Wichita families face drained retirement accounts after contractor didn’t finish work

Carly Buehner said she will never forget her family’s first home in west Wichita.

Their former home in the 12000 block of West Lynndale was where she and her husband had started raising their four children, but it was also the setting of a two-year horror movie after they hired a contractor who was charged in March with 26 counts, accused of taking $922,000 from nine individuals and families and not completing or even starting the work.

“I’m just anxious to hear what happens next, because this is kind of like one of those things that happens in movies,” she said. “And, you’re like, ‘is this really happening to me?’ ”

Chad E. Smith owes money to many others as well, according to a bankruptcy filing from the 54-year-old Wichita man, which says he owes about $780,000 to 64 people and organizations despite having less than $50,000 in assets, which was mainly from the two vehicles he mostly owns.

He also reported in the August 2024 filing having $78 between his checking and saving accounts.

A person who answered a number associated with Smith in July hung up and did not respond to a text.

The Buehners said the situation put them into credit card debt; a couple of other people listed in the March criminal filing, including one who went into business with him, say they had to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars or drain their retirement fund.

“It’s been emotionally draining and our kids have been along for the ride of all of it,” said Cassie Tinsmon, who hired Smith in July 2023 to renovate a former school and adjacent building in Augusta that she and her husband were converting into a homeschool space and cafe with play area.

Tinsmon said they had to take $70,000 out of their retirement and are still on the hook for a bank loan for work they say Smith never finished.

She had to hire other contractors to finish the work.

Donnie Wallace, who went into business with Smith after hiring him to build his family’s Cheney home, said he had to drain his and his wife’s retirement savings and hire other workers to complete the home.

“We are kind of in a bad place because of all of that,” Wallace said. “We have zero money in our retirement funds.”

Wallace said he was drawn to Smith because of his enthusiasm for the work; Tinsmon said their children had played together.

But the excuses for delays in the work started piling up after hiring him in 2023, Buehner, Tinsmon and Wallace said.

Smith doesn’t list when all of his 64 debts started occurring, but the majority of those listed happened in 2023. It’s unclear, so far in the court process, where the money went.

Wallace and Tinsmon were hopeful, but not overly optimistic, about getting their money back.

“If the guy sits in jail the rest of his life or prison … I think that’s where he belongs,” Buehner said.

Smith was never licensed to work as a contractor in Wichita, according to court records in the criminal case.

He also had a previous criminal case where he was charged with one count of theft. That case was dismissed in 2015 when he paid back the $14,627 from an uncompleted home improvement contract, court records show.

In 2018, he was fined $7,000, ordered to pay $3,500 in restitution and told to get a license before doing work, court records show. In the 2025 criminal case, Smith used another contractor’s license to get permits in some cases, but didn’t have a permit in others, court records show.

There are a dozen cases in Sedgwick County for small claims and debts against Smith and one of the businesses he operated. Those cases involve companies and individuals and date back to 2013. One of those cases was dismissed; another was dropped. The other 10 ended in a default judgment, meaning Smith never responded to the court, and money being awarded to those who filed suit. It is not clear from court documents which, if any, of those Smith has paid.

Besides the stress families said Smith caused them, an owner of a Wichita interior design business said her partnership with Smith has damaged her company’s reputation.

Partnering on projects

Emma Schlittenhardt, owner of Hardt Studio, had recommended Smith to at least five of the nine individuals and families listed in the criminal case, according to court records.

Tinsmon, Wallace, Buehner and Amy Limes were among those Schlittenhardt had referred to Smith. Their complaint was not with her or her company’s work. Their problems started when Smith became involved, they said.

Schlittenhardt said she was skeptical about ever recommending a contractor, but did so after Smith reached out to her around 2022 for her to do work with his clients.

The projects went well, and they started referring their clients to each other. They did between five and 10 projects together, she said.

People praised Smith for being fast, affordable and doing good work, she said.

She and Smith went into business together, opening the showroom they called Bocote at the same location as her interior design business.

“Then obviously after a year, year and a half of that, something happened that I don’t fully understand what happened, either financial trouble or something happened with him and things started to go downhill with the clients that he was involved with that we had referred to him.

“As soon as that started happening, I cut things off with Chad … as a business owner it has taken a huge toll on us because – credibility,” she said. “We take our clients’ trust, I take that very highly. And he betrayed my trust. I would have considered him a friend.”

