Magistrate Alex Tse (pictured), the judge presiding over the Ken Mattson Ponzi Scheme hearing, decided in favor of granting bail, setting an amount of $4 million, this over the objections of numerous victims of his financial theft who argued that he is a flight risk.
According to an account in the San Francisco Chronicle, “the detention hearing on Wednesday came after Mattson’s stunning arrest last week at a Napa gym. Prosecutors and his defense attorneys sparred for hours over basic facts of the case before Judge Alex Tse agreed to allow Mattson to be released into the custody of his wife, Stacy, to live in their home on Castle Road in Sonoma.
Many of Mattson’s former clients had hoped that Tse would order Mattson held in custody until his trial. At the beginning of the hearing, they described the fear and pain they had gone through learning that their retirement savings had essentially disappeared.
The judge also ordered Mattson to submit to GPS monitoring, to transfer ownership of three firearms he owned (but no longer held in his possession) to a relative, to report all financial transactions of more than $5,000 to pretrial services, and not to solicit or make any new investments of any kind. Tse also ordered him to surrender his passports and not to harass any witnesses, jurors, victims or other court officers related to the case.”
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