Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...Indicted Sonoma real estate investment adviser Ken Mattson no longer intends to plead guilty in the year-old criminal case in which he is accused of bilking hundreds of investors out at least $100 million, a federal prosecutor told the district court judge handling the case this week.
“Defense counsel informed the government that the defendant does not intend to plead guilty on June 15, 2026, and will instead persist in his plea of not guilty,” U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian said in a June 11 letter to Judge Jon S. Tigar. “Accordingly, at the next court hearing, the government intends to request that the Court set this matter for a jury trial.”
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Monday’s court date at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building in Oakland is expected to be a status conference now, with the government asking Tigar to set a trial date.
Mattson originally pleaded not guilty to seven counts of wire fraud and one count each of money laundering and obstruction of justice, following his indictment and arrest in May 2025. The government accuses him of operating a “classic Ponzi scheme” that defrauded his real estate investors, including many mom-and-pop clients.
A victim-witness specialist in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Jose had previously told investors that prosecutors were closing in on an agreement under which Mattson would accept a 12-year prison sentence and would offer restitution to his victims should any money remain following the liquidation of assets in the bankruptcy proceedings of two companies Mattson largely controlled — LeFever Mattson Inc. and KS Mattson Partners.
That agreement is now upended, as Missakian’s June 11 letter makes clear.
Mattson’s criminal attorney, Randy Sue Pollock, did not respond to a request for comment.
It isn’t the first inflection point in a legal saga that has grown around Mattson since his roughly $400 million real estate empire began to implode two years ago.
He and his legal team fought for months over his bail arrangement, and then over attempts to evict him and his wife, Stacy, from the multimillion-dollar estate they were occupying in the hills overlooking Sonoma. The government, along with attorneys representing the bankrupt companies, prevailed in both instances.
Mattson also delayed his change-of-plea hearing once.
This latest reversal is certain to incense many of the hundreds of investors who entrusted Mattson with their nest eggs, and now find themselves scrambling to stay afloat. About 100 of those backers had submitted impact statements in anticipation of his plea change, Missakian wrote in his letter.
Because Mattson is withdrawing his offer, the U.S. attorney will no longer be submitting those statements to Tigar.
“It feels like he’s playing chicken with the court, and with justice,” said investor Denise Gitsham. “Like this is punitive. My mom is 86. Every delay is justice deferred. But justice will come eventually.”
Gitsham, an attorney who splits time between Washington, D.C., and California, has known Ken and Stacy Mattson since she was in high school in Fairfield. She remained close to Ken Mattson over three decades, until LeFever Mattson accounting irregularities began to surface in May 2024, and her former friend stopped answering her calls.
The last time she saw him was at her father’s funeral in 2023.
“He never sent my mom another check,” Gitsham said. “That’s all the income that she had, because my dad invested every penny from being a schoolteacher with Ken.”
Gitsham and her mother both submitted impact statements in anticipation of Monday’s hearing**, **and had planned to attend. They arranged a dogsitter, and Gitsham planned to take the day off from work.
“For her, it’s really a matter of catharsis,” she said of her mom. “It’s not OK for people not to be able to have their voices heard.”
A trial would give Mattson’s critics additional opportunity to speak up, and possibly to see him brought to justice. Each of his nine felony counts carries a sentence of up to 20 years.
But maintaining a plea of not guilty also delays the closure many of his investors have sought, and adds to the bill taxpayers are footing for his prosecution.
Between the two of them, Mattson and his longtime business partner Tim LeFever purchased more than 200 properties across California — as many as 120 of them in Sonoma — with an estimated value of more than $400 million. LeFever, who has not faced any charges or legal sanctions, alerted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2024 that he suspected his lifelong friend of committing fraud.
That set in motion a cascade of lawsuits, bankruptcies and, eventually, Mattson’s federal indictment a year ago. Throughout all of it, he has steadfastly rejected culpability.** **
“I don’t know if anyone expects Ken to do what’s right,” Gitsham said. “He has to be forced to do it.”
You can reach Staff Writer Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @Skinny_Post.