Ken Mattson to Plead Guilty in $100M Sonoma Ponzi Scheme

Ken Mattson, the 64-year-old Sonoma County real estate investor accused of running a massive Ponzi scheme, is moving toward a guilty plea in federal court. Sources close to the case say he’ll plead guilty to at least one count of wire fraud, capping a collapse that wiped out roughly $100 million in investor funds and shook communities across the North Bay.

The hearing happened Friday in Oakland. Mattson, his attorneys, and federal prosecutors met with the judge to walk through a preliminary plea offer. The arrangement still needs approval from US District Court Judge Jon S. Tigar, who is set to rule on whether to accept it at a May 11 hearing.

A single wire fraud conviction carries up to 20 years in prison.

The fraud stretched across four counties. Mattson and his business partner Timothy LeFever built a portfolio of some 257 properties in Sonoma, Solano, Sacramento, and Placer counties, operating through what the federal indictment described as “an array of limited liability companies.” At its peak, the portfolio was valued at over $400 million. Federal prosecutors say Mattson sold fake ownership interests to roughly 200 investors, many of them retirees, many of whom he met through his church. Classic Ponzi scheme mechanics: new money covering old obligations, until it couldn’t.

Mattson was arrested in May 2025, about a year after cracks in the business became visible and investors started raising alarms. LeFever has not been charged with any crime. He blamed Mattson for creating a “secret scheme” and agreed in February to pay a $5 million settlement toward victim compensation.

The portfolio is being sold off. Last week, two landmark buildings near Sonoma Square went to a bankruptcy auction: the Seven Branches Venue and Inn at 450 West Spain Street, and the Victorian property known as The General’s Daughter at 400 West Spain Street. Together they sold for $3.2 million. Whether any meaningful portion of that, or proceeds from other property sales, will reach defrauded investors after secured creditors take their cut is an open question.

Not a small one.

Wake Up Sonoma, a grassroots group that formed partly in response to Mattson and LeFever’s real estate activity in the region, issued a statement saying it was glad to see “at least partial resolution” and hoped investors could recoup some funds. But the group stopped well short of calling this justice. “We hope that the enormity of his crimes are not reduced to just one count of wire fraud and that the plea deal does not let him off lightly,” the statement read. “He ruined many lives, disrupted our community for the past several years.”

That’s the part that’s easy to lose in the procedural shuffle of plea hearings and bankruptcy auctions. The scheme started unraveling publicly around 2024, but community tension around Mattson goes back further. He and his wife drew backlash starting in 2019 over their vocal anti-LGBTQ views, which made the couple locally polarizing even before the fraud allegations surfaced. The investors he allegedly defrauded were often retirees from his own church community. The betrayal there is specific and ugly in a way that a single federal count doesn’t quite capture.

SFist first reported the guilty plea development Monday, drawing on reporting from the Press Democrat and Bay Area News Group.

The May 11 hearing will determine whether Judge Tigar accepts the arrangement. If he doesn’t, the case proceeds. If he does, sentencing will follow on its own timeline, and the harder, slower work of compensating victims continues in bankruptcy court, where the math rarely works out in favor of the people who got hurt.

Wake Up Sonoma has been watching this for four years. So have the investors who handed over their retirement savings to a man they trusted. They deserve more than a partial resolution. Whether the court gives them that is what May 11 is about.