In court, DOJ argues Vallejo cemetery operators demonstrated ‘severe mismanagement’

FAIRFIELD – An attorney with the California Department of Justice argued in two days of court hearings last month that Vallejo businessman Buck Kamphausen and his partners in operating several California cemeteries made risky investments – including $1 million in uninsured solid gold – that put trusts designed for cemetery maintenance at risk. 

“Audits demonstrate severe mismanagement with those funds,” Deputy Attorney General Julianne Mossler said. 

She said there had been “self-dealing and purchases of assets” in violation of the Prudent Investor Act, which states that trustees “owe a duty to their beneficiaries” to “invest and manage assets as a prudent investor would.”

Mossler’s comments came during a trial in Fairfield to determine whether California’s Cemetery and Funeral Bureau can keep over $50 million in cemetery assets it seized from Kamphausen and his partner Joshua Voss. Both were already ordered to surrender their licenses to operate cemeteries in October over a 2022 accusation that alleged they’d mismanaged financial reports at four cemeteries and failed to comply with maintenance standards at two of them. 

But Kamphausen and Voss have maintained control of the cemeteries — Skyview Memorial Lawn in Vallejo, Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery in San Rafael, and Chapel of the Light in Fresno — by transferring them to a religious nonprofit named Evergreen Ministries. The transfer occurred in June 2023, before they lost their licenses, but while the bureau was investigating them. 

Kamphausen is Evergreen Ministries’ CFO and Voss is its vice president. The duo have been able to continue running their cemeteries through the nonprofit because the bureau can’t legally oversee any cemetery controlled by a religious organization.

The bureau isn’t attempting to stop Evergreen Ministries from running the cemeteries. But who will control the over $50 million in cemetery’s endowment care fund assets – which include at least 15 properties in Vallejo, stocks, vintage vehicles, cash, and about $1 million in uninsured solid gold – is still to be determined in court. 

In court filings, the bureau’s lawyers have called the transfer of these funds, which are seeded by those who have bought burial plots and required by state law to be used for cemetery maintenance, an illegal ploy to avoid oversight. They’ve said the bureau is able to stop the transfer under California law because there is probable cause to believe it could cause irreparable loss and injury to the funds.

In their own court filings, Kamphausen and Voss’s lawyers said the transfer is legal because the bureau hasn’t produced evidence to show that it would cause loss or injury to the funds.

The bureau filed a petition in Solano County Superior Court last year to stop the transfer and allow it to seize the funds. But Kamphausen and Voss asked Solano County Superior Court Judge Christine Carringer for a temporary restraining order to stop the seizure in September, which she granted. 

The bureau appealed, and an appellate court vacated Carringer’s decision in December. 

Currently, the bureau controls the endowment care funds and any profits they make, although Evergreen Ministries can request funds for expenses needed to run the cemeteries. But Kamphausen and Voss are again asking Carringer to allow Evergreen Ministries to return the funds by dissolving the bureau’s conservatorship, which would allow them to use them with no bureau oversight. 

Carringer opened the trial by asking why she should consider dissolving the conservatorship when the Court of Appeal has already ruled against Kamphausen, whether transferring funds “in an apparent attempt to avoid oversight” is legal, whether gold is a legal investment for a cemetery trust, whether Kamphausen and Voss had refused to turn in cemetery trust reports, and whether evidence of a lack of maintenance of the cemeteries sufficiently shows they cannot maintain control of the trust funds.

While she acknowledged Evergreen Ministries as a religious organization, Carringer also asked if the religious corporation exception to bureau oversight could apply to its cemeteries since they were founded by a private secular business that had already sold plots to consumers.

Voss testified during the trial that he and Kamphausen believed the gold that they’d purchased and stored in a safe at Skyview Memorial Lawn in Vallejo was a good investment. He said it had increased in value and is worth $400,000 dollars more now than when it was first purchased. 

Voss testified that the gold was purchased in multiple transactions weeks apart in June 2022 at around the same time that the bureau's accusation was filed on June 9, 2022. 

Steve Gurnee, an attorney for Kamphausen and Voss, argued that the gold is “a perfectly appropriate investment that has substantially increased in value.” Bureau lawyers argued in court filings that the way the gold was stored and the fact that it was uninsured was improper, but Gurnee did not address those issues.

Gurnee objected to what he said was the Justice Department’s suggestion that Kamphausen and his business partners had misused funds or planned to abscond with them. 

“The suspicion of Ms Mossler has been Mr. Kamphausen is somehow a thief that is going to steal the endowment care funds,” he said. “There’s not a shred of evidence to support that.”

Gurnee said that the bureau had made “accounting misconceptions” by claiming withdrawals spent on maintaining real estate were improper, when they were in fact legitimate and helped the real estate generate profit to the trust funds through rent revenue. 

Manuel Mendoza, Kamphausen’s lead accountant since early 2020, testified that the extensive investments in real estate bring money back into the trusts through rent payments that the buildings’ tenants make. Money from the trusts go into the buildings as well, according to Mendoza, to pay expenses like maintenance and taxes. 

