Part 5: Did the Corrupt Whatcom County Planning Department and the Prosecutor's Office Conspired to Defraud a Property Owner?
- Brian Gass
- 6 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 21 hours ago
This article is part of our continuing investigative series, “When Whatcom County Protected a Corrupt Natural Resources Planner — and Then Became Corrupt Itself.”
Our reporting documents how Planning Departments wield near-absolute control over property rights — control that is subjective, opaque, and difficult to challenge. It also shows how, when that power is abused, subsequent investigations can be designed less to determine what happened than to manage liability, protect the institution, and sidestep accountability to the people whose lives and property were affected.
How Whatcom County Hid the Truth After It Was Already Known
The most disturbing part of the Mahaffie case is no longer the original conduct. It’s what happened after the facts were already clear.
By the time Whatcom County commissioned its so-called “independent investigation,” the County already possessed documents that contradicted its own narrative. Those documents were never examined, never reconciled, and never mentioned.
This post explains how the truth was buried in plain sight — not by accident, but by process.
The Truth Came First. The Investigation Came Later.
The background
Back in 2017 Mr and Mrs Dierdorff owned 4470 Castlerock Rd in Blaine Wa. You can go HERE for the background. What you need to know is that the corrupt Whatcom County Natural Resources Planner, Matt Mahaffie flagged their property as "being totally encumbered by wetlands buffers and essentially unbuildable without mitigation or special use restrictions.
From July 2017 to October 2020, the Dierdorff's were in wetlands purgetory courtesy of Matt Mahaffie. After their builder dropped them, the wife had passed, and Mr Dierdorff was facing health problems, they had to sell.
Unfortunately for the Deirdorff's they ended up selling to the corrupt Natural Resources Planner Matt Mahaffie. When they did, Mr Mahaffie had convinced the sellers that it would be too much time, effort and money to make the lot sellable.
So they dumped their lot that was assessed for over $160K for 1/2 the price.
Fast forward to April 2022, just 18 months later, Mahaffie listed their old property for $230K with ZERO MENTIONS of wetlands or issues.
In July of that year, it closed without issue to a new buyer and they ended up building without any wetlands issues netting the corrupt Naturan Resouces Planner Matt Mahaffie a cool $150,000 PROFIT for doing nothing.
The MAGIC MEMO
On April 22, 2022, Whatcom County issued a memorandum on the Planning Director’s letterhead stating that wetlands for The Greens at Loomis Trail subdivision had been fully mitigated as part of the original plat.
The memo stated plainly:
Wetlands mitigation was completed during plat formation
Buffers were reduced
No further critical areas review was required for any lot in the subdivision
This memo resolved the exact regulatory issue that had been used to block development at 4470 Castlerock Drive for nearly three years.
That memo existed years before the County’s investigation began in 2024.
Let that sink in.
The investigation did not discover the truth. It was conducted after the truth already existed.
Nothing to see here? Right?
Memo is written the same day that Mahaffie's sale fall through...due to wetland issues?
Seven Planners Were Interviewed — and Nobody Mentioned the Memo
According to the investigation record, approximately six to seven planners and supervisors were interviewed, including:
The Planning Director
Multiple supervisors
The subject of the complaint
A planner whose later determination contradicted the original restrictive finding
Not one of them:
Raised the April 22, 2022 memo
Explained why it contradicted earlier determinations
Addressed why one property owner was blocked for years while others weren’t
Reconciled conflicting County interpretations
This memo was not obscure. It was not buried. It was not a staff email or an informal note.
It was issued on official County letterhead, addressed the exact plat at issue, and fundamentally altered the regulatory position.
An investigation that interviews leadership after such a memo exists, and never mentions it, is not missing facts.
It is excluding them.
You can download the intial investigation report here:
And the supplimental report here:
The Question Was Narrowed to Ensure the Answer
The investigator framed the inquiry as whether a planner “used his position” to profit from real estate transactions.
