HIDING IN PLAIN “SIGHT”: Convicted Felon Steven Ingersoll Debuts “ICONIX” In Grand Rapids At The 2023 “Michigan Vision Therapy Study Group” Meeting; Ingersoll Wriggling On A $332,541.94 Bankruptcy Judgment Hook While Pitching His New Visual Learning Snake Oil (And He’s Not Even A Licensed Optometrist!)

5 min readJun 7, 2023

BACKGROUND:

Steven Ingersoll’s ability to direct others to engage in actions that serve his benefit has been manifested in a variety of ways.

A former charter school founder and manager, Ingersoll was convicted on March 10, 2015, of one count of tax evasion for 2009, one count of tax evasion for 2010 and one count of conspiracy to defraud the IRS — along with his co-defendant Roy Bradley, Sr — with respect to 2011.

Ingersoll was the former owner and operator of Smart Schools Management and Smart Schools, Inc., educational management companies that ran two charter schools here in Michigan — one in Traverse City and one in Bay City. Ingersoll failed to accurately report and pay taxes on payments he received from his educational management companies.

On December 15, 2016, Ingersoll was sentenced to three concurrent terms of 41 months with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

A former optometrist, Ingersoll was stripped of his license post-conviction. Ingersoll’s Michigan optometry license expired on June 30, 2020 while he was incarcerated. Ingersoll did not seek to renew his Michigan optometry license upon his release from federal prison, and remains unlicensed.

Ingersoll is currently seeking to get out from under a $332,541.94 “default judgment” stemming from Full Spectrum Management’s bankruptcy adversary action: a two-year income stream secretly provided by Traverse City optometrist, Mark Noss.

Noss made the payments after he assumed management of a Traverse City charter school Ingersoll co-founded (Grand Traverse Academy, under the entity “Full Spectrum Management, LLC”). In addition to making secret payments to Ingersoll, Noss assumed the obligation to repay Ingersoll’s whopping $925,000 debt to a Traverse City bank. An adversary action was brought against Noss, who sought to discharge his Ingersoll-related debt in a February 2019 bankruptcy filing.

OH, THE PLACES YOU WILL GO, AND THE PEOPLE YOU’LL MEET…IN PRISON.

The mortgage on the Farragut facility was not paid off with “taxpayer funds”. Michigan ALN Properties, LLC, using its own private sources of funds (not “taxpayer funds,” as you allege, apparently meaning Academy funds), paid off the then-outstanding $522,281.63 mortgage Wildfire Credit Union held on the property at the time the Academy entered into the purchase agreement and land contract to acquire 301 N. Farragut to the Academy.

November 11, 2022 “Cease and Desist” Letter; Bodman PLC

While serving his sentence at “Club Fed” (AKA FPC-Duluth), Ingersoll crossed paths with Timothy Jon Oliver.

Federal Bureau of Prisons official records reveal that Timothy Jon Oliver (a now-disbarred attorney who plead guilty on September 10, 2014 “for stealing $500,000 from ARS Tectonica, a Mexican construction company, in connection with an alleged real estate project in Libya”) and Steven Ingersoll both served time at Duluth FPC — with their sentences overlapping for a period of nearly 18 months.

It must have been a fertile overlap, since Steven Ingersoll and Timothy Oliver’s wife, Sandra, recently executed a property transfer — Sandra J. Oliver, paid off the outstanding $522,281.63 mortgage on Ingersoll’s “Farragut Schoolhouse” — the building housing the Bay City Academy.

In addition to the nearly $400,000 Full Spectrum Management bankruptcy adversary judgment, Ingersoll currently owes nearly $2.0 million in delinquent income taxes to the IRS.

Sandra Oliver to the rescue!

In addition to paying off the Farragut Schoolhouse mortgage (and transferring ownership to an entity she controls) so it cannot be seized by the IRS, Sandra Oliver has formed and registered Limited Liability Corporations on behalf of Steven J. Ingersoll.

Although nominally “owned” by Oliver, the corporations appear to be the launch of several “visual learning education” businesses.

Oliver registered these two corporations in her home state using the same Two Harbors, MN address used in forming “Michigan ALN Properties, LLC”: Minnesota ICONIX Learning Center, LLC and Minnesota Developmental Academy.

The websites for the ICONIX Learning Center reveals nearly identical “visual learning” therapies as those Ingersoll previously promulgated at the Bay City Academy and Grand Traverse Academy under his trademarked “Integrated Visual Learning”, or IVL.

Is Steven Ingersoll’s “ICONIX Learning Clinic” really a “mission to bring neuroscience to education to help parents and teachers improve instruction” — or just a money laundering scheme?

Although a “Legal Disclaimer” that formerly appeared on the Clinic’s website (recently deleted) stated “We don’t believe in instant or guaranteed result programs”, the link reveals “Julie” pitching her status as a “Certified Developmental Educator”.

While “Julie” doesn’t reveal her full name, I have learned she is directly linked to another former FPC-Duluth inmate, a man who served nearly six years for money laundering and mail fraud. Again, this man’s sentence overlapped both Steven Ingersoll’s and Timothy Jon Oliver’s.