PAVING DISASTER: Local businesses claim asphalt company scammed them

IDAHO FALLS — A number of Idaho Falls business owners are angry at a local asphalt company for not doing the job it promised.

“They are fast-working scam artists,” commercial property owner Rick Christensen said. “What they were doing is nothing I have ever seen done to a parking lot.”

Christensen and Tim Colling, the owner of Colling Pest Solutions, say Joles Asphalt was hired to refinish parking lots at their businesses, but they claim the paving company did not use the right materials or complete the job.

They said they were scammed by Joles Asphalt, which used a tactic that has been used by similar paving companies around the country.

Joles Asphalt owner Charles Joles disputes the accusations and tells EastIdahoNews.com his company offered to redo the projects to make things right.

What happened

Christensen says Joles Asphalt contacted him last week and offered to patch two holes on his lot at a bargain price. Workers with the company said they had extra asphalt left over from a job on Skyline Road.

Christensen gave Joles the go-ahead and later went to his property to inspect the work. He says he was shocked to see the workers spreading gravel across his entire lot. Christensen confronted them and they maintained he had agreed to the work being done and they promised to give him a good price on the entire lot.

“I felt stuck because I did agree to their work,” Christensen tells EastIdahoNews.com. “But they were doing more than I agreed to and honestly I didn’t know whose misunderstanding it was.”

“I told them to get the hell off my property.”

That’s when Christensen says the workers asked what price he thought was fair for the work they had done and he lost his cool.

“I told them to get the hell off my property,” Christensen says. “They had gravel spread all over the lot, and all I wanted was the two holes patched.”

Christensen says Joles Asphalt did clean up part of what workers had started, but he had to hire a parking lot sweeper to finish the job.

Colling, the owner of Colling Pest Solutions, has a similar story.

He recently moved his business into a new building on the 300 block of First Street in Idaho Falls.

“We got the new building, we had a new sign scheduled to be installed and we noticed the parking lot was an eyesore,” Colling tells EastIdahonews.com. “So I decided to get our parking lot refinished.”

Colling says on his way home from work last week, he noticed Joles Asphalt refinishing Christensen’s lot on 17th Street. Colling says he stopped and asked them for a quote for his lot.

Joles Asphalt came by Colling’s business the next day. Roman Joles, an employee of Joles Asphalt, walked around the lot and asked Colling what he wanted done.

“I told him I wanted a nice, flat and smooth lot that I would paint lines on,” Colling says. “I showed him a lot across the street, and he told me he could do it, no problem.”

Joles Asphalt quoted him a price of $9,500 for a chip seal to smooth the lot, but Colling and his daughter, Marquee Rasmussen, felt the price was too high.

Within 24 hours, Joles Asphalt came to him with another offer: $4,000.

Colling agreed to the price and Roman Joles and his crew began laying gravel within a few hours.

“My feet sunk in, and the gravel stuck to my shoes.”

“I thought it was great,” Colling said. “We were excited to be in the new building, our sign was on the way and we were about to have a beautiful lot for our customers. The new curb appeal itself was exciting as a business owner.”

The excitement didn’t last long.

Colling had concerns immediately after the job was complete. The parking lot was uneven and the gravel seemed very loose.

Colling voiced his concerns to Joles, who reassured him that all was well.

Joles told Colling he still needed to apply another coat of spray and the next morning it would be a hard surface suitable for painting and driving on. Colling wrote him a check for $4,000.

He regretted making the payment the next morning.

“It just wasn’t right,” Colling said. “My feet sunk in, and the gravel stuck to my shoes. I’m not in the asphalt business, but I knew something was wrong.”

Colling, thinking he had been scammed, called his bank and issued a stop order to the check.

“The deal was he would get paid when the job was done,” he said. “As far as I was concerned, the job wasn’t anywhere near done.”

Charles Joles, one of the the owners of Joles Asphalt, contacted Colling days later and offered to fix the lot. Colling already had another company clean the job up and said he did not wish to work with Joles Asphalt.

Charles wouldn’t comment on the job to EastIdahoNews.com other than to say he offered to fix it.

What we learned about Joles Asphalt

Joles Asphalt appears to be a relatively new company, but members of the Joles family have been involved in the industry for much longer.

The new Joles business was registered with the Idaho Secretary of State’s office on May 23 under the name of Melissa Joles, Charles’ wife and business partner. A contractor’s license was issued to Melissa on May 26. They subscribed to the Better Business Bureau at the end of June and currently have an A+ rating. Charles is listed as an owner with the BBB.

The company’s listed address is a box at a UPS store on Channing Way in Idaho Falls. The phone number, which is not local, rings to a voicemail that isn’t set up.

The Joles Asphalt’s vehicle used at Christensen’s and Colling’s lots is registered in Wisconsin.

Charles Joles is not currently licensed to do construction work in Idaho. He received an Idaho license in October 2005, but that license was revoked in June 2015 after the Idaho Contractors Board found that Joles failed to meet generally accepted standards on a $7,400 paving job in Ammon.

