An update tonight to a 7 Problem Solver Report we first brought you Friday. The sudden closure of Evans Furniture has led to a full-scale investigation by the Iowa Attorney General’s Office.


We’ve received dozens of calls and e-mails from irate customers since Friday when we found the doors locked at the Evans Furniture store on Hammond avenue. Now, these subpoenas have been issued for the owner of the company, Jack Evans, and his daughter, Angela Evans, by the state Attorney General’s Office.

The subpoenas order Jack and Angela Evans to talk to an investigator with the consumer protection division of the Iowa Attorney General’s Office in Des Moines. They’re ordered to bring customer lists and receipts including order status, sales and inventory records since the first of the year, banking statements, and a list of secured creditors.

Meantime, not much has changed at the company’s store in Waterloo but there is one big difference. The furniture that had been loaded onto the company’s moving truck Friday is no longer there.

And customers like Lois Hackman keep showing up hoping to find someone around. She’s been trying for a month, to get her barstools. “I went in on Wednesday afternoon and I said if they’re not in by Friday, I want my money back. Thursday I heard they were closed up so I’m out the stool and out my money. I don’t want the stools. I want my money back.”

Hackman says she wrote a check for 164 dollars for the barstools. She was so mad she called the manufacturer. “They said they have not sent this outfit here anything in the last 30 days. ‘so they didn’t even carry the furniture you had ordered?’ No it’s outdated. You couldn’t have even got it.”

Now, all Hackman can get is red in the face as the yellow truck sits parked along the side of the building. “It’s fraud. I’d like to take a black pencil and write all the way across that truck..fraud!”

But it’s up to the Attorney General’s Office and the police department to determine if it really is fraud.

We also spoke with one former Evans employee today. She told us she hasn’t been paid for her last two weeks of work. She also told us that all of the actions, and promises made to customers were ordered by Angela Evans from company offices in Davenport.

Again, we have no comment from the company.

Now, the Scott County Sheriff’s Department is in the process of serving these subpoenas.

A hearing is set for Tuesday at the Attorney General’s Office in Des Moines. We’ll let you know what happens.

And if you think you’ve been ripped off by Evans Furniture, you can file a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office at 515-281-5926.