Soma gold: The CEO wanted by Interpol and $6000 AISC
From international arrest warrants to "Moving Goalposts". The truth behind the social media hype.
Disclosure. This report is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be, and should not be construed as, investment advice. I am documenting my own research and observations based on public filings, news reports, and transaction logs. For the record, I currently hold no position in Soma Gold Corp. I am neither long nor short the stock. My only objective is to lay out the facts as I have found them so that other investors can make their own informed decisions.
I have spent a significant amount of time recently looking into Soma Gold Corp. (SOMA.V). It started because I noticed a lot of people on social media and investor forums talking about the company as an “undervalued cash cow” that was perfectly positioned to ride the current gold bull market. On the surface, the story is compelling: high-grade veins in Colombia, a massive land package, and new technology being installed to boost margins. However, as I began to pull the thread and look past the hype being pushed on X, a long list of operational and governance red flags started to appear. It is one thing to have a management team talk about the price of gold or a new piece of equipment, but it is another thing entirely to look at the cold reality of the financial filings and the history of their personal transactions.
When you look at the company’s official communication on social media, you see a team that is extremely vocal about the potential of their new TOMRA XRT sensor-based sorter. They present it as a revolutionary step that will fix their grade issues and slash costs. But while they are busy hyping up the “step-change” in technology, the actual production numbers tell a story of a company that is regressing. In 2024, Soma Gold produced 27,460 gold equivalent ounces. After two years of promising that transitions were complete and “high-grade zones” were just around the corner, their official guidance for 2026 is only 23,489 ounces. It is hard to reconcile a narrative of aggressive growth and technological transformation with a production profile that is actually shrinking.
Section I: A Timeline of Blame (2024–2026)
One of the first things that stood out during my research was the sheer volume of excuses management has deployed over the last eight quarters. In the mining industry, everyone understands that things go wrong; weather happens, equipment breaks, and labor can be difficult. But when a management team has a consistent history of promising that the “strong second half” is coming while blaming every miss on external factors, it suggests a deeper issue with execution. I have documented what I call the “Timeline of Blame,” where management has masterfully moved the goalposts every time they failed to hit a target.
In April and June 2024, the excuse was a “transition to a new mining method.” CEO Geoff Hampson told investors that while this was causing disruptions and increasing costs, the full impact of these “beneficial” changes would be felt in the second half of the year. When the second half of 2024 arrived and the numbers still didn’t materialize, the blame shifted to the geology itself. By November 2024, the narrative was that head grades were lower than expected because the veins were “narrower and fragmented,” causing higher dilution than the historical average. Investors were told not to worry, as development work to reach the “high-grade zones” was largely complete and production from those areas would begin in Q1 2025.
By August 2025, the excuses pivoted back to operational failures. Q2 2025 production fell below targets, and this time it was a mix of “lower average-grade ore” and “mechanical issues at the El Bagre Mill”. Then came the ultimate shield for the management team: the 58-day union strike that lasted from September 9 to November 5, 2025. While a strike is a legitimate disruption, management used it to mask operational failures well into 2026. They claimed that because the union didn’t allow for a proper shutdown, critical equipment was damaged, which prevented the mill from reaching full capacity until Q1 2026. Even now, in April 2026, with the strike long over and gold at record highs, they are still missing targets, this time blaming “difficulties in receiving feed” from small miners for a catastrophic Q1 where they only produced 3,617 ounces.
Section II: Insider Transactions
Everyone likes a management team that owns a significant percentage of their own company. On paper, Soma Gold looks great in this regard, with insiders and directors holding roughly 58% to 60% of the shares. Ideally, this means they have the same incentives as retail shareholders and want to see the stock price rise. However, a look at the insider transactions over the last 24 months reveals a pattern that feels more like capital extraction than long-term alignment.
While the CEO was telling the market that the production recovery was on track and that the “forecasts for H2 2026 and FY 2027 remain strong,” his personal brokerage accounts were reflecting a different strategy. Between late 2023 and early 2025, Geoff Hampson engaged in a systematic liquidation of his position, selling over 2.5 million shares through various private and open-market transactions. For instance, he sold 820,000 shares in February 2024 at roughly $0.49 and another 250,000 shares in February 2025 at $0.52. To see the person at the top dumping shares while the company is consistently missing its own production targets is a major red flag.
The behavior of the former Chief Financial Officer, Gregory Hayes, is perhaps even more telling. On June 16, 2025, Hayes sold 343,200 shares in the public market at $1.428 per share, netting roughly $490,000. Just one month later, the company announced a highly dilutive financing at $1.15; a significant discount to where the CFO had just sold his shares. Even after he resigned as CFO, Hayes continued to dump stock, selling hundreds of thousands of shares in February 2026 at prices as high as $2.39, just before management released the disappointing 2026 guidance that sent the stock back down. When the man who controls the company’s cash flow is liquidating 80% of his position right before a dilution or a bad guidance report, it suggests that he sees the ceiling more clearly than the shareholders he was supposed to represent.
By selling his shares just 30 days before the $1.15 financing, the former CFO effectively avoided a 20% loss in value that retail shareholders were forced to swallow.
This “churn” strategy is how insiders can sell a lot of stock but still maintain a majority. They sell when the hype is high (like during the April 2024 “transition” promises or the early 2026 “gold fever”) and then they “re-up” their ownership at the bottom. The most blatant example of this occurred in August 2025, when Director Glenn Walsh and his entity, Conex Services, converted $10 million in debt into 8,695,652 units at the rock-bottom price of $1.15. By doing this, Walsh didn’t just get cheap shares; he got millions of warrants at a $2.00 exercise price. This allowed him to maintain his 42% ownership stake while the existing retail
Unlock the Full Report to read about:
The Labor Catastrophe: How management was so unprepared for a strike that it led to physical damage of their primary assets.
The Interpol CEO: The (allegedly) corrupt mining minster as CEO.
The Sorter Mirage: Why "revolutionary technology" is being used to mask a multi-year production regression.
The $19.5M Debt Wall: A look at the payables crisis and why Soma has effectively become a “zombie miner”.