Nicolas and Ana Ruvalcaba pleaded no contest to housing roughly 270 farmworkers and their families in unpermitted greenhouses and hillside shacks in Royal Oaks — but only after a competency claim stalled the case for a year, and only under a settlement that threatens to sell their land out from under them if the fines go unpaid.

The plea ends a three-year Monterey County prosecution, but the sharpest element isn't the no-contest deal — it's the enforcement mechanism the district attorney attached to it. If the Ruvalcabas don't pay 95 percent of a $127,678 court penalty by Oct. 28, a receiver will be appointed to sell their property to satisfy the fine. Daily-accruing code fines are a tool landlords routinely wait out; a court-ordered sale is not.

The plea closes a case Monterey County prosecutors have pursued since 2023, built on what amounted to an unpermitted village on a 23-acre nursery parcel off San Miguel Canyon Road: 68 dwelling units, some carved into a hillside, some inside windowless greenhouses, housing about 270 people who paid the owners roughly a million dollars in cash rent that never showed up on a tax return. What makes the resolution notable isn't the plea but two things around it — how close the prosecution came to collapsing over a competency claim, and the unusual lever the district attorney used to force compliance.

The case began in 2023 almost by accident, when a probation officer noticed that someone under supervision was living in what looked like a greenhouse on the parcel in Royal Oaks, in North Monterey County. An inspection found dozens of makeshift units housing about 270 people. The county began levying code-enforcement fines — more than $59,000 by that May, accruing daily — for conditions officials said made the buildings unfit to live in, the TV station KION reported at the time.

Investigators found the units had no working smoke detectors, no emergency exits, no operable windows, and no required ventilation or heating, along with a raft of other mechanical, electrical and safety failures, according to a statement from DA Jeannine Pacioni's office first reported by SFGATE. Prosecutors said the Ruvalcabas intimidated families into keeping quiet about where they lived and barred children from playing outside.

Chief Assistant District Attorney Berkley Brannon did not mince words. "These premises were uninhabitable," he told KION, describing the tenants as mostly Indigenous Oaxacan workers who paid to live there out of desperation while the owner exploited them. He said he could not recall a case this despicable involving so many people.

The DA filed criminal and civil charges in 2024: three felony counts of tax evasion, a misdemeanor for failing to carry workers' compensation insurance, and seven misdemeanors tied to the housing. Then the case stalled. As Monterey County Now's Erik Chalhoub reported, the civil and felony cases bogged down in 2025 and early 2026 after Nicolas Ruvalcaba's attorneys argued he was not fit to stand trial, citing an Alzheimer's diagnosis, and sought a mental-health diversion. The couple had pleaded not guilty; in a court filing, Nicolas insisted they had done nothing that caused harm.

These premises were uninhabitable," he told KION, describing the tenants as mostly Indigenous Oaxacan workers who paid to live there out of desperation while the owner exploited them.

That path closed on July 30, when defense attorney William Pernik withdrew the diversion motion after Judge Mark Hood warned repeatedly against further delay, the outlet reported. With trial set to open Aug. 3, the couple instead settled and pleaded no contest — Nicolas to the tax felonies and the housing and insurance misdemeanors, Ana to misdemeanor tax evasion and the same lesser counts.

The money is where the settlement gets its teeth. Monterey County Now itemized the deal as $450,000 to former tenants — $45,000 to each of 10 couples who sued — plus more than $300,000 in penalties divided among the California Franchise Tax Board, Monterey County agencies and the court. The couple also paid about $170,000 to cover temporary housing for displaced families, per the DA's office as reported by SFGATE, which put the total resolution at roughly $800,000. Prosecutors pegged the unreported cash rent at about $1 million between 2020 and 2022, roughly $135,000 in dodged income taxes.

And the order carries a deadline most code cases never reach: if 95 percent of a $127,678 civil penalty to the court isn't paid by Oct. 28, a receiver will be appointed to sell the Ruvalcabas' property to satisfy the fine. Sentencing is set for Sept. 29, where the DA's office will recommend four years' probation and 240 days of home confinement for Nicolas, and 40 days for Ana.

That receivership clause is the quiet innovation here. A court-ordered sale is not something a landlord can outlast the way daily fines can be waited out. For the roughly 270 people who paid cash to sleep in a greenhouse because the Salinas Valley's farm economy offers them almost nowhere else to go, it arrives years late — but it is the rare enforcement outcome that ends with the landlord at risk of losing the land.