An Ames real estate developer paid more than $180,000 for tickets to premier sporting events — including Sunday’s Super Bowl XLVI — to a Boyden woman being investigated by Iowa officials for allegedly failing to deliver discounted tickets bought more than a year in advance of the events.
Dickson Jensen of Ames said he bought scores of tickets from Ranae Van Roekel, 44, beginning in December 2010 for sporting events including the Super Bowl, this year’s Masters Golf Tournament, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and other major events.
Jensen planned to resell the tickets for the benefit of the Iowa Youth Basketball Foundation, a nonprofit group that provides instruction and league play for Iowa athletes from third to 11th grade, said Erik Charter, controller for Jensen’s business and charity interests.
Jensen, who paid for the tickets with his own money, was offered the tickets at deeply discounted rates. For example, he ordered 156 tickets to the Super Bowl for $470.26 each, according to documents he provided The Des Moines Register. The lowest face-value ticket to the game was $800, according to the National Football League.
These allegations come days after Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller’s office received more than a dozen complaints that Van Roekel allegedly sold travel packages for the pro football championship that included airfare, hotel and game tickets. The money was paid, complainants said, but the tickets never arrived.
“This raises concerns,” said Bill Brauch, Miller’s director of consumer protection. “There are a lot of ‘it’s too good to be true’ scenarios here. We don’t know if something went wrong in acquiring the tickets or there was an intention of deceit from the start. The conversation is ongoing.”
Brauch said the investigation is not considered a criminal probe at this time.
Efforts to reach Van Roekel or her attorney, Jared Weber of Orange City, were unsuccessful Tuesday afternoon.
The first complaint of undelivered Super Bowl tickets came from a former Iowa man in Florida, who forwarded his complaint to the Iowa attorney general’s office through a state senator. At least one other out-of-state complaint has come in from Montana and may involve as many as 50 people who did not get purchased tickets, Brauch said. It was reported earlier that the complaint was from Wyoming, but it’s from Montana, Brauch said.
Jensen, 46, is an Iowa State University alumnus and booster who runs the Jensen Group, which builds, sells and rents homes, apartments, commercial properties, golf courses and other properties.
A married father of five, Jensen founded All Iowa Attack Basketball in 2004, a not-for-profit organization that develops young players for high school and other levels. Through the Attack, Jensen met Van Roekel, who had a son in the program, said Charter, Jensen’s representative.
Van Roekel told Jensen she “could get tickets for anything that Ticketmaster or Livenation tickets,” according to a November 2010 email between Jensen and Van Roekel provided to the Register.
Though the purchases were made more than a year in advance, Sunday’s Super Bowl was the first event for which Jensen had bought tickets. Van Roekel, documents show, promised tickets to arrive two to three weeks before the event. However, a letter from Weber, her attorney, dated Friday said the “tickets are unfortunately not secured for the 2012 Super Bowl.”
Charter said, “In fairness to her, this is the first event, but the way things have been going, we have serious doubts that the other tickets are going to arrive.”
In December 2010, Van Roekel sent Jensen a series of invoices printed on a letterhead for Get’em Now Tickets with an address in Boyden, a northwest Iowa city of about 625 in Sioux County near the South Dakota and Minnesota state lines. The Iowa secretary of state has no record of a company named Get’Em Now Tickets in its online databases.
The ticket invoices listed Super Bowl tickets at “discounted rate $470.26 (non-profit) TM account.”
A spokeswoman for Ticketmaster, the largest ticket-seller in North America, was unaware of any discount rates for nonprofit organizations.
“The sports leagues or venues set the prices,” said Jacqueline Peterson, Ticketmaster spokeswoman. “We don’t have a role in that.”
Peterson could not confirm or deny a connection between Van Roekel and the company, but pledged to investigate the claim.
In 1991, Van Roekel and husband Kevin L. Van Roekel declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which wipes out unsecured debt, according to federal court records. The couple has been sued in small claims court for unpaid debts under $5,000 at least eight times since then, state court records show.
Members of the Iowa attorney general’s consumer protection division planned to meet today to discuss the case and continue to gather information, Brauch said.