Months later, Hayes drove to Sonoma County and pulled up property records, including at Sonoma City Hall. He was stunned at what he found for 230 E. Napa St.
“He never put me back on the deed,” Hayes said. “I gifted $625,000 to him for nothing in return.”
Even more galling, he noted that one of Mattson’s sons was living in the house.
“I never did confront Ken on that,” Hayes said. “I was trying to get my deed back. I didn’t want to add fuel to the fire.”
The “deed on, deed off” switch was a fairly common occurrence, a number of Mattson investors have told The Press Democrat over the past year. A class-action complaint filed against LeFever Mattson and related entities last October makes similar allegations.
The federal indictment unsealed Thursday doesn’t talk about that particular tactic, though Hayes said he turned over a series of texts to the FBI in which he had raised the issue to Mattson.
The indictment does, however, lay out a host of other irregularities. Mattson convinced people they were buying stakes in specific properties, and produced paperwork to that effect, but the interests were fictitious, according to prosecutors. He then filed fraudulent tax forms, doubling down on the scam, prosecutors allege.
And the time frame for those activities parallels the surge in Sonoma real estate acquisitions.
Fractures in the community
Gorin remembers her introduction to Ken Mattson well. It was late 2015, and Mattson had recently purchased two houses at the intersection of Moon Mountain Road and Sonoma Highway, properties that had been a half-built mess in the possession of a previous owner.
Mattson talked to Gorin and articulated his plans. He held a community open house to answer neighbors’ questions.
“At the time, I thought, ‘This is fabulous,’” Gorin said Friday. “This is a legitimate developer, and he’s gonna move these projects to completion.
“It was the same in The Springs,“ she added, referring to the unincorporated communities just north of Sonoma, where LeFever Mattson had scooped up properties and offered to partner with the county in the construction of a long-sought public plaza. ”The initial vision was great, and we needed a savvy investor to bring up the economic worth and vitality of The Springs. I was enthusiastic about him.
“Until it became evident things were not moving forward.”
That was a decade ago. Mattson demolished the previous Moon Mountain construction, and replaced it with new, much larger homes that are similarly unfinished and unsightly to this day.
Other Sonoma-area properties owned either by KS Mattson Partners (Ken Mattson’s personal business) or entities related to LeFever Mattson also are unoccupied, including the former Dirty Girl doughnut shop and iconic Ravenswood winery. Cornerstone Sonoma, one of the most visible commercial centers in the area, is a shell of its former self, with only two or three remaining businesses.
“The fact that so many are lying fallow or vacant discourages investors from investing in our community,” said Gorin, who lives in Oakmont. “That might depress property values. So I think we are losing our potential and our economic vitality by all of this playing out in the last 10 years.”
Many local LeFever Mattson properties have been put on the market or have been sold.
As his profile grew, Mattson spawned fractures in the community.
Gorin had high hopes for the Springs Plaza project, which sought to build a small community plaza next to the Boyes Hot Springs post office, over a planned underground parking lot. She announced her support for a tentative public-private partnership with Mattson in late 2022.
It didn’t go over well in the liberal community.
Mattson hadn’t been accused of anything illegal at that point. But his wife, Stacy, had posted derogatory comments about same-sex marriage on social media, and the couple had attended Donald Trump’s first presidential inauguration in January 2017.
When a group of local activists discovered that Mattson’s business partner, Tim LeFever, was affiliated with several powerful right-wing organizations and foundations, they had seen enough. They formed the grassroots group Wake Up Sonoma, dedicated to exposing LeFever Mattson and checking the company’s growing power.
Members of Wake Up Sonoma still bristle at Gorin’s willingness to work with Ken Mattson in The Springs. They accuse the two of having a “backdoor meeting,” and complain that, at the time, Gorin publicly attacked them for getting in the way of a good deal.