WASHINGTON — A lifetime dream gone bad turned into a real-life nightmare for Max and Vera Linneweber Friday as they barricaded themselves inside the offices of their longtime family business while inventory was removed from the warehouse by unauthorized individuals.

Max founded LinCo Services Inc. on a kitchen table in his garage in 1978. The company, which provided merchandise to convenience stores, grew to service thousands of accounts and relocated to a facility just outside Washington. Early last year, the Circle K company — 50 percent of LinCo’s business, according to Max — withheld a $450,000 payment, and the company couldn’t absorb it, according to Greg Linneweber, who went into business with his father in 1980 and was running the company.

“Our lender foreclosed so fast it made our heads spin,” Greg said.

At that same time they began negotiations with Louisville-based john conti Coffee Co., which also services convenience stores. john conti officials offered to keep employees, lease the warehouse for 15 years and purchase equipment at its assessed value.

“On April 15 (2009), we started working with them,” Greg said. “Everything at first seemed to go pretty well.”

Then, he said, the company demanded a gross profit margin of 60 percent.

“The average was 30 percent in the LinCo days,” he said. “We lost more than $150,000 a month, mostly because of the price increases.”

Greg said john conti also changed LinCo’s coffee blend and packaging and increased the price, costing the company more customers.

Still, the LinCo facility managed to stay in the black for the most part. Then, according to the Linnewebers,  john conti transferred $50,000 of the company’s overhead to the LinCo branch, making it appear they were $10,000 in the red over a four-week period. They also placed the poor-performing Evansville district under Greg’s management, he said, but he turned it around and made it more efficient.

Despite everything the john conti people heaped on the Linnewebers, Max and Greg said they did their best to be accommodating. Three months into the arrangement with john conti, it was time for the company to purchase LinCo’s equipment according to their agreement.

“They shorted us $250,000 with the promise to buy the warehouse for its assessed value,” Greg said, adding that the family wasn’t happy, because that wasn’t the agreement, but they weren’t in a good position to complain.

To date, Max said, the only thing the john conti Coffee Co. has paid for is the discounted equipment. He added that they still have never paid Indiana taxes.

“They have never paid personal property taxes in Indiana, ever, and definitely not in this county until the assessor made them file,” he said. “They should’ve filed for more than $1.4 million, but they only filed for $311,000.”

Daviess County Treasurer Martin Mumaw III confirmed that john conti has not paid its taxes, but has paid a penalty on this year’s first installment.

“We thought they were a strong company, but we found out they’re not,” Max said. “We were in so far then that we kept pushing to make it work.”

On Friday, with Greg in a meeting north of Indianapolis and his sister, who’s the sales manager, also in northern Indiana on company business, john conti sent semi after semi to the LinCo warehouse to load inventory, presumably to be transported to the Louisville headquarters. The Linnewebers company cell phones were disconnected at the same time, and Indiana State Police Alliance security officers showed up.

“We’re here to make sure nobody gets hurt,” said Mark Green with the Indiana State Police Alliance.

Max discovered that the security had been arranged by john conti two days in advance.

A john conti employee who refused to identify herself said, “john conti has no comment at this time.”

“As of right now, they haven’t told any of us why they’re doing this except that they’re shutting us down,” Greg said. “They’ve removed property that doesn’t belong to them.”

According to Max, their contract states that john conti bought equipment, not office supplies and not LinCo files. And they’ve never purchased the facility. Yet, he said the company was on LinCo property removing not only warehouse inventory they hadn’t paid for and some that predated their original agreement, but trying to take office equipment as well. Max said john conti Vice President Michael Jones was there and removed LinCo files from the computer system before anyone could stop him.

“They can’t legally touch them,” Max said, adding that inventory records also were taken, so it’ll be difficult to determine exactly what’s missing from the warehouse.

A message left for Jones had not been returned at press time.

“I started getting a bad feeling in March when the vice president quit coming up here or even talking to me,” Greg said, explaining that a general manager was promoted to be his contact.

But he said he didn’t expect to be blindsided the way he was on Friday with no warning — and have his phone cut off — while he was three hours away. He said all appearances are that the Linnewebers and their warehouse workers are being eliminated, and he believes three route drivers, a route supervisor and a sales position also will be eliminated when john conti has someone of their own choosing familiar with the routes.

Shortly after Greg arrived back in Washington to find his parents and loyal employees locked inside LinCo offices and security officers parked outside, a temporary restraining order was granted by Daviess Circuit Court Judge Gregory Smith to halt the john conti trucks from hauling away anything else from the LinCo property. However, Max said more than 20 trailer loads already had been removed.

“They probably got 90 percent of it,” he said. “The bad thing is they got records we were using for a future lawsuit. They got stuff they knew was important like that.”

The restraining order prohibits anyone from the john conti company from being on the LinCo premises until after a hearing next week. All trailers still on the property had to be unloaded, but Max said there were only five or six left at that point in time.

“They can’t touch anything or come on the property without a deputy sheriff being here with them,” he said. “They’ve all been told that.

“I don’t know what they’re going to do with our customers. That’s our concern. We’d like to see that they get service, but our hands are kinda tied right now. We had jobs here, and the jobs are gone now, too.”