But instead of testing that claim with evidence, the investigation avoided the only materials that could answer it.
No one reviewed:
Purchase and sale agreements
Settlement statements
Listing agreements
Seller disclosures
Dual-agency disclosures
Financial records
No one interviewed:
The elderly seller who lost money at closing
The Dierdorffs, who endured nearly three years of regulatory obstruction
Any real estate agents involved in the transactions
Instead, the investigation relied primarily on internal interviews and accepted self-reported explanations at face value.
If Matt Mahaffie told the investigator that SANTA WAS REAL, she would have included it in her report as the truth.
That is not how you investigate financial benefit.That is how you avoid proving it.
The “Arms-Length” Claim Was Never Tested — Because It Couldn’t Be
Mahaffie repeatedly claimed the transactions were “arms length.” That claim collapses under even minimal scrutiny.
Both the Castlerock Drive transaction and the Blaine Road transactions involved dual agency, where the same real estate agent represented both buyer and seller.
That alone destroys the notion of arms-length dealing.
But the imbalance went further:
One party was a County wetlands regulator
That party possessed superior, outcome-controlling regulatory knowledge
The sellers were being regulated by the same system
The sellers were never informed they were negotiating with a regulator
One seller was left underwater at closing
An arms-length transaction cannot exist when:
One party controls or influences the regulatory environment
The other party is being worn down by that environment
And both rely on the same agent
What possessed Ms Beckwith to GIVE AWAY her property? What benefit did it give HER?
The investigation never interviewed a single agent. That omission was not accidental.It was essential.
Contradictory Testimony Was Allowed to Stand — Unresolved
The investigation documents directly contradictory accounts regarding the 2023 wetlands determination:
Goldschmidt stated Mahaffie consulted on the determination (click here for our post on Nathan Goldschmidt who was the only planner thrown under the bus by his superiors on purpose)
Mahaffie stated he had never seen it until the investigation
Both statements cannot be true.
A real investigation would:
Re-interview both witnesses
Resolve the contradiction
Make credibility findings
Instead, both stories were allowed to coexist — because resolving the conflict would have required acknowledging that someone was lying.
Prosecutors Didn’t Fix the Problem — They Finalized It
By the time the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office endorsed the investigation, they knew (or should have known):
Key witnesses were never interviewed
No transaction documents were reviewed
The April 22, 2022 memo was omitted
Contradictory testimony was left unresolved
Despite this, the investigation was certified as “thorough,” and complainants were later warned about continuing to raise concerns.
At that point, the issue stopped being investigatory. It became institutional protection.
This Is How the Truth Was Hidden
Not by shredding documents.Not by forging records.
But by:
Narrowing the question
Excluding adverse witnesses
Avoiding financial records
Ignoring contradictory documents
Accepting mutually exclusive testimony
And declaring the result final
This is not how investigations fail accidentally. This is how they are designed to succeed at exoneration.
Why This Matters
When regulators can:
Exhaust property owners
Acquire property at depressed values
Reverse positions after acquisition
Profit from the reversal
And rely on curated investigations to escape accountability
Land-use regulation stops being public service. It becomes a wealth-extraction tool. And when prosecutors endorse that process, the cover-up becomes worse than the original misconduct.
And it gets even WORSE when the same regulators who are restricting your property and it's use, are setting up their own SIDE HUSTLE of buying "worthless properties" on the cheap, and then selling you back MITIGATION CREDITS to the tune of $400,000 an acre.
And their bosses, don't see a problem with it...because they are just "regular people" when they aren't controlling property values, uses, and outcomes...right?
Then the corrupt Director of the Planning Department THREATENS a person who DARES to say that his department is CORRUPT, which it is.
Then he CC's Prosecuting Attorneys on the letter to make it more ominous and threatening.
Bet you didn't know that Whatcom County Prosecuting Attorney's delt with hurt feelings!
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