How a store at the Moorestown Mall grew out of what investors call a massive e-commerce scam

When serial entrepreneur Adetunji Thomas-Quarcoo opened a discount store called Value Vault inside the Moorestown Mall last summer, he branded it a bargain-hunter’s paradise — offering cheap electronics, back-to-school supplies, Herman Miller-branded housewares, and more.

But there was a hitch.

Investors from across the country said Value Vault was a brick-and-mortar twist on a predatory business model. For years, Thomas-Quarcoo ran companies that offered to set up investors with turnkey Amazon or eBay stores — collecting up-front investments of $5,000 to $50,000, and touting profits as high as 40% per month, all with a 100% money-back guarantee.

But clients now contend in court records and interviews that it was a scheme to take their money, and that the Value Vault storefront was one more gambit to lure new victims into what is now being billed as a “fractional retail ownership” program.

The Pennsylvania attorney general has received 18 complaints about two of Thomas-Quarcoo’s companies, BMB Matrix and Build My Brand, which list addresses at Philadelphia coworking spaces. And a handful of clients, largely representing themselves, have unsuccessfully pursued action in small-claims courts from New Jersey to Oklahoma. Others said they have complained to everyone from mall security to the FBI.

Some clients said they already had Amazon stores, but were looking to improve their business. Others were lured by the hundreds of positive online reviews and persuasive sales pitches from BMB’s staffers, and the opportunity to get a small sliver of the $2.7 trillion Amazon market. The concept: BMB would establish Amazon or eBay stores in their names, fill the stores with inventory, and handle all of the fulfillment and customer service. As sales took off — on paper — clients who experimented with small investments were persuaded to pay more and more for additional inventory.

But the allegations in court, echoed in interviews with 10 former clients, were that BMB’s stores were plagued with issues and did not deliver on the guaranteed returns — and that those who pursued refunds through the money-back guarantee were never made whole. Instead, when clients demanded answers, they said, the company did not respond to them or blocked their calls.

Standing in his Pennsauken warehouse in February, surrounded by pallets of discount merchandise, Thomas-Quarcoo described himself as a legitimate businessman navigating the industry’s hurdles. His only mistake, he said, was dealing with novice investors — who either misunderstood or regretted the nature of their contracts, and invested money they could not afford to lose. He later accused former clients of harassing or even trying to blackmail him.

The investors — most of whom stumbled on the company while searching online for passive income opportunities — said that ventures into e-commerce with BMB had been disastrous.

A 64-year-old man from Massachusetts, Michael Scalise, said he struggled last year as his home filled with returned packages, because BMB had sent out defective or damaged merchandise. BMB charged him for the inventory it was sending out — and then he was charged again for the returns. He had initially signed up for a $5,000 package — but he ended up putting in a total of $24,000, he said.

He said he eventually got his initial $5,000 refunded. But by then, he was behind on his rent.

He now lives in his son’s garage in Florida. “It’s not exactly what I envisioned for my retirement.”

Thomas-Quarcoo provided a video he said proved Scalise was a satisfied customer.

Jennifer Shirley, a single mother from Lexington, Ky., invested $9,995 — the payout from a car crash in which she had broken her neck, she said — for a contract that guaranteed at least $10,000 in first-year profits. That was in October 2023. But she soon received warnings from Amazon that her product listings violated pricing or intellectual property policies.

Within a few weeks, she tried to take advantage of BMB’s advertised money-back guarantee. She said she never got her refund. BMB’s staff threatened to apply legal fees, at a rate of $695 per hour, against her account, messages show.

Build My Brand did agree to refund another client, Simeon Jackson of Mount Juliet, Tenn., who had invested $10,000. The signed account-closure agreement from June 2024 said he would be repaid in monthly installments starting that August.

Jackson said he is still waiting for that first payment.

Thomas-Quarcoo did not respond to questions about Shirley’s and Jackson’s accounts.

While the Value Vault storefront operates under a distinct corporate identity, several clients said they were advised their investments were being “rolled over” into the retail business. Value Vault’s website, in turn, directs prospective investors back to BMB Matrix.

Thomas-Quarcoo said his business is thriving, with hundreds of satisfied customers and close to $10 million in revenue last year.

“They’re making all these outrageous claims,” he said. “If I’m running a scam, why have I not been locked up?”

He said that there are just a handful of unhappy customers, and that he has paid over $1 million in refunds in the last year.

“My stupidity was putting a money-back guarantee. That was a naive thing to do,” he said, adding, “I had to liquidate $300,000 of my own money to keep this thing going.”

Joseph P. Bailey, an associate dean at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business, was not familiar with BMB Matrix but said any company advertising 20%, 30%, or 40% returns on investment per year — let alone per month — would be an immediate red flag.

