Vallejo businessman takes back real estate seized by state

VALLEJO – Vallejo businessman Buck Kamphausen has moved a dozen properties in Vallejo that were seized by the state last year to another company he controls in an apparent violation of state law.

The properties were previously owned by a trust worth over $50 million that was intended to provide capital to maintain four cemeteries in Vallejo, Oakland, San Rafael, and Fresno. 

California’s Cemetery and Funeral Bureau, which oversees most cemeteries in the state, took control of the trust last year after a lengthy court battle. The bureau argued that Kamphausen used the trust improperly and demonstrated “severe mismanagement” over the cemeteries and their assets by not complying with financial regulations and allowing one site to fall into disrepair. 

Solano County Superior Court Judge Christine Carringer ruled last year that Kamphausen’s continued management of the funds would be “hazardous” to the cemeteries’ plot holders and other members of the public.

Kamphausen has consistently denied any wrongdoing and filed an appeal against Carringer’s judgment.

“Things are going to change mighty fast,” Kamphausen told the Vallejo Sun in an interview. “Everything that came out was a lie. I wasn’t ever going to steal $50 million.”

Kamphausen transferred the properties last July to the Neptune Society of Central California, another funeral home and cremation business where he serves as CEO, according to county property records.

The majority of the properties are in downtown Vallejo. Several of them have been the subject of complaints to the city which allege they have been neglected in recent years. Kamphausen has argued that the city doesn’t do an adequate job of stopping residents from damaging his buildings, which makes it difficult to maintain them.

The most well known of these properties is the former Crowley Department Store building  at 436 Georgia St., which has not been repaired since it was severely damaged in the 2014 Napa earthquake. Former Mayor Robert McConnell called it “notorious” during a meeting in 2023, and the city has fined Kamphausen over it at least three times. 

A spokesperson for the cemetery bureau, Kenneth Wright, told the Vallejo Sun that bureau “still protects” the trust and has appointed Farmers and Merchants Trust Company as a receiver “to manage and invest the trust’s assets.” He said the bureau will continue to control the trust “until a licensed cemetery authority can prove before a judge they can properly resume management of the trust.” 

Kamphausen and his partners forfeited their license to operate cemeteries in 2023 after admitting to turning in their cemetery financial reports late, sometimes years late, for over a decade.

Ryan Griffith, an attorney and expert in receivership law who works at the Bay Area Receivership Group, told the Vallejo Sun that, often courts allow receiverships in order to “take over an out of control situation” that’s harmful to the public in order to help fix it. 

Griffith said that in order for a property owner whose assets have been placed under a receivership to transfer them, they need to get permission. While it would be possible for a property owner to transfer land at a county office, this could violate the law, according to Griffith.

“You could just transfer a title at a county office,” Griffith said. “No one really checks, which is crazy, but you could do that. But for it to all be legit you’d have to get permission from the court to transfer the asset.”

According to Griffith, a person who breaks a court order to transfer properties could be held in contempt of court.

Kamphausen said that the bureau “told him to transfer the properties” and that “it’s all been done with recognition by the state.” He said that Neptune Society of Central California has its own trust, and the properties have been placed there.

The bureau would not confirm or deny that it instructed Kamphausen to transfer the properties.

If the bureau did instruct Kamphausen to transfer the properties into Neptune Society of Central California, it would have instructed him to violate the law.

The Neptune Society of Central California uses a different type of trust than cemeteries. While cemetery businesses use endowment care funds to fund long-term grounds maintenance, funeral homes use funeral establishment pre-need trusts in order to hold client funds paid in advance of their own or a loved one’s death for future services. According to California law, endowment care funds can hold real estate as long as it’s income producing, but funeral establishment pre-need trusts cannot.

Kamphausen insists that the transfer was legal though.

“Wherever the properties legally were supposed to go, they went,” Kamphausen said. “It’s all accounted for.”