Up until a week ago, Roland Sutterby’s plans were to manage a multi-million-dollar lumberyard in Iola’s vacated Herff Jones plant.
The excitement was palpable.
He had in his hands a contract to purchase the old Herff Jones plant. He was riding in a $60,000 fully loaded 2015 Dodge pickup.
And he’d heard from several acquaintances, eager for the job opportunity.
“It was going to be great for the town,” he said. “She was going to pay better than average wages. She said she was going to pay two weeks for one week of vacation, because so many workers live week to week, and they would need extra money.
“But have you ever heard that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is?” Sutterby asked. “That’s what this is.”
The deal to buy the Herff Jones plant were squashed, and Sutterby’s plans collapsed, he said, because the financial backer — Iolan Bobbie Ingalsbe — has no money.
“She’s been telling quite a story,” Sutterby said.
The episode has left in its wake a series of stunned (and angry) observers, including representatives from True Value Hardware, an auto dealership in Olathe, Thrive Allen County, and in particular, Sutterby and his wife, Spring.
Sutterby has filed a small claims suit against Ingalsbe, seeking restitution for a cell phone and computer he had purchased for her.
Ingalsbe, conversely, insists she still has money in an account, and is awaiting completion of legal proceedings to release the money.
“It had something to do with some lawyers and stuff,” Ingalsbe told the Register, declining to be more specific. “It’s getting straightened out now.”
And, she still insists she will at some point open a lumberyard in Iola.
SUTTERBY AND Ingalsbe crossed paths after she started working in late 2016 for Don Diebolt, who formerly owned Diebolt Lumber and still runs Diebolt LLC. Both Sutterby and Ingalsbe worked as delivery drivers, transporting work crews or materials for custom homes and other steel- or post-frame buildings to job sites across Kansas, Missouri and other parts of the Midwest.
One random conversation led to another.
“She asked me that if she had the capital, if I’d run a lumberyard for her,” he said. Sutterby said he would, but with the realization that such a venture would be costly: perhaps as much as $10 million.
“I have millions,” Ingalsbe reportedly told Sutterby.
The conversation soon turned to planning. Sutterby resigned from Diebolt in late January in order to focus full-time on getting the operation off the ground.
They involved several others in the process.
Sutterby and Ingalsbe reached out to Thrive Allen County, which in turn put them in touch with others who could be a part of the operation; in this case, True Value Hardware. David Toland, Thrive chief executive officer, noted True Value has been eager to open a hardware store in Iola.
And since the lumberyard had yet to find a home, Toland gave them the number of Herff Jones’ real estate broker.
“We had our plans right down to a T,” Ingalsbe agreed.
Included in the planning was a trip — funded by True Value — to California in an attempt to reach an agreement to secure a True Value Hardware franchise for the lumberyard.
Sutterby and Ingalsbe were treated to a Beach Boys concert, among other things, but could not reach an agreement with the hardware chain.
The True Value deal fell through — at Ingalsbe’s urging, Sutterby said — upon their return to Kansas, because she wanted to deal with another vendor.
THE PLANNING continued at a breakneck pace.
At the end of February, Ingalsbe and Sutterby went to a Dodge dealership in Olathe to purchase a pickup for Ingalsbe’s boyfriend. She then decided about a week later to buy a second truck, this one for Sutterby to use.
“I already have a truck,” Sutterby said. “I didn’t need another one, but she insisted.”
The 2015 Dodge was equipped with about every bell and whistle under the sun — against Sutterby’s recommendation. “I told her she needed to get a flatbed, and she sure didn’t need to get a truck with embroidered leather,” he said.
The truck’s retail value was $60,000.
But Ingalsbe refused to take no for an answer, so he picked up the truck, parked it at home, and drove it only sporadically.
He’s still unsure how Ingalsbe was able to get the dealership to part with the vehicles based on little more than a promise.
(Repeated attempts by the Register to reach the salesperson involved in the transactions were unsuccessful.)
FINALLY, the partners needed to find a site.
Ingalsbe and Sutterby figured they had two options: buy the Herff Jones plant, or reach a deal to buy land north of Iola along U.S. 169.
After weeks of negotiations, a verbal agreement was reached for Ingalsbe to buy the Herff Jones facility on North State Street for $950,000.
Sutterby received the contract March 16. All that was needed was Ingalsbe to sign it.
IT’S ABOUT then that the plans started to unravel.
Amid all the planning, meetings and trips, Ingalsbe’s promised capital for the operation had yet to materialize.
She purportedly was set to inherit a sizable amount of money — Sutterby said she frequently said it would be $64 million.
