How Rhetor's AI Uncovered a Second Billion-Dollar California Fraud Pipeline

California’s Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing program promised to cut electricity bills for low-income renters. Funded at up to $100 million a year from cap-and-trade auction proceeds since 2015, the program has received roughly $1 billion. According to SOMAH’s own reporting, just $72 million as of 2024 has gone to actual solar installations. That leaves $928 million unaccounted for.

Using Rhetor’s AI-powered fraud detection technology, CalDOGE traced where the rest of the money flows — and what it builds.

The structure

SOMAH is administered by a team of nonprofits selected by the California Public Utilities Commission in 2018. GRID Alternatives, the Oakland-based solar nonprofit that also received a $312 million EPA grant under Biden’s Solar for All program, serves as a key program administrator. The community outreach role belongs to the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA), which the SOMAH program website describes as “a driving force for equity since the earliest stages of program design.”

That description is more revealing than intended. CEJA didn’t just win the outreach contract — it co-sponsored AB 693, the 2015 legislation that created SOMAH. CEJA helped write the law, then secured a paid role inside the program that law created.

The political arm

As a 501(c)(3), CEJA cannot endorse candidates. But its sister organization, CEJA Action, is a 501(c)(4) that does exactly that. CEJA Action operates as a fiscally sponsored project of Tides Advocacy — a pass-through funding network designed, by its founder’s admission, to provide donor anonymity. Because CEJA Action’s finances are rolled into its fiscal sponsor’s filings, there is no independent public accounting of its money.

CEJA Action endorsed 24 progressive candidates for the California legislature in 2024, publishing voter guides in English, Spanish and Chinese. It describes itself as “the only statewide, people of color-led infrastructure” focused on mobilizing voters in candidate races. It is already endorsing for the 2026 midterms. Every endorsed candidate, in every cycle, is a progressive Democrat.

How Rhetor found it

This is the same structural pattern Rhetor’s AI exposed in CalDOGE’s first fraud report on the Prop 64 cannabis tax scandal: public money earmarked for a specific purpose routed through nonprofits that build community trust in disadvantaged neighborhoods, then convert that trust into partisan political power.

Rhetor’s AI cross-referenced SOMAH program documents, IRS 990 filings, CEJA job listings, legislative co-sponsorship records, CEJA Action voter guides and Tides Advocacy disclosures to surface the complete pipeline. No single document tells the story. The pattern only becomes visible when AI connects thousands of public records simultaneously.

CEJA’s outreach staff knock on doors to build trust around the solar program. CEJA Action shows up in those same neighborhoods with voter guides endorsing progressive Democrats. No one audits the line between the two. CEJA’s own SOMAH job posting instructs staff to “co-leverage SOMAH ME&O activities with CEJA’s activities supporting community needs.” The integration isn’t hidden. It’s written into the job description.

CalDOGE is calling for a full audit of SOMAH outreach spending. The receipts are public. Rhetor’s AI connected the dots.