Vallejo businessman faces new fines for funeral home businesses

VALLEJO – A state agency has again reprimanded Vallejo businessman Buck Kamphausen for his mismanagement of death related businesses.

Newly released records show California’s Cemetery and Funeral Bureau levied $1,000 in fines in September against two of Kamphausen’s businesses: Wiggins-Knipp Funeral Home in Vallejo, and Morrison Funeral Chapel in St Helena, for turning financial reports in almost nine months late. 

Records obtained from the bureau show Kamphausen owns at least 17 funeral homes, cremation providers, or cemeteries in California. The bureau has cited or seized assets from eight of them since 2023.

Last year, the bureau seized $50 million in cemetery trust fund assets from Kamphausen and his business partners for mismanaging four cemeteries, including Skyview Memorial Lawn in Vallejo. 

While the funeral homes are separate from the four cemeteries, there are similarities in how Kamphausen has allegedly mismanaged the businesses. Kamphausen had allegedly turned  required cemetery financial reports in late, sometimes years late. Solano County Superior Court Judge Christine Carringer said other factors that contributed to her allowing the seizure were Kamphausen and his partners letting their cemeteries fall into disrepair, and making improper investments with cemetery funds. 

The seizure blocked Kamphausen’s attempt to transfer $50 million in assets to Evergreen Ministries, a non-profit Kamphausen founded which he claimed was a religious organization, which would have placed the assets outside of the bureau’s jurisdiction.

In an interview with the Vallejo Sun, Kamphausen said the state, which claimed the attempted transfer was an attempt to abscond with consumer seeded funds legally required to be used to care for cemeteries, lied about all the things it said during the seizure case.

“All these things they say aren’t true,” Kamphausen said. “I never had the intention of taking up money and going somewhere. I’ve always put money back into these places, my own money, that I make in other ways.”

Kamphausen acknowledged that he turned financial reports in late for the Wiggins-Knipp and Morrison funeral homes, but said that the state seizing funds from his cemeteries has made it impossible to hire bookkeepers for his businesses.

“The state has done nothing but harass us,” Kamphauen said. “They want more and more and more information, but you can’t have enough bookkeepers. Now that our income is restricted, how can I hire more people?”

While the state has seized funds from four of Kamphausen’s cemeteries, it hasn’t seized any funds from the Wiggins-Knipp and Morrison funeral homes.

The required financial reports from the funeral homes deal with preneed trust funds, which are made up of funds consumers have paid to a funeral home or cemetery for services in advance of their own or a loved one’s death. The reports are intended to ensure transparency and prevent misuse for how these funds are managed, invested and used.

Wiggins-Knipp, Morrision, and the four cemeteries aren’t the only of Kamphausen’s businesses the bureau has reprimanded in recent years. Since 2023, the bureau has cited two more of Kamphausen’s businesses, Nautilus Society in Oakland, and Neptune Society of Central California in San Jose, both of which are cremation providers.

The bureau cited and fined Nautilus Society on four different occasions, totaling $6,000 in penalties, for allegedly implying an employee was a funeral counselor when she was unlicensed to work in that capacity, cremating a deceased person’s body without obtaining the required forms to do so, embalming a deceased person’s body without obtaining a required form to do so, turning in a financial report in late, and twice failing to register people’s deaths.

Regarding citations which Nautilus Society received over the last few years, Kamphausen said, “some of it is true, some of it is half truth. I don’t have all the info on that.”

The bureau cited Neptune Society of Central California once in 2024 for turning in a financial report late.

As the state is now the conservator of $50 million in Kamphausen’s cemetery business assets, it controls over $1 million the cemeteries invested in uninsured gold, as well as 15 properties in Vallejo. Most of the buildings are located on Virginia or Georgia streets in downtown Vallejo, and at least some of them have been left vacant for years. The bureau did not respond by press time to inquiries about what it plans to do with the assets.

While it controls the trust fund assets, the bureau hasn’t seized the cemeteries themselves. Kamphausen said that he and his team still manage them. They aren’t licensed to manage them, however, because as part of a stipulated settlement with the bureau, they surrendered their licenses to operate cemeteries in 2024. 

Kamphausen has said that he hasn’t been able to access any of the cemetery trust funds since the state seizure, but he’s been using his own money to care for them. He said he recently paved roads in Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery in San Rafael. 

Relatives of those buried at Mt. Tamalpais have complained in court filings and testimony that the cemetery has fallen into disrepair, as rodents have dug up much of the space, tree branches and headstones have fallen, and the grounds are barren when it isn’t rainy and overtaken by weeds when it rains.

Three people told the Vallejo Sun that the grounds have continued to deteriorate since the state seized the cemetery assets. Bob LeFevre of Morgan Hill, who has three relatives buried at Mt. Tamalpais, said that during recent visits he saw gophers digging up the grounds. 

“Nothing seems to have changed, even though the owners have been found guilty of this negligence,”LeFevre said.

Kamphausen said he’s doing his best, and it’s a difficult cemetery to maintain due to his lack of access to funds and its location.

“These people want everything perfect,” Kamphausen said, “but mountains aren’t perfect.”

In a July report on Mt Tamalpais’s decline, a spokesperson for the bureau told KQED it can’t currently do anything to improve it unless the cemetery is purchased by a new owner and relicensed. 

“It is considered unlicensed or abandoned and falls outside the regulatory authority of the bureau,” the spokesperson said.

Although he’s unlicensed to operate his cemeteries, Kamphausen told the Vallejo Sun he doesn’t intend to sell them. Instead he’s appealing Carringer’s decision which allowed the state to seize the cemeteries’ trust funds in the hopes of getting back access.

“All of this stuff is just bullshit,” Kamphausen said. “It’s going to be over here pretty quick. They have a trial set, and we have attorneys to take care of it.”