During the Covid pandemic in Hawaiʻi, governments and organizations were scrambling to set up lab testing for a virus that was sending patients to hospitals and the morgue. 

To help contain the spread of the disease, federal money was raining down on local governments. 

Tobi Solidum arranged to catch it. 

Solidum is now linked to a political controversy involving campaign donations to Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, which she failed to report, and evidence suggests he could be the person suspected of giving a lawmaker $35,000. 

A Civil Beat examination of Solidum’s work in recent years shows he gained significant wealth by seizing on a government-funded response to a public health crisis, which benefited his company and his friends. 

In early 2020, as a consultant for the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaiʻi, Solidum approached then-Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration with a proposition: Give the foundation a no-bid contract for millions of dollars, and we’ll set up a Covid testing lab quickly. Caldwell said yes. 

The foundation got about $35 million in federal funding through the city, and a mobile lab was launched at the airport to fanfare from Mayor Caldwell and then-Gov. David Ige. From 2020 to 2023, the Kidney Foundation brought in more than $130 million in testing revenue, most of which went to Capture Diagnostics, a startup out of Ohio that ran the lab even though it had no experience in this kind of lab testing. 

In the process, Solidum’s company raked in at least $7 million, and his friends and allies secured jobs and contracts, according to a Civil Beat review of public records and interviews with people involved. 

• Gary Kurokawa, Mayor Caldwell’s chief of staff who signed off on the no-bid contract that allowed Capture to stand up its operation, took a job with the testing effort after he left the city, according to multiple people who were there. 
• Kurokawa’s son, Jordan Kurokawa, was hired by Capture Diagnostics. 
• Milton Choy’s company got nearly $1 million in contracts. The businessman was later convicted of bribing state lawmakers and Maui County officials with cash and gambling chips. 
• Wes Yonamine, a former state airport official known for hosting big money fundraisers for politicians, got a job with Capture Diagnostics. 
• Kristen Pae, Solidum’s stepdaughter, worked alongside him, according to people who were employees at the time. She was a co-trustee for an entity invested in Capture Diagnostics, which received a nearly $1 million dividend. 

“That is fairly astonishing,” said Scott Miscovich, a doctor heavily involved in Covid testing through Premier Medical Group. “It is quite outrageous in the whole big picture, when you’re trying to help the community and you’re there to be serving, to pull that much money out is really really significant.” 

The Kidney Foundation’s testing program is attracting scrutiny as connections emerge between its architect — Solidum — and the Hawaiʻi Attorney General’s investigation into a mysterious transaction in which a federal bribery subject gave $35,000 to an influential state lawmaker in January 2022. 

Lt. Gov Sylvia Luke has said she might be the lawmaker of interest in the case, citing $10,000 she received in checks from Solidum and Pae during a dinner with Rep. Ty Cullen around that time. Luke failed to report those donations until last weekend, after Civil Beat asked about it, and issued two $5,000 refunds in March 2022 after Cullen was charged with bribery. Luke has denied accepting $35,000. 

INVESTIGATION: Sylvia Luke Quietly Took Thousands From This Lobbyist Linked To Cullen

Civil Beat has tried to contact Solidum and Pae for comment this week without success. A phone number listed for Solidum is disconnected. Multiple people have told Civil Beat they believe he left the country and now lives in the Philippines. 

A reporter left a note at a residence linked to Pae on Tuesday. Requests for comment were sent to attorneys the duo has worked with but did not receive responses. 

No one else seems to be talking either. 

The National Kidney Foundation of Hawaiʻi’s former CEO of 30 years, Glen Hayashida, did not respond to messages. Neither did former mayor Caldwell.

Kurokawa, who was listed as the “officer-in-charge” on the city’s first $16.5 million purchase order for Kidney Foundation services, did not respond to a message left with his son. Yonamine did not respond to a text message. 

Choy died in prison while serving time for bribery charges. 

Today, Capture Diagnostics is deep in bankruptcy proceedings and its attorneys did not respond to Civil Beat. In court filings, the company said it discovered the “Hawaiian COVID programs on the whole had been seriously mismanaged,” and it has been embroiled in contract disputes. 

The company said in court records that many of the tests it stockpiled early in the pandemic went to waste in 2022 as people got vaccinated and relied less on Covid tests. Court filings don’t say how many tests expired but note it experienced “large losses.” 

As of last year, the company owed $835,000 to the state of Hawaiʻi in unpaid taxes. 

Maile Kawamura, who has only been the president and CEO of the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaiʻi for four months, said in an email she is unable to answer questions at this time. 

“I will review the situation carefully,” she said, “and take appropriate steps based on what we learn.” 

‘I Have A Proposal To Make’

Tobi Solidum, 66, is listed in public records as a businessman and lobbyist with the firm GeoPolicy Development Group. The company is registered in Nevada under his stepdaughter’s name. 

From 2019 through 2022, he represented health care clients such as U.S. Renal Care, according to lobbying disclosures. 

And since at least 2015, nonprofit filings show he was a contractor with the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaiʻi. Until at least 2020, the organization paid Solidum a steady $125,000 a year, which for several years was more than it paid its CEO. 

