Fifteen months after Ken Mattson was arrested and indicted for masterminding what federal prosecutors allege was a “classic Ponzi scheme” tied to his vast portfolio of California real estate, much of it based in Sonoma, new angles continue to emerge as his criminal and bankruptcy cases proceed along separate tracks.
Mattson is accused of bilking hundreds of investors out of more than $100 million, and has a federal fraud trial set for April 2027.
Several months ago, the unsecured creditors committee appointed to represent the interests of Mattson investors in bankruptcy proceedings began to train its focus on a series of Mattson real estate sales transactions in Del Mar, a picturesque beach community in San Diego County. Some of the transactions came around the time he had fallen under federal investigation.
They have raised suspicions that Mattson orchestrated the deals in order to hide assets from impending legal action.
U.S. bankruptcy Judge Charles Novack on April 30 granted the committee power to subpoena information from Del Mar resident Marc Lair, his company Equitable Ocean Front LLC, his son Dylan and realtor Sandi Fletcher — Marc Lair’s domestic partner — in relation to properties they acquired from KS Mattson Partners LP (or KSMP), a company controlled by Ken Mattson before it filed for bankruptcy in June 2025.
The committee sought a wide range of property records, and all communications between the subpoenaed entities and Ken Mattson, KS Mattson Partners and Bird Rock Holdings LLC, a financial consulting business registered to a realtor in Colorado.
All four subjects of the subpoena were given until May 25 to respond with documents, and until June 16 to provide oral testimony.
In their application for subpoena powers, the committee alleged that Lair “engaged in a series of suspect transactions with KSMP — including after Mr. Mattson knew he was under federal investigation.”
Lair, in an interview, denied the allegation.
“There was no fraud,” he stated outright.
Multimillion-dollar deals
All in all, the creditors committee has questions surrounding at least six Del Mar properties, though for some, the connection between Mattson and Lair is unclear.
The transactions were sizeable.
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The 1716 Oceanfront home, as seen from the beach in Del Mar on Thursday, July 30, 2026. (Kristian Carreon / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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The 1716 Oceanfront home, as seen from the beach in Del Mar on Thursday, July 30, 2026. (Kristian Carreon / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
One was the transfer of a fashionable, 4,600-square-foot home at 1716 Ocean Front that backs up to the sand and sits next to the Del Mar Beach Hotel. Lair’s company Equitable Ocean Front took ownership in July 2024, assuming a $19 million mortgage from a private lender. That was two months after the FBI raided Mattson’s opulent home in the hills above Sonoma.
KS Mattson Partners had originally purchased 1716 Ocean Front for $9.8 million in 2018.
“It is highly suspicious and very unclear how Mr. Lair would ever be able to qualify for personal loans to the tune of $19,000,000,” Sandi Fletcher’s ex-husband, Richard Schroeder, wrote in a declaration filed in the couple’s divorce case.
Lair, in a long phone interview with The Press Democrat, disputed that characterization. He noted that he has brokered the sales of a number of large commercial properties over the years, including two to billionaire investor Ernest S. Rady. He owns a medical building in Torrance, and an administration building at a medical center in Anaheim, he said.
Lair, who has been in the real estate investment business for more than 40 years, knows Mattson through Fletcher, who rented half a Del Mar duplex from KS Mattson Partners beginning in 2017. Fletcher said she has never met Ken Mattson in person.
Lair insisted he’s eager to work with the bankruptcy professionals to sell 1716 Ocean Front, and has already provided everything the committee requested in the subpoenas. He’s willing to take a loss at this point, he added, and Fletcher has offered to reduce her real estate commission.
“I keep asking them, ‘What are you willing to offer me? What is the ask? What do you want from me?’” Lair said. “I still don’t even know. But they keep sending notices, asking me for more documents.”
Fletcher, Lair’s business and domestic partner, said the limbo status of 1716 Ocean Front has become an emotional topic for her.
“What is so hard, I’ve spent almost two years trying to sell this house, putting money into it, and now they want to say it’s an inside job,” she told The Press Democrat. “I lost my spousal (support) due to that house, and now they want to take it away from me.”
Another sale cited in court filings was a more run-of-the-mill, two-unit property at 1817-1819 Coast Boulevard, two blocks from the beach, that KS Mattson Partners sold to the MCDAB Family Trust — an acronym derived from the first names of Marc Lair, his ex-wife and their three children — for $3.5 million in March 2024. The trust was administered by Dylan Lair.
At that time, Mattson’s longtime business partner Tim LeFever had begun to call out his friend for financial irregularities in managing their LeFever Mattson company.
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Childhood friends Ken Mattson and Tim LeFever built a real estate portfolio of well over 200 properties before their company, LeFever Mattson Inc., descended into lawsuits, bankruptcies and Mattson’s federal indictment for investment fraud.
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Childhood friends Ken Mattson and Tim LeFever built a real estate portfolio of well over 200 properties before their company, LeFever Mattson Inc., descended into lawsuits, bankruptcies and Mattson’s federal indictment for investment fraud.