“He took advantage of a lot of people, including me.”

Schlittenhardt said Smith told her he was licensed and gave her his contractor number. She didn’t learn until later that Smith had been operating under someone else’s license.

Smith filed for permits to do work in some of the cases under the American Construction Team, court records show. That business was formed in March 2023 and then failed to file reports and forfeited its legal status in Kansas on July 15, according to the Kansas secretary of state. The owner of the business, William White, did not respond to a Facebook message. He told a police detective he didn’t know that Smith, who White had done projects with in the past, was not allowed to use his business to pull permits for work.

Work not being done

Here is what court records and those affected say happened:

Bank records in the criminal case show the nine individuals and families paid Smith $922,647.71.

The first person hired Smith to renovate her home, between Zoo and West and near the Sedgwick County Zoo, in August 2022 after a fire.

She paid him $72,055 in three installments toward the $144,110 contract, the last on June 5, 2023. He last worked on the project in January 2024. She filed a police report on Sept. 9, 2024. A permit was pulled for the project.

Smith wrote in bankruptcy court that he owes her about $29,444.

Wallace was the second person in the case who entered into a contract with Smith. The February 2023 contract was to build a $539,500 home for Wallace and his family in Cheney.

The contract was signed with the business Bocote, which was “not an operating business at this time,” court records say. Schlittenhardt still runs the business at its location near 13th and Webb.

Wallace said Smith was open to and enthusiastic about his ideas. He made a $100,000 payment the next month. He made it to Chad Smith Renovations, but the permit said American Construction Team, Wallace said.

“I didn’t think anything of it because he was cool,” Wallace said.

More than a quarter of the first payment was for trusses that were “never ordered or paid for,” court records say. Smith then asked for another $45,000 for cabinets, which Wallace paid on Aug. 18, 2023. Those cabinets also were never ordered or paid for, the document says.

Around July 2023, the two went into a partnership under a new business, Reliable Remodels. Wallace had already had a siding and window business. It went well until about six months in, he said, when he started getting calls from sub-contractors, saying they were owed thousands of dollars.

“I confronted him about that at one point, and he blew up on me,” Wallace said.

Wallace said he stopped getting paid at one point, went and checked the company bank account and found the funds had been drawn down to around $400.

Toward the end of 2023, about nine months since building started on Wallace’s home, the only thing accomplished was a hole in the ground with a foundation wall. Wallace said he took over at that point and hired others to do the work.

It was completed in September 2024, one year after it was originally supposed to be done.

Wallace said his construction loans were tapped out and they still had to do all the finishings and cabinets in their home. They emptied their retirement accounts to do so.

“To say it was stressful was an understatement,” he said.

Smith said in his bankruptcy filing that he owes Wallace about $32,000. Wallace said the real number is closer to $100,000 on the house and another $30,000 for the money he lost finishing projects that Smith had abandoned.

“I just hope that he never is in a position where he can keep doing this to people,” Wallace said. “So that’s my biggest hope. I mean, money is money, it would be great to have it back, but if he’s allowed to keep doing this, that’s a problem.”

The money owed to Wallace comes after Smith gave him a $10,000 refund, court records show.

Hiring Smith to renovate former Augusta school

Smith refunded Tinsmon $5,000 and then $10,000, but they have pay back the $10,000 because he paid it within 90 days of filing for bankruptcy, Tinsmon said.

Tinsmon said she also had to pay back $5,000 to the flooring company after they put a lien on the building when Smith failed to pay.

She paid him just over $101,000 after entering a contract with him in July 2023. Smith tried to get an additional payment, but the bank denied it because it “requested payment for work that had already been paid for,” the court record says. It adds that she fired Smith in April 2024.

Records submitted to the bank by Smith were for two payments of around $16,000 each to Bocote and $3,029 to Yoke’s Master Plumbing and Remodeling.

Schlittenhardt told a detective she didn’t write either invoice; the owner of Yoke’s said the same thing.

The largest invoice from the first payment was for $35,834 from Alpha Heating and Air. Someone from the company told the detective that it was an estimate of the work but only $17,000 had been paid for the first part of the job, the court document says. The second part hadn’t been completed.

A permit was never taken for any of the work.

Smith was not licensed to do work in Butler County, court documents say.

