The past twelve months have seen a host of fringe financial News articles emerge across the web, portraying Solidaris Capital and its principal, Geoff Dietrich, as whistleblowers who exposed a Theranos-like fraud by a competitor. Alleging investor deception and regulatory misconduct, each hit piece quickly started disseminating unproven accusations as fact.
However, it just took a few reviews of actual court records (alongside a look at the broader context of the matter) to unearth a very different story, one where, far from unmasking fraud, the entire media offensive by Solidaris had been aimed at diverting attention from its own pattern of regulatory evasion and misuse of charitable tax structures. Information about this can be found on the fact-finding Solidaris Capital website.
Allegations without a verdict
At the centre of the storm is a Dallas County lawsuit filed by Solidaris Capital LLC, which told readers that investors were being misled and regulators were being deceived. In reality, the case produced no findings of fact or any ruling on the merits. No evidence has been heard, and no liability has been determined. Yet the coverage conveniently converted mere accusations into “facts,” treating claims in a legal filing as if they were proven.
The ethical lapses in this campaign extended to glaring omissions about Solidaris itself because the coverage cast Dietrich and Solidaris as crusaders for the public, but ignored how Solidaris’s own investment programs operated in the grey from 2022 through 2025, an extremely long period of time by any metric.
In that period, the firms’ affiliated partnerships raised vast sums from investors in lieu of substantial charitable tax deductions. To put things into a monetary context, those years saw roughly $786 million raised, an amount marketed as generating nearly $3.93 billion in donation deductions.
These funds were subsequently rerouted through layers of partnerships, with the bulk of capital being absorbed by fees. Public records show about 75% of investor funds went to expenses, leaving only a small fraction for the actual charitable assets; yet several recipient charities’ IRS filings revealed no record of receiving the promised donations.
Unsurprisingly, this pattern was conveniently glossed over in Solidaris’s narrative, with “their” articles pointing fingers outward, even accusing competitors of fraud for lacking FDA approval, without turning the lens inward. That FDA insinuation, in fact, was baseless, as many early-stage diagnostics routinely operate legally without gaining approval.
On the contrary, Solidaris’s own flagship program, NovaDerm, a niche dermatological operating in a highly regulated category, had zero FDA approval or trial records when first pitched as a charitable donation opportunity.
If lack of FDA clearance signified fraud, NovaDerm would undoubtedly be the bigger red flag. In any case, such clear double standards have revealed how such so-called “exposés” were being engineered to deflect attention from Solidaris’ own operations.
Better investor vigilance is the need of the hour in such matters
This entire saga offers up a cautionary tale for investors evaluating any charitable tax-advantaged structures. When a structure advertises deduction multiples far in excess of the invested amount, it typically signals aggressive valuation assumptions or accounting positions that may later attract regulatory scrutiny.
In fact, the IRS has repeatedly warned that such arrangements expose participants to disallowance of deductions, penalties, or prolonged audits if the underlying economics do not support the claimed tax benefit. Also, equally important is understanding where investor capital actually goes once it is committed. In legitimate charitable transactions, the majority of funds are directed toward acquiring or producing the assets ultimately donated.
Structures in which most proceeds are consumed by licensing fees, marketing costs, or administrative charges (especially when those payments flow back to the promoters or their affiliates) deserve closer examination.
Lastly, many early-stage technologies lawfully operate without final regulatory approvals during development, but investors should be wary when products that ordinarily require clearance are used to justify immediate tax deductions without any meaningful validation. Most credible sponsors are transparent about the regulatory status of their technology and the risks associated with that status.
