over 5M was sent via cashiers check,” Keim wrote.

In a separate message to a group of investors, Keim added: “I’m also an investor and want my money now…just wanted to keep it real and let everyone know proof of funds are there so I am encouraged and trying to be as patient as possible.”

Keim told Barron’s he was never in a position to corroborate Coulibaly’s claims because his name wasn’t on any of the accounts. All of the information he shared with investors was shown to him by Coulibaly, he said.

His assessment now: “Obviously a scam.”

Write to Jacob Adelman at jacob.adelman@barrons.com

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