Todd Ameden and his wife were in vacation mode. It was 2023, and the Manchester couple were camping at Ricker Pond State Park in Groton, enjoying the outdoors while their thoughts drifted to the future. Retirement was still several years away for Ameden, then in his late fifties, but he could ha rdly wait. An earlier, 10-day tour of Nova Scotia had planted the idea of spending more time on the road. A camper van like the one they’d rented in Canada had become the vehicle for that dream — more convenient than an RV and more comfortable than a trailer or tent. Why not now? they thought. Then, as they drove through nearby Bradford, they came across a gray, gabled garage on Route 5 with a sign out front: East Coast Van Builds. They stopped and met owner Matt Strong. The business owner looked the part, Ameden recalled. A white guy with dreadlocks, Strong seemed easygoing and knowledgeable. He was also a music promoter who booked reggae shows in the Upper Valley. More importantly, Strong could help the couple acquire a Ford Transit van that he would convert into a camper outfitted with plumbing, air-conditioning and cabinetry. Ameden and his wife reasoned they could fulfill their dream while supporting a small Vermont business.  “We were all in,” Ameden said.  They had no inkling that Strong might also be the sort of person who would take $30,000 from them and never return the money or a finished van. Or that they’d eventually have to retrieve their camper and figure out how to salvage their dream. The Manchester couple were among the customers from across the country who took their van-life dreams to Strong, only to encounter delays, excuses and deceit. The aggrieved include retirees, people with disabilities and a Massachusetts homelessness organization that was trying to build a mobile shower room. Some have reported paying Strong as much as $70,000 without a finished van to show for it, leaving them to wonder whether the hippie-like builder was a terrible businessman or a dishonest one. “It went from, Maybe he should lay off the weed, to What is he doing with the money?” said Sarah Deuell of Bath, N.H., who said she lost $70,000 to Strong on an unfinished van build.  The feds, for their part, have determined that Strong committed fraud. In a court filing last month, prosecutors accused the businessman of taking nearly $500,000 of his van customers’ cash for his personal use, including to pay for the music festivals he organized. Strong plans to plead guilty to felony wire fraud for misusing funds from 10 customers in six states, according to records filed in the U.S. District Court in Burlington. The proposed plea deal calls for the Bradford man to pay restitution and forfeit any assets; he would spend no more than one year and one day in prison. A judge will consider the deal during a hearing on December 29. Strong’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment. The charges came as a surprise to some in the Upper Valley, where Strong was better known for the concerts he brought to small towns in recent years. Through his music business, Rooted Entertainment, he put on a series of reggae shows at his van shop and at the Fairlee Town Hall, helping to raise money to create a local dog park. In 2024, Strong launched the Green Mountain Reggae Festival, bringing in big-name acts from around the world. The second annual festival took place over three days this September. At the time, according to emails that customers shared with Seven Days, the feds were already investigating his alleged misuse of down payments at the van business in response to complaints. Bradford resident Jared Pendak, a local arts supporter who has helped Strong publicize some of his shows and volunteered at the first Reggae Fest, said he was shocked to hear of the fraud charge.  “He’s done a lot for performance arts here in Bradford and the surrounding area,” Pendak said.  Available court records provide only a partial picture of what prosecutors describe as a “scheme” to defraud customers of East Coast Van Builds. The feds claim that Strong misled clients about the status of their vans in part by sending them photos of other campers that were further along in the process. Then he used the purported progress reports to solicit more money. Charging documents say he used customers’ payments to cover “certain expenses” related to a music festival he produced in Topsham in September 2022. Strong described the origins of his businesses in a 2023 interview with “The Full Vermonty” podcast. He came to Bradford in an RV in September 2020 from Utica, N.Y., after the pandemic quashed his efforts to grow his music business there. He didn’t intend to stay long, he said, but started a van business after a friend asked for a conversion. Strong saw an untapped market in the Northeast to serve a lifestyle that boomed during the pandemic. The opportunity seemed good enough to renege on a promise he’d made to himself not to start another business. “If you told me three years ago I’d be building vans, I’d be like, ‘Nahhhh,’” Strong said on