An Alvarado Street odyssey gets weirder.

The strange tale of Nader Agha’s property at 449 Alvarado St. has turned even stranger.

As of last December, Agha, a real estate investor, had planned to sell the downtown Monterey building to the Dan and Lillian King Foundation, a nonprofit founded in 2011 with assets from the Lillian King Trust. Agha has served as the president of the foundation’s board since it was founded.

But the Community Foundation for Monterey County, which is set to take over the foundation’s finances after Agha is no longer chair, expressed concern the sale would constitute a prohibited act of self-dealing, and CFMC’s attorney Chris Campbell took the issue to court. In July, she filed in Monterey County Superior Court to receive an accounting of the foundation’s finances.

In response, King Foundation Executive Director Steve Collins says the proposed sale was called off. Yet unbeknown to him, he says, the sale had in fact already happened.

According to the deed on the property, it transferred from a business Agha owns to the King Foundation July 8. The deed asserts the foundation is exempt from paying a transaction tax because the buyer and purchaser “remain the same.”

Essentially, the deed says, the property owner stayed the same, but is under a different name.

After that came to light, Campbell brought it to the attention of King Foundation attorney James Dawson, and the sale was rescinded Nov. 7, although the county does not yet have record of it.

The first hearing on the case is scheduled for Nov. 30, and Dawson filed an accounting and other documents with the court Nov. 17. Among them is the rescission agreement, as well as paperwork showing that Agha allegedly paid back the $350,000 the King Foundation paid toward the building in November 2015, and its subsequent mortgage payments.

Agha maintains there was nothing untoward about the deal, and that it was done so the foundation – which had intended to convert the former bank building into an education center about the U.S. Constitution – could secure a loan. He also believes CFMC “is trying to steal something that’s not theirs.”

Collins, who was the center of a conflict of interest scandal that sunk the regional desalination project, says the deed transfer was a “mistake.”

Despite the sale being rescinded, Campbell says, the court could order that CFMC take over control of the foundation’s finances, although CFMC did not ask for that transfer.

“Things are still very much up in the air,” she says.