The story of how the Covid testing effort got off the ground was captured by a film crew. A documentary called “Caught Inside” aired on Hawaiʻi News Now in 2022 and was a finalist for a regional Emmy Award. It includes interviews with some of the same people now keeping mum.

In the film, Hayashida said the group was motivated to address Covid when they learned one of the first American Covid deaths was a dialysis patient.

“We knew we needed to do something,” Hayashida said. 

Kurokawa said in the documentary the city was looking for a testing solution that could provide results within 24 hours to allow for rapid contact tracing. A mobile lab in a 40-foot shipping container was proposed to get around building permit requirements, project participants said. 

In the film, Caldwell explains how the city first learned about the project from Solidum: “Tobi, he knocked on our door at the mayor’s office, and said: ‘I have a proposal to make. I think there is a company out there that could do the testing and the capacity and the turnaround you’re looking for,’” he said.

The group worked with Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, adjutant general of the Hawaiʻi National Guard, and Gov. Ige to place the lab at the Honolulu Airport. 

Solidum was interviewed for the film too. Speaking over moody piano music, he said the project took a big risk by buying the shipping container for the lab before they’d secured government funding. 

“We had no contract, we had no funding,” he said. “This was all being done by private enterprise. Through the consortium the National Kidney Foundation put together, which was key to this whole project.” 

SynergyMed Global Design Solutions provided the lab, and Capture Diagnostics would do the testing. DataHouse Consulting was hired to build the technological system to provide results to patients. 

Between Fiscal Years 2021 and 2023, the Kidney Foundation – a small nonprofit whose pre-pandemic revenue didn’t exceed $3 million – pulled in more than $135 million from Covid testing, its IRS disclosures show. 

Honolulu provided about $35 million, according to records the city provided. The remainder apparently came from other sources, including charging for tests, although tax records don’t provide a breakdown. 

In that time period, the foundation paid Capture more than $100 million. It paid Synergy $11.2 million in Fiscal Year 2021, and DataHouse made nearly $3 million over three years. 

The mobile lab was unveiled in November 2020 with a Hawaiian blessing and a press conference, and testing commenced. 

The lab’s manager, Brad Simmons, said in the documentary that at one point, they were processing 10,000 to 15,000 tests per day. 

“The lab played a major role,” he said, “in keeping the community safe.”

Solidum Had Multiple Income Streams

The program has drawn some past criticism. 

In August 2022, Hawaiʻi News Now reported Capture was charging $120 per test at a time when the cost was about $20 per test. But Hayashida brushed off concerns, saying other companies were then charging more. 

And political observers have whispered about the Kidney Foundation in recent years, questioning why the organization got so much government money to do lab work, which is outside its usual scope of business.

But much of the operation’s financials were not in the public domain. Now, years of Kidney Foundation tax disclosures, Capture’s bankruptcy filings and other lawsuits offer a glimpse into the operation. 

Those records show Solidum had multiple income streams through the project. 

He had a consulting contract with Capture. And the company now claims in court records it overpaid him by $7 million. The total amount he made likely exceeds that, but the records don’t say how much Capture paid him in legitimate invoices. 

Synergy also hired Solidum as a consultant, but court records don’t specify how much he was paid. 

In addition, the lobbyist appears to have been invested in Capture as a part owner. 

An entity called Green Coral Trust owned 5.46% of Capture Diagnostics, and 80% of Geopolicy Development Group, according to filings in Capture’s bankruptcy case. Court records indicate Green Coral Trust is controlled by two trustees: Solidum’s stepdaughter Pae and an attorney, David Tuan Nguyen. 

Green Coral Trust received a dividend for its investment totalling about $995,000 in September 2022. It was apparently supposed to receive $150,000 more, according to court filings, but never got it. 

While the trust is legally controlled by Solidum’s stepdaughter and Nguyen, an email attached to a court filing suggests that money was meant for Solidum. The email from then-Capture CEO John D’Orazio to Nguyen includes the subject line “Tobi Dividend.” 

“Can you please send me the wire instructions for Green Coral Trust?” D’Orazio wrote. “I want to give Tobi space as he mourns the passing of his father, but we really need to finalize the payment as this was for the May dividend we declared.” 

Nguyen did not respond to an email from Civil Beat seeking comment. 

As the money flowed in, Pae, 34, was involved in two million-dollar real estate transactions. 

In May 2022, Green Coral Trust bought a condo in Kakaʻako for $1.2 million. In July 2023, it was transferred to another trust controlled by Pae and Solidum and then sold a few months later, in November, for the same amount the Green Coral Trust had paid, public records show. 

The following month, another trust controlled by Pae and Nguyen — the Carlson Residence Trust — bought a $1.6 million home in Kāneʻohe. Carlson is the last name of Pae’s mother, whom Civil Beat was unable to reach for comment.  

The neighborhood, nestled against the cloud-covered Koʻolau mountains, is serene and close enough to the nearby Byodo-In Temple that one can hear the banging of the temple’s gong. Real estate records show the buyer paid in cash.