photo credit: Noah Abrams/KRCB
Protests with Wake Up Sonoma protesting Ken Mattson and Tim LeFever's influence in 
Sonoma Valley outside the Sonoma Cheese Factory, when it was part of Mattson's real 
estate portfolio on January 30, 2024.

Residents of Sonoma Valley and beyond have had plenty of questions about Ken Mattson's many cases in court, and so do the many investors in his real estate ventures.

The Press Democrat's Phil Barber has closely covered the years-long Mattson saga.

He's reported on everything from controversial anti-LGBT Facebook posts by Ken's wife, Stacy Mattson, to the long-running and controversial political affiliations of Mattson's longtime friend and former business partner, Tim LeFever.

LeFever's alleged close ties to conservative-right wing organizations set in motion a strong counter-reaction from some residents in Sonoma Valley.

Efforts to oppose and shed light on Mattson and LeFever's vast real estate holdings in the valley - well over 100 properties - led to the formation of Wake Up Sonoma.

The outspoken advocacy group has been a leading critic of the pair.

In May of this year, Mattson was arrested by the FBI, and accused by federal prosecutors of running a ponzi scheme with his real estate dealings.

Now, Mattson is tied up in bankruptcy court, and has been accused of fraud by LeFever.

KRCB News spoke with Barber for the latest on the bankruptcy case, and where things might be heading for Ken Mattson.

Below is an excerpt from that conversation between Barber and KRCB's Noah Abrams.

Noah Abrams: You have been reporting on the financial situation in the bankruptcy case of Ken Mattson, and now it's gone to bankruptcy court. So, what's going on there? It seems like per your latest reporting, the investors are looking like they might not get all the money back that they were promised, and all the money that they put in.

Phil Barber: Yeah, this whole saga has gone through several different major phases. [It] started out with allegations and questions and lawsuits where there was a lot that was unanswered. Then it entered the phase of indictment and prosecution and bankruptcy proceedings where a lot of those questions have been answered.

They're allegations, they have not been proved, but US attorneys and lawyers in the bankruptcy cases have now really presented a very strong case, I think, against Ken Mattson and the businesses that he ran.

Now I think we've entered the next phase and it's more a matter of the facts just kind of sinking in with the investors, because it is starting to look like there are assets available for creditors.

Creditors could be banks, but they could also be these individual or family investors, but it's very unlikely to compensate people 100% percent for what they say that they've put into these investments. So, it's becoming a slow process. It's getting ground out.

NA: What do some of the assets look like? Are these properties, real estate? Is this something like a luxury car that could be repossessed and sold, and the proceeds given to somebody?

PB: There's a little bit of that latter, but really we're talking real estate. These investment funds were set up to purchase real estate and ostensibly for everybody to share in the profits. If those real estate properties were sold; or some of them were commercial properties, so, if there's rents coming in, everybody was to share in that.

So, there is a portfolio when when you look at all of the LeFever-Mattson entities, that's the company that Ken Mattson started with his lifelong friend Tim LeFever. Then there's a separate company K.S. Mattson Partners, that Ken Mattson ran as a 50/50 partner with his wife, Stacy.

If you combine all of the properties from those two entities, it's over 200 sites all across the board, a huge mix, but for the most part, it includes some very valuable properties.

There's office complexes in Sacramento. There are a lot of residential and commercial properties in Sonoma, that when you add it all up are worth quite a bit of money. The question is, how much do you spend to sort out who is owed what? Because every dollar that you that you spend on that analysis is a dollar that's probably not going to come back to the investors.

But, you know, without that analysis, how do you even know who is owed what?

NA: Some of the properties have already been sold, right? And some folks are trying to pick up the developments where they were left off [because] I was driving on Highway 12 the other day in Sonoma Valley and you know, there's still some of those properties right there just north of Boyes Hot Springs right along the road that have the construction that was never finished.

PB: Yeah, the infamous Moon Mountain properties that have been in stage of half construction since before Ken Mattson purchased them for well over a decade now.

But yes, the LeFever-Mattson company went into bankruptcy first and the properties that were technically owned by LeFever-Mattson and all of its various related corporations, those were marked for real estate sales first and many of those have been sold. There's a pretty good number and a lot of them are on the market now. I think at least 40 are currently on the market and a number have been sold.

That process should start happening now with the KS-Mattson properties assets. That's much more based in Sonoma. The LeFever-Mattson portfolio was kind of all over California. A lot of them kind of along the I-80 corridor; Solano County and in Sacramento County.

KS-Mattson properties assets [are] heavily based in Sonoma. So we should start seeing sometime over the next few weeks or months, lot of properties being sold in Sonoma, too.