Then, when Sutterby received the contract to buy the Herff Jones plant, he asked Ingalsbe for her lawyer’s email address so it could be sent for review. “But she couldn’t remember her lawyer’s email address,” Sutterby said.
What’s more, Ingalsbe was to have spent a few days in Texas last week for a court proceeding to free up her inheritance and unfreeze a checking account in her name.
When she returned empty-handed, Sutterby’s suspicions were piqued. It was then that Spring Sutterby began researching her husband’s new business partner.
The results were unsettling.
When Spring Sutterby contacted Ingalsbe’s attorney he said he had not talked to her in roughly 20 years.
Things came to a head shortly thereafter.
Through an online database Sutterby found two other names Ingalsby had used in addition to her maiden name, Bobbie Dorsey: Bobbie J. Beaird and Bobbie J. Huckabee.
“Stuff just wasn’t lining up,” Roland Sutterby said. “There were too many excuses.”
Finally, after being confronted with his suspicions, Ingalsbe admitted there was no money, Sutterby said.
Ingalsbe refutes this, maintaining that she does have a substantial amount of money coming her way.
“The $64 million is not an accurate number,” she said. “I’m not sure how much, to be honest.”
She said her attorney would be hesitant to share information about her dealings to the Sutterbys or anybody else, for that matter. “My lawyer’s not at liberty to tell some Joe Blow off the street my business.”
The Register contacted the attorney, Tim Altaras of Cleburne, Texas, who confirmed he had received a call from Kansas in recent days asking about Bobbie Dorsey. “I’ll tell you what I told them,” Altaras said. “She’s not my client.”
When pressed further about the details, Ingalsbe declined comment.
“Once it’s all settled, I’ll be happy to tell you anything,” she said. “But right now, I’m not going to say much. I’m just ready for this to be over and done with,” Ingalsbe continued
Ingalsbe also carried a request for the Register.
“I’d just as soon this (story) not come out in the paper right yet,” she said. “At least, wait a couple of weeks so I can prove to him this is not a scam. This is just unfair.”
“That’s the way it’s always been with her,” Sutterby responded. “It’s always, ‘just wait two more weeks.’”
Sutterby said he’d been contacted by Ingalsbe’s relatives, who expressed regret over the incident, and confirmed there was no long-lost inheritance.
“They told us she had said I’d been paying for all this,” Sutterby said.
Sutterby called off the deal with Herff Jones, called the auto dealership in Olathe and returned his pickup. The second truck was returned as well.
THE EPISODE led to financial losses for Sutterby and True Value.
Sutterby estimates he spent between $1,200 and $1,500 in preparing for the business, including the cell phone and computer for Ingalsbe.
She has since returned both items, but Sutterby still is seeking financial restitution.
“I don’t need two cell phones, and I don’t need two computers,” he explained.
True Value, meanwhile, lost money in transporting both Sutterby and Ingalsbe to California for four days.
Thrive lost no money in the deal, Toland said, “but we’re out a lot of time, and we have egg on our face.”
Had Ingalsbe approached Thrive without Sutterby as her partner, Thrive likely would have taken more precautions before reaching out to folks like True Value or Herff Jones, Toland said.
“We get a lot of people who come through here who have ideas and want to start a business,” he said. “And lots of people aren’t credible, and we can sniff those out.
“This one was different,” Toland continued. “I knew Roland had hardware store experience. In this case, she used Roland, who has a good reputation and is a good man, as a way to gain access and the trust of people in town. This deal appeared to be a good one, and it wasn’t. And I’m responsible for that.”
If there is a bright side, Toland noted True Value executives still desire to open a hardware store in the area.
“They expressed their unhappiness, but they haven’t soured on Iola,” Toland said.
And Thrive, likewise, will continue to serve as an economic matchmaker to all interested parties.
COULD Thrive have done anything differently to prevent such an episode?
Perhaps, but maybe not.
“Our job is to be the matchmaker,” Toland said. “We got damaged this time because we brought somebody to the table who shouldn’t have been there. We wanted this to be real, and it wasn’t.”
Lissa Regehr, Thrive’s director of outreach and advocacy, agreed, noting it would be foolhardy to ask all prospective business owners who come into the Thrive office to immediately succumb to a background check.
“We don’t want to scare people off,” she said. “We want people to come in, and we want to see if we can connect them to resources, to get their dreams off the ground and create a local business.”
Sutterby, meanwhile, is uncertain what his next steps will be.
He receives some Social Security benefits, but likely will seek a part-time job.
He’s scheduled to undergo a stress test next week at Kansas Heart Hospital. (It was already scheduled before the entire Ingalsbe episode occurred.)
“Just good timing,” he laughed.
