Mattson’s operations as clear as mud Flowery school closure troubling

EDITOR: I read with interest Phil Barber’s May 30 detailed description of Mattson’s fraud techniques, but it still doesn’t make sense. OK, so he was defrauding unsophisticated investors well before he started buying the 400 Sonoma disparate properties. In the typical Ponzi scheme the original investors are paid with new investment funds. He used Socotra Capital a Hard Money Lender (also known as a “kneecap lender” ) charging a higher interest rate probably because no traditional lender would finance him. I get the “on title/off title” pull money out with a refinance fraud for which any first-year law student could have been of help.

What I don’t understand how he could have ever thought everything was going to work out just fine. The only possible way out would have been a fantastic and unlikely real estate price inflation that you might see in San Francisco, but not in Sonoma. The signs of desperation were all over the place. Buying properties that had no relationship to each other and then not having funds to “add value.” Instead of completing and selling a project like Moon Mountain for a profit he put money into more new purchases. How is somebody able to build a financial hole so deep and so public that they must know that they will never get out of? There is no reasonable answer.

Ironically, Socotra Capital might do OK. They are in first position on title and are therefore owed the debt plus the interest and penalties that keep adding up until the properties are sold. They won’t get back everything they are owed but they will be paid before any “on title/off title” investors ever get paid. The only good news is that most of the properties are now being marketed, and the new buyers will likely be trying to make a profit in the old-fashioned way. EDITOR: I have lived in the Flowery School resident area for eight years and practice clinical psychology in Sonoma. From a mental health perspective, I find the decision to close Flowery School very troubling.

Many of the students who live in Spanish speaking homes are already living with extensive trauma. The available statistics are unreliable but all point to the fact that a substantial proportion of these families include members who are undocumented and therefore at risk of sudden, harsh deportation. It is my understanding that significant numbers of our Spanish speaking neighbors are staying away from food distribution centers and the health center out of fear. Some students are being kept home from school out of fear. This level of fear damages physical and mental health and limits children’s ability to learn.

At Flowery School, these young people can go to school within walking or biking distance of their homes within a community that is close knit and familiar. Should a deportation occur among their family members or close friends, some adult - a parent, grandparent, aunt, or uncle - will be able to walk to the school and support them through a traumatic loss. To move them out of this vital support system into a part of town that is unfamiliar and which, for many of them, feels threatening amplifies their daily, hourly trauma.

We must consider also the impact on the youths at Flowery and in our community who live in English speaking homes. What does it teach them when we close a place of safety for their Spanish speaking peers, especially in times like these. Whether we agree or disagree with the current federal administration’s stance on the deportation of our undocumented neighbors, there is no gainsaying its traumatic impact on innocent children in our community.