Peter Thiel and Vivek Ramaswamy Are Named in a Federal RICO Lawsuit. Here’s What the Record Shows.
By Brian Allen
This reporting continues a document-driven investigation into the business practices surrounding Vivek Ramaswamy, building on prior coverage of biotech financing, asset management compliance, and investor risk as new court records surface.
The Allen Analysis is an independent investigative newsroom documenting how power, money, and institutions collide, and publishing the record when the public is told to look away.
This piece is a document-driven examination of a federal civil lawsuit filed in the Northern District of Georgia that names Vivek Ramaswamy, Peter Thiel, and a network of investors, funds, and corporate entities as defendants under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
It does not allege criminal guilt.
It does not substitute adjudication.
It does exactly one thing: it lays out what the complaint says, what the docket shows, and why the alleged conduct fits a pattern readers have already seen before.
A federal civil complaint filed in the Northern District of Georgia alleges that Vivek Ramaswamy and a network of billionaire investors and political operatives participated in a coordinated scheme to sabotage GloriFi, steal its intellectual property, and recreate its business model through competing entities, including Strive, Coign, and Old Glory.
The lawsuit, brought by WPI Collateral Management and related plaintiffs, does not describe a startup that simply failed. It alleges an organized effort to seize or neutralize a company after defendants reviewed its confidential materials, recognized its value, and were contractually barred from appropriating its ideas.
What follows is not a theory. It is a summary of what the complaint alleges.
The core allegation
According to the filing, GloriFi, formally known as With Purpose, Inc., assembled a valuable portfolio of proprietary research, branding, customer-acquisition strategies, and financial infrastructure designed to build a nationwide financial services company aimed at a specific, highly desirable market segment.
The plaintiffs allege that after reviewing GloriFi’s confidential materials under signed agreements protecting trade secrets and proprietary information, certain investors sought to take control of the company despite owning less than twenty percent of its equity through their investment vehicles.
When that effort failed, the complaint alleges, the defendants set out to make GloriFi “un-investable” to anyone but themselves by launching a campaign of disparagement and defamation against the company’s CEO and largest shareholder, Toby Neugebauer. The suit claims this effort was designed to collapse confidence, block outside capital, and force a distressed takeover.
That attempt, the plaintiffs allege, also failed.
What followed, according to the complaint, was something more severe: a coordinated effort to misappropriate GloriFi’s intellectual property, violate non-compete and non-disparagement agreements, and replicate its business model through newly formed or affiliated competitor entities.
Who is named
The complaint names Vivek Ramaswamy as a defendant, identifying him as an Ohio resident. It also names Peter Thiel, described as a California resident and the founder and controlling force behind Founders Fund, along with Joseph Lonsdale of Austin, Texas; Richard Jackson of Georgia; Jeffrey Sprecher and James Nick Ayers of Fulton County, Georgia; and Joseph Ricketts of Wyoming.
The filing further names a web of investment entities, intermediaries, and associated individuals, including Citadel-linked entities, Founders Fund-related funds, and operational figures alleged to have acted as subordinates within the broader scheme.
The plaintiffs allege that these defendants did not act independently, but as part of what the complaint explicitly labels a “RICO Enterprise.”
How the alleged enterprise operated
According to the complaint, GloriFi’s internal research identified a roughly one-hundred-million-person demographic as an ideal customer base for financial services: customers with reliable payment histories, strong credit profiles, favorable loss ratios, and unusually low customer-acquisition costs. Patriotic branding and messaging were integral to reaching this market and were embedded in GloriFi’s marketing and strategic planning.
The plaintiffs allege that defendants, by virtue of their positions in finance and politics, immediately grasped the magnitude of this opportunity after reviewing GloriFi’s confidential materials. They were not strangers, the complaint claims, but part of an interconnected network that routinely co-invested in political action committees, candidates, causes, and business ventures.
Within this alleged hierarchy, the complaint places Citadel, Peter Thiel, and Jeffrey Sprecher at the top, with subordinates reporting upward and key decisions made above the level of individual operators. The filing alleges that Vivek Ramaswamy explicitly stated a need to align himself with Citadel and its representatives, citing ambitions that included future presidential financing.
According to the plaintiffs, none of the individual defendants’ actions would have occurred without support from the top of this structure.
From GloriFi to Strive and beyond
The lawsuit alleges that after GloriFi was destabilized, defendants moved forward with competing platforms that mirrored GloriFi’s concepts, messaging, and strategic positioning. These included Strive and other entities tied to the same network of investors and political operatives.