KS Mattson Partners transferred another double parcel, at 1834-1836 Ocean Front, to Equitable Ocean Front in July 2024. In a maneuver reminiscent of many Ken Mattson deals, Equitable transferred the property back to KSMP just 20 days later.
The KSMP trustees empowered through bankruptcy proceedings ultimately took possession and sold it to a San Diego couple for $11 million.
The committee is also scrutinizing one of two Del Mar home sales that Stacy Mattson — Ken’s wife and a 50-50 partner in KS Mattson Partners — made in March 2024 and June 2024, for a total of $13.25 million. The buyer of the property in question was a Del Mar resident named Jared Smith.
Fletcher made real estate commissions, or has been in line to make commissions, on at least four Mattson-related properties, according to Richard Schroeder’s declaration. She insisted she’s done nothing improper.
“I’m just as confused as everybody else,” she told The Press Democrat. “I was kind of blindsided by this.”
‘Almost like Rain Man’
Lair walked a reporter through his version of the real estate deals, insisting all of them were above board. In his telling, Ken Mattson was neither a partner nor a friend, but simply another businessman presenting a series of opportunities.
In Mattson, Lair saw someone who he regarded as brilliant, disorganized and seemingly fearful of confrontation.
“We met for coffee in Del Mar. And I want to tell you, it was almost like that movie, ‘Rain Man,’” Lair said. “It’s almost like he’s looking through you. He’s so many steps beyond you. Is he so scatterbrained that he just doesn’t take care of details?”
That fits the profile offered by many of the investors who entrusted their nest eggs to Mattson over the years. Their money helped him assemble a real estate portfolio of more than 200 California properties, worth upward of $400 million. Beginning in 2015, those real estate buys became concentrated in and around the city of Sonoma, where Mattson and his associated businesses claimed ownership of around 120 parcels by March 2023.
A Press Democrat investigation at that time detailed a trail of lawsuits, questionable transfers of deeds among Mattson-related entities and the mounting concerns of Sonoma residents who had grown frustrated by the lack of upkeep at his properties — and angry over the Mattsons’ right-leaning political views.
LeFever reported his former business partner to the SEC in May 2024, touching off an escalating flurry of lawsuits against, and between, the two men. Then came a cascade of bankruptcies. Finally, FBI agents arrested Mattson at a Napa gym in May 2025. He was indicted on nine felony counts of wire fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice.
Mattson had pleaded not guilty to all counts.
The majority of properties once owned by LeFever Mattson, KS Mattson Partners and related entities have been liquidated under the bankruptcy, with proceeds going into a fund to compensate victims.
Marc Lair and Equitable Ocean Front LLC first came onto the unsecured creditors committee’s radar in October 2025, when Equitable Ocean Front filed a claim for $23 million — the 1716 Coast Boulevard acquisition — in the KS Mattson Partners bankruptcy.
The committee challenged the claim in a legal filing, arguing that “no agreement, deed or other supporting documentation” had been submitted to support the claim.
It also sought more information on a claim Equitable Group put in for a home at 454 15th Street in Del Mar. The company had signed an agreement to purchase the property for $4.8 million cash, but the transaction never closed. The purchase agreement for the parcel noted that Equitable would lease the property from KS Mattson Properties for $7,000 per month, “although Debtor has received no rent since the Relief Date.”
Lair confirmed that he and Fletcher are living at the 454 15th St. home.
Ex-husband’s allegations
Richard Schroeder’s declaration, filed as an attempt to modify his spousal support agreement and introduced as an exhibit in the KS Mattson Partners bankruptcy case, is a flamethrower of a document.
The declaration accuses Fletcher and Lair of cooking up an elaborate money laundering scheme. Fletcher, according to her ex-husband, created an LLC eight days before she closed her first real estate deal, and deposited subsequent real estate commissions with the corporation as a way to avoid reporting them to the family court.
The name of Fletcher’s company is FRLS Real Estate LLC.
“Respondent elected to name her corporation after me: F*** R(ichard) L(ane) S(chroeder),” the ex-husband wrote. “This corporation was designed to offend me — from it’s namesake to it’s illegal function.”
Lair came to Fletcher’s defense, arguing that Schroeder was trying to make something out of nothing.
“Here’s a guy who made a million dollars a year. His wife was a stay-at-home mom, and he took her back to court every year for less money,” Lair said.
Richard Schroeder also introduced a connection likely to carry more resonance in Del Mar than in the North Bay. Fletcher’s aunt is Nancy Hoover, who was the city’s mayor from 1976-77, but later served 30 months in prison for partnering with her boyfriend, Jerry Dominelli, in a pyramid scheme.
Dominelli pleaded guilty to defrauding about 1,500 people out of an estimated $80 million between 1979 and 1984. He spent 10 years in prison.
“She’s my aunt,” Fletcher said of Hoover. “I love her. But I have not been that close to Nancy. She was involved in all that stuff when I was young. I never really knew about it.”
You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @Skinny_Post.