At one point during Gurnee and Mendoza’s exchange about real estate, Carringer abruptly paused them to reprimand Voss, who sat in the audience of the courtroom. She accused him of “signaling to the witness.”

“Please stop doing what you are doing,” the judge said. “I will ask you to leave the room if you continue to do that.”

During cross examination, Mossler said that some of the buildings owned by the trust are unoccupied. Mendoza said that he was aware some buildings were under construction, but didn’t know how many or where they were. 

Mendoza testified that since the seizure, all rent money and other endowment care fund revenue had not been sent to the bureau, as Mossler said was legally required.  Mendoza said endowment care fund checks had been printed and signed by Kamphausen, but were being held until the seizure ends because the bureau had not explained “how to get the money into the appropriate bank account.”

Mendoza laid the blame for years of late reports on Kamphausen’s previous lead accountant. Kamphausen’s cemeteries had been tardy turning in reports from years 2010 though 2020 at least 37 times, sometimes by as many as three years, according to the bureau’s accusation. 

Mendoza accused the previous accountant  of “putting up a smoke screen” while “not providing information,” and “shredding paperwork.”

Mendoza said that when first hired, he noticed the previous accountant had not provided the reports to the bureau, so he “jumped right in and started preparing” them, and they’ve all been turned in at this point. Mossler, however, said the bureau still hadn’t received one report that was due June 1.

Mendoza denied finding improper usages of funds while he was preparing the reports.

Meanwhile, Mendoza said that Evergreen Ministries has been unable to withdraw funds from the trust for cemetery maintenance, and testified that requests for the state to release the funds are not being granted.

Mendoza said “several months ago” Evergreen Ministries had asked for reimbursement for over $168,000 in maintenance costs and needs to fulfill obligations to plot holders at Mt. Tamalpais alone, but that the bureau had delivered no reimbursement. Mendoza said that the profits the cemeteries were bringing in were not sufficient to pay the cemetery expenses, and that Kamphausen was paying the difference out of pocket.

Mendoza testified that other cemeteries also requested reimbursement funds. Mossler suggested that over $1 million was requested for all cemeteries, and asked if that figure was correct. But Mendoza was unable to estimate how much was requested in total.

The accusation outlines six times since 2019 that Evergreen and Mt. Tamalpais cemeteries had been warned and cited for failing to comply with maintenance standards, such as watering the grounds and controlling vermin. The cemeteries had paid over $2,500 in fines associated with the citations.

But Gurnee’s said issues of maintenance itself are not relevant because they’re not part of the case.

Attorney Kevin Frankel, who represents Congregation Kol Shofar, a synagogue based in Tiburon which regularly inters its members in a Jewish section of Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery, also spoke against dissolving the conservatorship. While not a plaintiff in the case, Carringer has allowed Kol Shofar to submit testimony and question witnesses.

Frankel also said that “in light of the myriad continuing violations at Mt Tamalpais Cemetery, Evergreen Ministries should not be allowed to hold the endowment care fund,” and that Kol Shofar plans to present testimonies showing Mt Tamalpais “used to be a beautiful parklike environment, but under [Kamphausen’s] management it has become an unkempt place of reproach and desolation.” 

He cited rodent holes, tall weeds, poison oak on graves, bad trash disposal, falling branches, unmaintained roads, sinking headstones, and tire tracks over gravestones.

Frankel warned that if the court dissolved the conservatorship and allowed the cemetery trust funds to be transferred, it could set a precedent that would “render the bureau pointless and ineffective.” Cemeteries that violate the laws the bureau enforces could simply “transfer ownership to a religious organization” to avoid oversight.

Evergreen Ministries’ CEO Ray Jackson testified that he has not been able to do much to address the tilting headstones and rodents due to a lack of funds. Jackson, a chaplain with Vallejo’s police and fire departments and a bishop at Solid Rock Cathedral of Faith Church in Vallejo, said he first started having conversations with Kamphausen and Voss about taking over the cemeteries in October 2022 and formed Evergreen Ministries a month later. Voss became the CFO of Solid Rock in August 2023.

Jackson said he was the person currently overseeing cemetery compliance with state laws and that he had visited Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery one time since becoming CEO of Evergreen Ministries and thought it was well maintained. 

Mossler asked if Jackson had seen signs at Mt. Tamalpais warning visitors of falling tree limbs. Jackson responded that he had only seen such signs hung by a construction company that was cutting back limbs on the day he visited. Jackson attributed tilting headstones to the terrain, as some headstones sit on a hill. He said he only saw one spot with rodent holes. 

Jackson also said he saw grass everywhere at Mt Tamalpais. In court declarations, family members of those interred have shared some photos of dried out brown grass and other photos showing a mixture of tall weeds and grass at the cemetery.

Jackson said the biggest issue he was trying to resolve was securing water for the grounds. Mossler asked him how long he expected it to take to secure water. 

“It’s undetermined at this point unless I can get the Lord to bring me some rain,” Jackson said.

Testimony in the trial is scheduled to resume next week.