The board found Joles “failed to adequately clean the asphalt surface prior to the application of the seal, failed to properly seal the cracks in the asphalt, failed to apply a tack coat to achieve proper adherence of seal coat and failed to mix any sand or aggregate into the sealer.”

As a result of the deficiencies, the board said the seal coating failed to properly adhere to the asphalt and began to peel from the asphalt within weeks after he did the job.

Court documents show Charles Joles agreed the seal coat had not adhered correctly and promised to redo the work when the weather permitted. However, despite multiple attempts to reach Charles, he never returned to repair the work.

Joles declined to speak with EastIdahoNews.com about the licensing issue or the Ammon project.

Charles is also listed as an owner of Pro Cote Asphalt Paving & Seal Coating, a business that was later renamed CPS Construction. That business address is listed with a box at a UPS store in Pocatello.

There also is a Joles Paving company in Idaho Falls listed under the name Jerry Joles. It is unclear if Jerry and Charles are related. This business also lists a UPS store as its address.

Keeping up with the Joles

The complaints issued by Christensen and Colling are remarkably similar to complaints registered all across the country against very similar looking companies.

EastIdahoNews.com cannot confirm a relationship between Joles Asphalt and other companies.

However, EastIdahoNews.com discovered various Joles Asphalt companies in at least nine other states — many of whom are connected to fraudulent paving projects.

In 2010, law enforcement officers in Uintah County, Utah, were warning people to be aware of “fly-by-night paving companies.”

Uintah County Sheriff’s Department officers were called to investigate Joles Asphalt Paving, operated by Arkansas native Clarence Allen Joles in Vernal, Utah. He was arrested and charged with communications fraud after “taking advantage of (a customer) by telling him one price before performing the work and coming up with a much larger price when the work was completed,” according to one victim.

The investigation found he also approached a second homeowner offering to pave his drive with “leftover” asphalt for $3,000. Later, Clarence Joles inflated the price to $6,000 and finally $9,800, which the homeowner paid, according to the Uintah Basin Standard. The victims, both senior citizens, said the work was substandard in both cases.

Also, a Clarence Joles with a Utah and Arkansas address also registered a Joles Asphalt company in Idaho, which closed in 2006.

Here are some other examples:

• In 2002, two Arkansas men, Danny Joles and Ronnie Joles, faced charges of deceptive trade practices and money laundering in Lamb County, Texas, for “trying to pave driveways using inferior grades of asphalt, but selling them as higher-quality materials,” according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.
• Danny Joles was charged with felony fraud in January of this year in Chippewa County, Wisconsin, for allegedly quoting a cost of $1,000 to the homeowner, but ended up charging more than $7,500 for his work, according to WQOW.
• Additionally, in Wisconsin, a Joles Asphalt company has an F rating with the BBB and a listed address of a UPS store. The BBB says this business has gone by nine different names.
• In Missouri, two Wisconsin men with the last name of Joles were among five people arrested for a paving scam targeting the elderly in 2008.

There are similar stories in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Oregon, and Ohio — some dating back into the 1980s. Nearly all of them involve paving scams, individuals with the last name of Joles, and businesses with addresses at UPS stores.

There is no clear indication that any of these instances are directly related — or that there is a direct connection to the Joles Asphalt in Idaho Falls. Cross checking these names against federal repositories shows that none of the individuals mentioned have been charged in federal criminal or civil cases relating to fraud.

A warning from local business owners

“This is going to cost us literally thousands of dollars to get fixed and put back the way it was.”

There have been no lawsuits or criminal cases filed against the company in Idaho, according to the Idaho Repository.

However, Colling, Christensen and other local business owners have contacted EastIdahoNews.com and maintain they have been the victims of a paving scam with Joles.

EastIdahoNews.com asked Chris Cook, a veteran asphalt contractor with DePatco, to inspect the job at Colling Pest Solutions.

“Looks to me like they used totally the wrong material,” Cook said. “They were trying to do a chip seal, but it’s not even a real chip seal — and a chip seal in a parking lot isn’t a good idea anyhow.”

An attorney for Charles Joles is expected to give a statement on his behalf about the projects later today. When we spoke with Joles he threatened a lawsuit if we published this story.

The Idaho Falls Better Business Bureau encourages all homeowners to consider the following when choosing a paving contractor:

• Be suspicious if the paver states they have leftover materials from another job.
• Be suspicious if you are pushed to make a quick decision.
• Be wary of cash-only sales.
• Be extra cautious if the company is from out of state.

Colling says he has filed a report with the Idaho Falls Police Department and is planning legal action against the company.

In the meantime, Collins wants the community to be careful when picking a paving contractor.

“This is going to cost us literally thousands of dollars to get fixed and put back the way it was,” Colling said. “My No.1 concern here is to protect our fellow eastern Idahoans from this type of scam.”