Passive income, he said, is not a reality in the complex and cutthroat world of online retail.

“You have to continually update and improve [an e-commerce store], and adjust to the realities of competition, technology changes, and changing prices, ” he said. “I would be very skeptical if someone said to me, ‘You can make money and don’t have to do anything.’”

Thomas-Quarcoo, 41, was raised in New Jersey and, according to a biography posted on his LinkedIn page, began his career while still in high school, selling T-shirts to other students.

While enrolled at Montclair University, in 2005, he launched his first e-commerce venture: a simple site that resold Nike Air Jordans for $70 a pop, an eye-catching 50% below retail.

The operation acquainted Thomas-Quarcoo with the power of AdWords — Google’s search-based advertising platform — and he spun off search-engine-optimized resale sites, like “jordanairs.com” and “MyJordansFly.com.”

The reselling operation did not go unnoticed.

“He caught the attention of Nike who filed a lawsuit stating jordanairs was an unauthorized basketball shoe seller,” Thomas-Quarcoo’s LinkedIn biography continues. “Notoriety came with some hardships.”

A federal trademark-infringement lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for Southern Florida in 2008, alleged that the young businessman was in fact selling counterfeit Nikes. The case ended with a permanent injunction and a $60,000 default judgment against him.

In 2010, he filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

The filing states that at the time, he owed creditors $127,000, including the Nike debt, a $26,000 loan linked to the purchase of a 2006 BMW the year before, and $15,000 from a New Jersey lawsuit filed by a payment processor against yet another of his companies, Young Entrepreneurs Group.

In his bio, Thomas-Quarcoo casts this all as a learning experience. “He knew that he could teach and train other entrepreneurs how to have a successful online business through his accomplishments and failures,” he wrote.

It led him to create ebizbrokerz.com, which coached clients on how to create stores on eBay, Craigslist, and Amazon.

This company later rebranded as simplydropshipping.com, which offered turnkey e-commerce stores, which the company would build, stock, and manage. The drop-shipping concept meant his clients did not maintain their own inventory but instead acted as middlemen, offering hundreds of products for sale to be shipped on-demand from third-party suppliers, typically overseas.

But angry customers posted online reviews complaining their $10,000 e-commerce stores were losing money, or that their accounts were flagged for supplying counterfeit merchandise.

Thomas-Quarcoo said customers unfairly blamed him when Amazon shut down their stores, even though Amazon could do so for any reason. Asked why Amazon was flagging his businesses, he would say only: “Google it. Google ‘Amazon shuts down stores.’”

So, he rebranded again, and again — eventually adding his own warehouses in New Jersey to replace or supplement the drop-shipping services.

But problems persisted.

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Thomas-Quarcoo said that he has worked out logistics challenges, and that only about 18% of his sales result in returns, which he said is well below the e-commerce norm of 35%.

Bailey, the Maryland dean, said either of those numbers would be disastrous for successful e-commerce merchants, who typically expect closer to 5% returns on electronics, and up to around 10% for clothing and shoes.

He said that just as the internet brought immense opportunity to businesses — lowering entry costs and opening up a vast customer base — it had also lowered barriers for businesses to rebrand and shed damaged reputations.

“The lower that cost is, the easier it is to cycle through these businesses, and have serial entrepreneurs leaving, unfortunately, a lot of waste in their wake,” he said. “It’s very suspicious behavior. It’s the same idea as moving to a different city and setting up shop under a new name to erase your history.”

Some clients never knew who was truly behind any of the companies. And while some personally interacted with Thomas-Quarcoo, they did not always know his real name.

Just as he had shuffled between different business names, he began using an alias: “Tom Parker.”

He said it was necessary because of the harassment he had been enduring online from angry clients.

In 2018, a Long Beach, Calif., man named Gino Fracchiolla was excited to land a sales position with a company called Hire My Team — a company that appeared to have cracked the formula for recruiting investors eager to purchase turnkey online stores.

The business was another of Thomas-Quarcoo’s ventures, and it was Fracchiolla’s job to sell the turnkey e-commerce packages to new clients.

He said he was amazed at how quickly he began closing big accounts, from clients willing to pay tens of thousands up front in return for online shopping sites. He said he brought in $150,000 in new business in his first two weeks.

“They spent a ton of money on Google AdWords campaigns. A lot of folks would land at their doorstep,” Fracchiolla said.

He said that Thomas-Quarcoo and his then-partner, Santos Gonzalez, both flew out from Philadelphia to help him set up an office in a WeWork location and hire a team.

