Ken Mattson Trial Set for April as Office Vacancy Falls

A trial date has been set in the Ken Mattson saga. The Sonoma developer and investor is alleged to have defrauded hundreds of people out of tens of millions of dollars in a years-long Ponzi scheme.

The jury trial will begin on April 12, federal Judge Jon S. Tigar decided on Wednesday. That would be just shy of two years after Mattson was swarmed by federal agents in an Orangetheory parking lot and charged with nine felony counts, including wire fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice in connection to his scheme. Prosecutors initially pushed for the trial to begin as early as November, with Mattson’s attorney seeking a summer 2027 start date.

Seated amongst dozens of his victims in the Oakland federal chambers Wednesday, Mattson, who is out on bail, quickly exited the courthouse upon adjournment without comment. Afterward, as a crowd lingered in the hallway, one of the victims complained to a court-appointed advocate that the slow road to trial was “bullshit” and that he and many of the victims were “struggling to get by.”

Mattson initially pleaded not guilty, but changed his mind after reviewing the evidence and agreed to plead guilty to at least one count of wire fraud, skip a jury trial, and face a up to a 20-year prison sentence. Then, just days before he was scheduled to amend his plea on June 15, he changed his mind again, putting his fate in the hands of a jury.

Prosecutors may seek a new, superseding indictment against Mattson within the next 90 days, according to court documents. It’s unclear what those charges would or could entail, but prosecutors said any new charges would be based on evidence already gathered in the case. U.S. attorney Nikhil Bhagat declined to comment further.

Office leasing’s highs, and vacancy’s lows

When cybersecurity firm Fortinet nabbed 26,000 square feet of commercial office space in Sunnyvale late last month, it felt like deja vu. The company has purchased more than 10 such properties in the Silicon Valley city over the last two years.

It also spoke to the larger wave of interest in Silicon Valley’s office market. At the close of 2024, the region that includes, among others, San Jose, Palo Alto, Cupertino and Mountain View had a vacancy rate between 20 and 23 percent according to the major brokerages in the area. That number has fallen to the mid-teens in 2026. Kidder Mathews’ early look at Q2 numbers showed a 16.6 percent vacancy rate, down 1.7% over the last year.

That momentum has trickled down from San Francisco, where the artificial intelligence boom has allowed that market to plug its vacancy rate faster than any other major U.S. city, according to a new report from CBRE.

Q2 estimates show San Francisco’s office vacancy rate fell five points year-over-year, from 34.7 percent in 2025 to 29.7 percent today.

For the first half of the year, net absorption in San Francisco reached 2.9 million square feet, higher than all of 2025, and tenant demand sits at 8.9 million square feet, an all-time high.