by Mike Donoghue
Vermont News First
BURLINGTON–An Orange County businessman, who authorities say ripped off customers at his custom van shop for nearly $500,000, has agreed to plead guilty to two federal charges of wire fraud.
Matthew Strong, who owned and operated East Coast Van Builds in Bradford between 2021 and the end of 2024, also has agreed to forfeit at least $477,502 from his fraud, court records show.
Strong has signed a 12-page plea agreement filed in U.S. District Court in Burlington admitting that he was involved in wire fraud by transferring ill-gotten money across state lines.
The amount of the total fraud could go higher by the time the sentencing is held, court papers noted.
Strong, 44, who has a couple of addresses, including one in Vershire, is also an entertainment promoter. He has operated the annual Green Mountain Reggae Festival, a three-day event in Bradford in recent years. He also operated Rooted Entertainment Solutions in Bradford and other music events in Topsham.
He used some of the payments made by van customers to pay certain expenses for a music festival in Topsham in 2022, records show. The money was not used for the intended vans, the criminal charges noted.
Strong actually took a customer’s van from the Bradford shop to use at the music festival in Topsham, records show.
The van owner traced her vehicle to the Topsham area by using a tracking device she had in her van, the records note. Strong did not have permission from the owner to use the van for the music festival, the charge said.
Under the plea agreement, the proposed prison sentence is one year and one day, but the judge can reject the deal.
No court date has been set for Strong to formerly enter his guilty plea before Chief Federal Judge Christina Reiss in Burlington.
It is a standard procedure after a guilty plea to postpone the sentencing until a pre-sentence report is prepared by the U.S. Probation Office for the judge.
Strong’s criminal charges paint a picture of a businessman that would string along his customers about the conversion of their vans while falsely claiming he was working on them.
Strong would collect payments and use the proceeds for his personal benefit, the plea agreement said.
Strong and ECVB vans failed to meet timelines in the conversion process. Instead, Strong collected the initial deposits — normally a $10,000 non-refundable down payment — and later get 50 percent of the remaining balance — often $30,000 or more, the plea agreement said.
He would fail to communicate with the customers — often for months at a time, court records note. On many occasions, Strong refused to communicate with the customers until they made multiple attempts to connect with him, usually in the form of wire communications including email or telephone calls.
On certain occasions, in furtherance of his scheme, Strong sent misleading photographs to customers to suggest that work had been done on their vehicles when no real progress had been completed, court records show.
Strong painted the interior of one customer’s van, photographed it, and then sent the pictures to different customers who were demanding progress reports on their conversion projects, the plea agreement noted.
Strong intended to mislead the customers that their van was being worked on and painted when, in fact, their vehicle was in the same or substantially the same condition as when the customer first dropped it off with ECVB, records show.
The business owner would use the photographs to demand additional payments, claiming milestones in the project had been reached, court papers said.
The business presented itself as the only east-coast based van conversion service company. ECVB marketed itself as specializing in converting Ford Transit vans and Mercedes Sprinter vans into “reliable, self-sufficient adventure homes.”
As the COVID-19 era got underway in 2020 and people were looking for ways to travel and live, the van conversion business took off. ECVB operated with five employees and at times had seven, all under the control of Strong, court papers noted.
The plea agreement hammered out by Assistant U.S. Attorney David Golubock and defense lawyer Ian P. Carleton is binding only in federal court in Vermont. It does not bind other federal, state or local prosecutors, it notes.
The two wire fraud charges pertain to a woman with a bank account in Lebanon in March and April 2022.
Court papers note Strong had at least 10 van customers that were ignored after getting payments. They were located in several states, including Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Maine, Delaware, and Maryland and used banks in those states to wire money.
Each wire fraud count is punishable by up to 20 years in prison, followed by up to three years on supervised release and up to a $250,000 fine. The law also requires full restitution.
Strong agreed to waive formal indictment by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont and allow prosecutors to file the felony charges without a federal grand jury.
By cooperating early, Strong hopes to get a break on his court sentence.