the podcast. An unfinished van retrieved from East Coast Van Builds Credit: Courtesy East Coast Van Builds launched a flashy website and figured out how to help customers acquire the hard-to-find vans for conversion. Strong purchased computerized machining equipment and hired as many as six employees. But he was quickly overwhelmed. Each build, Strong told the podcasters, is “taking longer than it should.” It was around the time of the podcast interview that Ameden and his wife put down a $10,000 deposit at East Coast Van Builds. The business helped the couple acquire their van in October 2023, but Strong explained that he would not be able to begin work on the conversion until the following June, Ameden told Seven Days. A few weeks later, however, Ameden said he got a written request from Strong asking for another $21,000. Strong explained that he wanted to buy the electrical components immediately because he was worried they wouldn’t be available the following summer.  Ameden sent the money, then heard nothing for months. Strong didn’t return Ameden’s emails until December 2024, at which point Strong explained that he was finally ready to tackle their van. Ameden and his wife drove to Bradford one Friday evening after work, where they sat down with Strong and a designer and discussed “all the really fun stuff,” such as fabric patterns and countertop materials. As the couple departed, Strong made another request for thousands more dollars. “I said, ‘Well, I think you actually need to do some work on the van before we give you another chunk of money,’” Ameden recalled.  That weekend, Ameden saw a post on a Facebook group for van enthusiasts. It was from another of Strong’s customers, relaying similar delays with their build.  Ameden was spooked. He drove back to Bradford and retrieved his van before Strong or his team could start work on it; other vans on the property had been disassembled to the point where they couldn’t be driven.  Ameden and his wife asked Strong to refund the roughly $32,000 they’d fronted. They agreed to a lesser amount of $24,000 or so to account for Strong’s claimed design fees, Ameden said, but the check never arrived. Then, in February of this year, they and other East Coast Van Builds customers got an email from an attorney, notifying them that the business had dissolved.  Aggrieved customers continued to connect through a Facebook group. That’s how Ameden came to consider himself relatively lucky. “He took $66,000 from us and gave us basically nothing.”Charles Allen Others, he learned, were owed much more, including a Delaware couple, Charles Allen and his wife, Linda Snyder Allen. “He took $66,000 from us and gave us basically nothing,” Allen, 71, told Seven Days. Allen made three partial payments to East Coast Van Builds in early 2022, and the couple’s Ford Transit van arrived at the shop that May. In the months that followed, company staff repeatedly told Allen that they were planning to start work soon — first in July, then August, then October, then the end of October, according to emails shared with Seven Days. In January 2023, Allen traveled to Bradford and found that the van was mostly untouched. That May — one year after the van arrived in Bradford — Strong told Allen that the work would be finished by the last week in June. So the Allens traveled to Vermont again in June and found that Strong had installed windows, some subflooring and wall ribs but nothing else. To their surprise, a partially finished “East Coast Van Builds” decal had been printed on the side. The couple told Strong that they wanted their van back. When they returned to retrieve it and their agreed-upon refund check, the discussion grew tense, according to a recording that Allen made without Strong’s knowledge. “I can’t give you money until Friday,” Strong told them.  “You’re manipulative,” Snyder Allen told Strong.  When the couple returned on Friday, Strong wasn’t there.  “He is, I think, coming back with a band from Belize,” an employee told them, according to their audio recording of the visit.  The Allens still haven’t recovered any of their money. They paid another builder to finish their van. At the same time, they watched in frustration as Strong went on to launch the ambitious Green Mountain Reggae Festival in 2024. The second installment of the festival took place in September, featuring three days of acts from far-flung places, including Boston dub collective 10 Ft. Ganja Plant and Jamaican dub legend Scientist.  The most recent fest attracted a larger crowd, Pendak noticed. But staging such events isn’t cheap, and traveling bands had told Pendak that Strong treated them well and sometimes provided lodging. His van customers had an altogether different experience. The original print version of this article was headlined “Van Scam | A Bradford music promoter promised to build retirees the campers of their dreams. Instead, he made off with nearly $500,000.” The post Bradford Music Promoter’s Camper Van Biz Was a Fraud, Feds Say appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less