Above, from left: Kyle Sandler, John McAfee and then-Opelika Mayor Gary Fuller outside the Round House. Photo courtesy of Jerry Katz.
Opinion — by Jerry Katz, editor, Opelika Daily News
I guess it was one of those “too good to be true” stories from the beginning, but most of us didn’t catch it. I do remember one friend saying, “What’s wrong with you? Haven’t you been to Google Search?” Live and learn.
The first Round House
Kyle Sandler first put the Round House in the old railroad warehouses downtown, over by the 10th Street bridge. That’s where the picture of Kyle and the mayor was taken. Office space inside that building could be rented, and that is where I got my picture of John McAfee.
The work area was set up like a relaxed Silicon Valley business: free coffee and drinks, video games, a lounge and a meeting room. I lasted a few months, but the Space Invaders game right outside my office door was more than I could work through.
Then, under cover of darkness — maybe an exaggeration on the time of day — the Round House moved to South Eighth Street. I stayed behind in the old space for a few more months, quiet and a great place to work, before going back to the home office. The new place on South Eighth was much larger, with more individual offices. After Kyle’s departure it became a true co-working space for the city. Upgraded, and done the right way.
Generous with other people’s money
Kyle was pretty generous with other people’s money. He told people he was a part owner of the Memphis Grizzlies — which is a little like me being a part owner of Budweiser because I drink their beer. He did get friends a couple of seats on the floor for a game. Had the goal and the cheerleaders not been in the way, they might have been good seats.
He took Taylor Rosenthal, a local high school student, to the Consumer Electronics Show to pitch RecMed, the first-aid vending machine idea that got Taylor on national television at 14. As I understood it at the time, the trip cost that family money, and I suspect the whole episode shattered a young man’s confidence in his own project and in what came next.
Then there was the birthday party he threw for me at Zazu downtown. Big banner, happy birthday — I think he had my age wrong. He invited people he thought I knew, and a good many well-known Opelikians came. Always looking for investors. He also told me he was going to buy the local iHeart stations, and he did put a low-power radio station on the air downtown for a while. I never saw a licence for it.
The word
When I was working up the news story on Kyle’s death, I had used the word “grifter” in my draft. My co-worker, an AI agent, reminded me that in a news story I have to keep my thumb off the scale. Fair enough. But we are in an opinion column now, so let’s use grifter instead of businessman. Much better.
Just to remind everyone what a grifter is: a con artist who tricks people out of money or property through lies and clever deception rather than physical force. The characteristics, per the dictionaries, are deceit — charm, invented stories and manipulation used to win trust; the absence of violence — theft by persuasion, not by weapon; and exploitation — trusting people treated as targets, the ones con men call “marks.”
Kyle told this town he was a former Google executive. He was not. He had prior fraud convictions he was required to disclose to investors, and he did not disclose them. He oversold the company’s equity and spent investors’ money on his own rent, cars and child care. He pleaded guilty, served 63 months, and was ordered to pay back about $1.9 million that more than 70 people around here handed him. That is not a businessman who had a rough run. That is a grifter.
I suspect some of those investors who lost big dollars might be sad to learn of Kyle’s death. Or maybe not.
The news account of Sandler’s reported death, including what has and has not been confirmed, is here: Kyle Sandler, who took Opelika investors for $1.9 million, reported dead. The court record cited above comes from the Alabama Securities Commission and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama. Opinions here are the author’s own.
