State seeks to seize over $50 million in assets from Vallejo businessmen’s cemeteries

VALLEJO – A state regulatory agency has ordered Vallejo businessman Buck Kamphausen and two partners to surrender their licenses to manage cemeteries and is seeking to seize tens of millions of dollars of assets owned by the cemeteries, court records show.

In October, California’s Cemetery and Funeral Bureau ordered Kamphausen and his business associates Joshua Voss and Edward Wilkes to surrender their licenses in response to a formal accusation against the businessmen which outlined how they had consistently turned in financial reports late — sometimes years late — for over a decade.

Additionally, the accusation said that the bureau had fined, warned or cited Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland and Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery in San Rafael six times since 2019 for failing to comply with maintenance standards such as watering grass and controlling vermin. The businessmen were also ordered to surrender their licenses to operate Skyview Memorial Lawn in Vallejo and Chapel of the Light in Fresno.

Although the businessmen have agreed to surrender their licenses, Kamphausen and Voss are in a court dispute with the bureau over the cemeteries' trust funds. The cemetery bureau is attempting to seize the funds, which are intended to be endowments to pay for cemetery upkeep. Kamphausen and Voss’s cemetery trusts own at least 15 properties in Vallejo, vintage vehicles, large cash deposits and about $1 million in uninsured solid gold. The bureau estimates the trusts are worth over $50 million.

Kamphausen and Voss are seeking to donate the trust funds to a religious nonprofit corporation called Evergreen Ministries, which was formed in Nov. 2022, about five months after the bureau opened its accusation. California Secretary of State filings list Kamphausen as the CFO of Evergreen Ministries and Voss as its vice president. Bishop Ray Jackson, a chaplain with Vallejo’s police and fire departments, is listed as CEO.

The filings show that Evergreen Ministries’ initial stated purpose was to “conduct grief, death and recovery support.” In October, about a week before Kamphausen and Voss surrendered their licenses, the corporation restated its purpose, adding it also was formed to manage cemeteries and their funds.

In court filings, attorneys with the state Department of Justice, which represents the cemetery bureau, called the potential transfer “self dealing” and “a ploy” Kamphausen and Voss are attempting to use “to avoid oversight.” While the bureau oversees and regulates most cemeteries in the state, it cannot exert such powers over any cemetery controlled by a religious organization.

According to Kamphausen and Voss’s court filings, their cemeteries donated all their assets to Evergreen Ministries in June. This was the same month the bureau ordered the assets seized. Kamphausen and Voss’s attorneys say the donations occurred for “various reasons” including Kamphausen’s health. Kamphausen, who is in his mid-80s, had a stroke around that time.

Evergreen Ministries currently owns and operates the cemeteries, and the bureau is not attempting to stop its ownership or management of the facilities. Control of the cemeteries’ trusts, though, is still being determined. 

Cemeteries in California are required to set up trust funds that are seeded by consumers’ purchase fees for burial plots. Profits from the trusts must be used for cemetery maintenance, and when a cemetery fills up, as Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland has, they rely on income from these funds to ensure their continued care.

Cemetery bureau attorneys say that in addition to breaking California law over their constantly delinquent financial report submissions, Kamphausen and Voss made illegal investments and stored trust funds in a manner that puts them at an unnecessary risk for loss. 

Kamphausen and Voss’s fillings show that their cemetery trusts are investing in solid gold, which they call a “highly desirable investment” and a “good safe haven and inflation hedge.” They’re storing approximately 36 pounds of gold, worth about $1 million, in a safe at Skyview Memorial Lawn because “banks refuse to allow gold.” 

Bureau attorneys say that under California law, physical gold is not an approved investment for cemetery trusts. Additionally, due to the manner in which Kamphausen and Voss are storing the gold and since they have not shown that it's insured, the duo are putting it at risk for loss or theft.

In a court declaration filed last September, Michelle Arthur, a bureau auditor, stated that over $1 million of cemetery funds were being stored in six different non-interest bearing checking accounts. Storing the funds in such accounts, bureau attorneys say, violates cemetery trust fund investment statutes. The funds in three accounts exceed $250,000, the limit for what the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will insure, making them vulnerable to permanent loss.

The bureau first filed a petition in Solano County Superior Court in July to take control of the cemetery assets.  But Kamphausen and Voss asked Judge Christine Carringer for a temporary restraining order to prevent the seizure in September, which she granted. The bureau appealed, and the state Court of Appeal vacated the restraining order in December, allowing the bureau to proceed with the seizure.

Kamphausen and Voss are now asking Carringer to reinstate the restraining order, which would allow them to transfer the cemetery assets to Evergreen Ministries.  Their filings argue that Evergreen Ministries already own the trusts, and since it’s a religious nonprofit, the trusts are “now fully exempt from [the bureau’s] regulation and oversight.” The bureau argues that the duo would be able to “abscond or dissipate” the funds if given access to them through a religious nonprofit that the bureau can’t oversee.

In their filings, Kamphausen and Voss’s attorneys wrote that the bureau has produced no evidence that the transfer of funds would harm the public, and its reasoning for seizing the trusts relies only on “outrageous speculation that the transfers were but a mere ruse to steal the money.” The fillings insist that that transfer of funds to Evergreen Ministries is legal, and that the corporation’s “ready access” to them are “essential to the cemeteries’ continued operations.”

The bureau’s fillings say it is not interfering with Evergreen Ministries’ ability to operate the cemeteries. The corporation can still pay for cemetery expenses since it has access to the facilities’ operating accounts, which have not been seized, and can still access trust fund assets if it submits the expenses for approval and the bureau determines they’ll be used for maintenance of cemetery grounds and payment of landscape workers.

But Kamphausen and Voss’s attorneys say the process of accessing the trust funds is cumbersome, time consuming, and “wholly subject to the arbitrary discretion of [bureau] employees.” If Evergreen Ministries can’t easily access the trust funds, their filings claim, the public and the cemeteries’ maintenance workers will suffer.

Well before the bureau began regulating Kamphausen and Voss’s access to the trusts, many people with loved ones buried in the cemeteries complained about their maintenance. Since 2014, eight people have complained about Evergreen Cemetery in court filings and negative Yelp reviews, mostly about insufficient watering.

In 2021, Jim Weeder, whose mother is buried at Mt. Tamalpais, posted a petition that called its conditions “disgraceful” due to the presence of weeds, gopher holes, unwatered grass, and buried headstones. The petition asked for improved maintenance. Over 1,500 people have signed, including about 40 people who stated in comments that they have friends or family members buried there. Two people wrote they could no longer locate family members’ gravestones due to the cemetery’s conditions.

Weeder told the Vallejo Sun that he thinks improper financial management has harmed the cemeteries.

“The trust funds should be used for the perpetual care of the cemetery,” he said. “But the only thing [Kamphausen] cares about is his fancy cars.”

A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Jan. 30.