While the business is closed, the website for East Coast Van Builds in Bradford is still online. Screenshot courtesy of Valley News This story by John Lippman was first published in Valley News on Nov. 26, 2025. A Bradford man faces a potential prison sentence and nearly $500,000 in restituti on payments for taking payments for van conversions for which he failed to perform the work. Matthew Strong ran the now-shuttered business called East Coast Van Builds on Route 5 in Bradford’s Lower Plain. He advertised as a specialist in customized camper vans. He also has worked as a music promoter and is known for organizing reggae events in the state. Strong has agreed to plead guilty to a charge of wire fraud after admitting that he took van customer payments and diverted some of the money to his entertainment business, according to a plea deal entered in federal court in Burlington on Nov. 18. Strong required customers to pay an initial $10,000 non-refundable down payment and then 50% toward the remaining balance of their job — typically $30,000 or more — but failed to deliver the work as promised and dodged calls and emails from irate customers inquiring about the status of their vehicles, the court documents said. East Coast Van Builds operated from 2021 through at least the end of 2024 and specialized in converting Ford Transit and Mercedes vans into customized camper vehicles with kitchen, bathroom and bedding facilities, according to court documents. Customers said Strong would prevaricate when it became apparent the work had not been done, or ghost them altogether, according to court documents and interviews with customers. An attorney listed in court documents as representing Strong did not respond to an email request for comment on Tuesday. An email to an address listed for Strong also received no response. A private Facebook group called Survivors of East Coast Van Builds, which was created in March as a place for former customers “to commiserate, share resources, legal advice, ideas, rage, and heal,” now has 37 members. Many of the accounts shared in the group echo that of Charlie Allen. Allen, a retired software developer from Wilmington, Delaware, said he and his wife had purchased a new Ford Transit 350 HD van for $65,000 in 2022 which was delivered that May to Strong in Bradford to convert into a camper. The cost of the job would be $120,000, and Allen said he paid half upfront. Then began the runaround, Allen said. “I’d call him up and ask what’s going on,” Allen, 71, told the Valley News. “He’d say, ‘Oh, I’m having trouble getting parts’, or ‘So-and-so ‘is sick’. Then the summer wore on and it’s August and he says, ‘A month. You’re third in line’. Then there’d be another month.” Eventually, Allen became fed up with the excuses and said he drove seven hours from his home in Delaware to Bradford in February 2023 — nine months after Strong took possession of the van — to see for himself what the problem was. What Allen said he found was that only the windows, roof vents and a fan had been installed, only a fraction of the work. “He’d done zip,” said Allen, who abandoned all hope and drove off with his van. He said he does not expect to recover the $60,000 he paid to Strong despite the restitution required under his plea agreement. He noted that when he and his wife found another company to complete the conversion, the windows that Strong installed had to be replaced because they leaked. “We got nothing. All we got was lies,” Allen said. According to court documents, Strong took photographs of work-in-progress inside one customer’s van and sent them to the customer of another van claiming the images were evidence of work-in-progress on the van the second customer had demanded to see. In another instance, Strong used money customers paid for van conversions to cover expenses for a music festival he produced in Topsham in 2022, prosecutors said. He used one customer’s van without permission at the Topsham festival, which the customer was able to detect through tracking software. Strong, through his company Rooted Entertainment Solutions, organized the Green Mountain Reggae Festival at the Bradford Fairgrounds last year and the Green Mountain Smoke Out festivals in Topsham in 2023 and 2024. Strong was stringing along at least 10 van customers from seven states, the court documents state. He has agreed to forfeit a total of $477,502 in payments, according to the plea agreement. A court date has not yet been scheduled for Strong to formally enter his guilty plea on a single felony count of wire fraud. A conviction on the charge is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine or twice the gross gain or loss, whichever is greater. Even customers who were able to get their van conversions completed by Strong said it was an ordeal. Michelle Robbins said she had to literally show up on the day she was told work would be done and wouldn’t leave until it was completed. “We were actually one of the ‘lucky’ ones. … We did end up getting a build-out but only after showing up at the shop multiple times demanding answers,” Robbins said via text. “We straight up accused (Strong) of felony fraud because he had $60K of our cash and nothing to show for it,” she said. “At that point we gave a firm deadline … We knew there was no money and knew we had to push for a build rather than try to get money back.” “We let him know it was up to him whether we got the police involved,” Robbins wrote. “Once we accused him of fraud, he magically found time to work on the van and get it almost complete — with many issues because they rushed.” Getting his van converted into a van was a much rougher ride for Tim Weaver, however. Weaver, of Carrabassett Valley, Maine, said he forked over $60,000 to have Strong convert a van he purchased at the Lebanon Ford dealership in 2023 and contracted with him in April of that year to begin work. Weaver had very specific instructions about how the van was to be fitted out with special equipment because his wife, Carol Weaver, is an adaptive athlete who is a paralyzed from the chest down as the result of a mountain biking accident three years ago. The couple’s goal was to have a vehicle that could transport Carol Weaver’s $25,000 mountain bike securely while also providing room for Tim Weaver, also a software engineer, to work remotely. A specially fitted-out camper van, like the one Tim Weaver had seen on YouTube of a paralyzed former Canadian female Olympic athlete using to “drive around Canada,” would be the ideal solution for them. At first Strong seemed enthusiastic about taking on the van conversion project, even contacting the Canadian woman in the YouTube video. “That to us said all the right things. We jumped right in,” said Tim Weaver, admitting sheepishly, “we didn’t do a lot of due diligence after that.” So in April 2023, the Weavers signed a contract and sent Strong the initial $10,000 down payment and soon followed that with another $50,000 for “materials cost” [sic]. They also spent $67,000 to buy a Ford Transit Extended High Roof. “Less than two weeks after I wired the big $50K (to Strong) it was radio silence,” Weaver said. Months passed before Weaver said he could finally get Strong on the phone again. “I was a little upset,” Weaver said. He recalled telling Strong, “I get you may not be jumping on my van because you got other things going on, but I send you 50 grand and you ignore me? You just take my money?” Weaver said “that was the point we should have bailed. But we had already invested so there was no way out.” In April 2024, 12 months after they had signed the contract and paid Strong $60,000 Weaver said he delivered the van to Strong’s shop in Bradford. Inquiries about how things were progressing were fruitless. The few times he could get Strong to respond, “he said they ‘started it, we’re working on it’. There was always some weird excuse, like ‘my dad’s house burned down’,” Weaver said. Although he demanded photographs as proof of progress, Weaver said none were ever sent. “The van sat with them from April 2024 until we got a call from the Vermont AG’s office saying, ‘You need to come get your van,’ which was April 2025, basically 12 months,” Weaver said. He traveled from Maine, and when he got there and tried to start the engine, it wouldn’t turn over. A rear brake light was smashed. The only conversion work that had been done was some mounting strips to which interior paneling was to be attached — but was so poorly done it had to be stripped out. “Basically, after two years, all I had was flooring,” Weaver said. With the help of jumper cables, Weaver got the van to start and he drove it back to the dealership in Lebanon, which in a couple weeks did the necessary repairs. He then brought it to home Maine where Weaver, now retired and with ample time on his hands, embarked on a DIY project to convert the van into a camper himself. Weaver wrapped up the project a couple months ago, and on Dec. 5, he and Carol are driving the camper to Breckenridge, Colorado, where Carol will participate in the Hartford Ski Spectacular, a week-long program ski and snowboarding adaptive program. “That will be our first big trip,” Weaver said. Read the story on VTDigger here: Van conversion business owner agrees to plead guilty in fraud case. ...read more read less