After they used about $70,000 from Tinsmon and her husband’s retirement, work on repurposing the 1920 former school was finished in November 2024, about a year after she expected it to be finished.

She filed a civil case against Smith in May 2024.

On Aug. 14, 2024, a judge ordered Smith to pay Tinsmon $197,000 in restitution and damages. The default judgment came after Smith “failed to plead or otherwise defend this action,” court documents say.

Smith, who filed for bankruptcy on Aug. 26, 2024, said he owes Tinsmon $63,0000.

Work never started, finished

Smith never got a permit to complete the unfinished basement for Amy and Collin Limes at their home in the Edgewater housing development in northwest Wichita.

They paid him $53,000 in two payments.

“At that point, we were under the impression everything would be done on time, but we were pretty much just ghosted after the second payment and nothing got completed,” Amy Limes said.

She said they were skeptical about hiring another general contractor so they vetted and selected the subcontractor themselves. The subcontractors had to go back and fix some of the work done under Smith, she said.

Smith listed in bankruptcy court that he owed the Limes $22,000. Amy Limes said they doubt they will see any of it.

The Limes entered a contract with Smith on Sept. 8, 2023.

Another Wichita couple entered a contract with Smith’s CS Renovations on Sept. 27, 2023, to renovate a College Hill home they purchased at auction. Schlittenhardt referred the couple to Smith.

They paid Smith just under $315,000, but a couple of contractors told the couple the work completed at the home was between $25,000 to $40,000 “at most,” court documents say.

The couple are Smith’s largest single debtor, owed just about $275,000, according to the court document. Smith said in bankruptcy court that he owes them $200,000 — still making them his largest debtor.

Another one of the people in the criminal case said he did not want to talk about what happened.

That person and Smith agreed on a $153,877 home remodel of his east Wichita home in July 2023, court documents say.

“97% of the project wasn’t complete even though 97% of the project had been paid,” the court document says.

The man had to pay $5,740 to Rains Construction Management to avoid a lien on his home after Smith failed to pay the company, court documents say.

They say Smith owes the man about $33,738. Smith put in bankruptcy court that he owes $23,000.

The other projects mentioned in the court document are: a $10,800 master bathroom remodel, in which half was paid to Reliable Remodels on Jan. 31, 2024, but no work done and an “elder female” who paid Smith $6,250 for a roof replacement that was never started.

Carly Buehner said her family’s dealing with Smith has made it hard to trust others.

The project was supposed to take 90 days, but it wasn’t completed for two years and only got done after they hired another contractor.

“I am pretty sure we have PTSD from the whole situation. It was so bad,” she said. “It is probably the hardest thing we have gone through as a married couple.”

The six of them, including an infant, and their dog moved into a short-term rental for the expected 90 days.

They were paying $2,200 for their mortgage and $1,500 for rent.

They had to rely on credit cards to get through.

Smith kept pushing back the timeline of finishing. At the six-month mark, they told him they were moving back into their house, that his sub-contractors would have to work around them.

They lived in half the house while workers tried to finish the other half. But even that completed work was shoddy, she said.

Almost immediately, she said, the shower that was supposed to be finished started leaking, causing black mold. There were also gaps and cracks in the drywall, she said.

The finished work also left gaps allowing critters to come in from outside.

“We had mice, we had cockroaches, we had a snake in the house at one point,” she said.

The contractor they hired after getting rid of Smith estimated the work completed under his predecessor to be around $11,500, court records say. The Buehners had paid him $75,000.

Other debts

The $780,000 Smith listed as owing in bankruptcy court includes several lenders, including an $80,000 loan from Credibly in Arizona and $7,275 to Speedy Cash in Wichita.

There are also several companies that supply home-building materials that Smith listed as being owed money.

Attorneys in the case wrote in an April filing that Smith has about $18,189 in assets after “liens, exemptions and other costs.”

In a June filing in the court, his then-attorney asked to withdraw from the case.

“He cannot afford to retain an attorney and needs a court appointed attorney,” the document says.

Tips from Sedgwick County DA on how to mitigate risks when hiring a contractor

• Check with the Metropolitan Area Building and Construction Department that the contractor is licensed to do work. Have the business name and/or license number.
• Check with the MABCD that permits are pulled for the work as well.
• Get references for the contractor
• Avoid or minimize up-front payments
• Have a written contract for the work