For nearly a decade, two aggressive real estate investors stirred excitement and suspicion as they amassed an impressive Wine Country real estate portfolio worth nearly $150 million. But then, two years ago, their buying frenzy ground to a halt when one man accused the other in a stunning case of fraud.
A year later, FBI agents arrested Kenneth Mattson outside a gym in Napa, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco filed a federal indictment detailing allegations that he’d engaged in “a classic Ponzi scheme.”
Now, ahead of a June 15 hearing at a federal court in Oakland, federal prosecutors are negotiating a deal that could send Mattson to prison for a dozen years, if he agrees to plead guilty to wire fraud, according to a notice sent to victims that was shared with the Chronicle and first reported by the Santa Rosa Press Democrat…