(Gonzalez, reached by phone, denied any knowledge of Fracchiolla, Thomas-Quarcoo, or Hire My Team.)

Fracchiolla said many aspects of the company were odd. For instance, he said, “There were maybe five people working there. [But] they had all these fake aliases. They were trying to give the appearance of a larger company.”

“You don’t care about this stuff when you’re making $10,000 a week,” he admitted.

But by June 2019, many of the clients he had closed were getting angry, Fracchiolla said. No work had been done on their accounts, and Thomas-Quarcoo was not answering their calls. He claimed Thomas-Quarcoo told him to ignore the calls as well.

Fracchiolla said when he started raising concerns, he was fired.

“At no point was it legitimate,” he concluded. “What’s crazy is, the business model is great. It’s just too good to be true, because the promises they were making were outlandish.”

Fracchiolla sued in federal court over unpaid wages and settled with Gonzalez. Records show he obtained a $201,000 default judgment against Thomas-Quarcoo personally and three of his companies.

To date, he said, he has been unable to collect.

Thomas-Quarcoo, in text messages filed in court, taunted Fracchiolla, once sending him a video of a new, $140,000 Mercedes SUV — labeled “Victory lap.”

In an interview, Thomas-Quarcoo denied the existence of a judgment in the case.

“That was thrown out,” he said.

By last year, Thomas-Quarcoo was increasingly promoting his brick-and-mortar retail operations, including the mall store and another business, Value Vault Shelving, which sought to find a market for shelving harvested from defunct Rite Aid stores.

Several of BMB Matrix’s clients said they were intrigued by the invitation to transition into a stake in the retail ventures.

An Austin, Texas, couple, Kristy and Jeremy Saucier, had been optimistic about their $15,000 investment with BMB Matrix, signing a contract that guaranteed a 100% first-year profit. When their sales rep pitched them on shifting from e-commerce to the retail business, the potential seemed even greater.

They received weekly spreadsheets reporting their sales. “It looked like it took off,” said Kristy Saucier, a mother of three.

But by the fall, those profits were still only on paper, they said. Thomas-Quarcoo did not respond to their claims.

“We have lots of things in collections now,” she said. “My daughter was in the ICU over Christmas and we don’t know how to pay those hospital bills.”

Sarah and Billy Cheek, a Louisiana couple, said they had previously had a functioning Amazon store. Then they paid BMB $15,000 to take over its management. Instead, Amazon shut their account down.

“To get our account reopened,” Sarah Cheek said, “they want paperwork that we don’t have, that BMB doesn’t have and probably never had: permission from manufacturers to sell their products.”

Several said they had talked to lawyers, who told them their cases were not worth the legal fees. Others were hoping for law enforcement action.

Such cases are rare, but not unprecedented. The Nebraska attorney general recently filed a deceptive trade practices suit against a lifestyle influencer who urged followers to invest in “automated” e-commerce storefronts — many of which were suspended for violating Amazon’s or Walmart’s policies

“This group of influencers manufactured lavish lifestyles on Instagram to lure consumers into a stream of ‘passive income’ schemes that were doomed to fail, then divvied up the money,” said Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers in a statement.

For now, Thomas-Quarcoo’s clients have resorted to posting online reviews.

Some are afraid to complain because they signed off on a nondisparagement clause, punishable by a $1,000 fine. Thomas-Quarcoo did attempt at least once to enforce the clause in New Jersey small claims court. But when it came time for trial last December, neither party showed up.

Less than two weeks after Inquirer reporters visited the Value Vault store at the mall, it, too, disappeared.

Paper was up on its windows, and the shelves were stripped of merchandise. Thomas-Quarcoo did not respond to follow-up questions about his plans for the business.

But BMB Matrix is still accepting clients — as is a new, BMB-affiliated company, MyDigitalSupply.com, that promises to help investors tap into a whole new marketplace: TikTok.

Recently, yet another new business popped up online: Tom Parker Co.

The investment packages it offered bore a striking resemblance to those at BMB — from the projected 20% monthly returns to the 100% money-back guarantee. But the price point was even higher, and the claims grander, including offices in London, Dubai, and, of all places, the same warehouse complex used by Value Vault in Pennsauken.

The “who we are” page shows a stylish executive team, although Tom Parker — Thomas-Quarcoo’s frequent alias — was nowhere to be found.

Instead, the site introduced prospective clients to “CEO & founder Gerry M.” — though the image actually depicts a European digital consultant, Rumble Romagnoli.

Romagnoli’s image, along with those of other purported Tom Parker Co. staffers, were all pilfered from the bio page of Relevance, a Monaco-based yacht marketing firm, according to the firm’s head of digital security, David Breviglieri.

“They basically stole it,” he said.