This allegation echoes patterns previously examined by The Allen Analysis, including reporting on Strive Asset Management and on biotech ventures where aggressive capital formation and narrative control preceded operational outcomes. In earlier reporting, this publication examined how Ramaswamy’s ventures repeatedly emphasized branding, ideological alignment, and rapid scaling while disputes followed over compliance boundaries and underlying fundamentals.¹²
The GloriFi complaint places those patterns into a new and far more serious context.
What the plaintiffs are and are not seeking
Notably, the plaintiffs state that they are not seeking damages belonging to GloriFi’s bankruptcy estate, nor are they attempting to recover lost equity value on behalf of the company itself.
Instead, they seek recovery for their own personal and individual damages allegedly caused by the defendants’ conduct, including harm arising from the alleged theft of intellectual property, contractual violations, and coordinated actions that destroyed the business.
Why this matters
Civil RICO cases are rare for a reason. They require plaintiffs to allege not just wrongdoing, but structure, continuity, and coordination. The GloriFi complaint attempts to do exactly that, mapping relationships, hierarchies, and incentives across finance, politics, and ideology.
Whether the allegations are ultimately proven will be determined by courts, not commentators. But the record now exists, and it raises questions that cannot be waved away by branding or political rhetoric.
For readers trying to understand how modern power operates, this case is not an outlier. It is a window.
The case, at the center of the record
On May 16, 2024, multiple plaintiffs including WPI Collateral Management, Banzai Advisory Group, and related entities filed a federal civil action captioned WPI Collateral Management, LLC et al. v. Ramaswamy et al., Case No. 1:24-cv-02148-ELR, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.¹
The complaint invokes 18 U.S.C. § 1962, the civil RICO statute, and names a long list of defendants that includes Vivek Ramaswamy, Strive Asset Management, Strive Enterprises, Peter Thiel, Citadel, Founders Fund entities, and other investors and intermediaries tied to the failed conservative fintech company GloriFi (legally, With Purpose, Inc.).
The plaintiffs allege that GloriFi’s collapse was not merely a business failure, but the result of a coordinated scheme involving misleading representations, improper inducements, and conduct that ultimately destroyed enterprise value while shielding insiders.
That allegation is not rhetorical. It is the legal theory pleaded.
What the complaint actually alleges happened
According to the complaint, GloriFi was marketed as a values-driven conservative financial platform while behind the scenes executives and affiliated investors allegedly engaged in conduct that misrepresented the company’s financial condition, overstated stability, and interfered with critical transactions including a planned de-SPAC deal.
The filing alleges that defendants made assurances to lenders and counterparties that were not supported by reality, pressured insiders to maintain a public narrative disconnected from internal financial distress, and engaged in actions that caused secured creditors to lose confidence at a decisive moment.¹
Critically, the complaint does not frame this as isolated negligence. It alleges enterprise-level coordination, the core element required to plead civil RICO: a shared objective, a common course of conduct, and continuity over time.
The case was later administratively stayed and closed pending related bankruptcy proceedings in the Northern District of Texas, a procedural move that does not adjudicate the merits but preserves the record.²
Why Vivek Ramaswamy is not a peripheral name here
Ramaswamy is not referenced as a symbolic figurehead. He is named as a defendant through Vivek Ramaswamy Investments LLC and through his leadership of Strive entities that allegedly participated in the broader GloriFi ecosystem.
This matters because Ramaswamy’s public brand rests on a carefully cultivated image of discipline, rule-following, and moral clarity. The lawsuit alleges the opposite dynamic inside the enterprise: pressure, narrative management, and incentives that rewarded capital attraction over compliance boundaries.
Readers familiar with prior AllenAnalysis reporting will recognize the pattern.
This is not the first time Ramaswamy-linked ventures have raised extraordinary sums while questions followed about how aggressively products were sold relative to underlying fundamentals.
See: Vivek Ramaswamy, Kriya Therapeutics, and the Billion-Dollar Question Nobody Will Answer³ and *Vivek Ramaswamy Didn’t Just Hype a Drug. He Sold the Story Around It.*⁴
The lawsuit puts that tension into sworn allegations.
Read our prior reporting on Krita Therapeutics:
The Peter Thiel dimension
Peter Thiel’s inclusion matters not because of celebrity, but because of what his presence signals about capital architecture.
The docket reflects Thiel-affiliated entities among defendants who were part of the GloriFi financing universe.¹ The plaintiffs’ theory is not that any single investor caused the collapse, but that elite capital networks can operate with asymmetric risk: upside privatized, downside externalized, accountability deferred.
That dynamic has been documented before in fintech and biotech alike. The RICO framing suggests plaintiffs believe it crossed a legal threshold here.
Whether a court agrees remains to be seen. The paper trail already exists.
Why this fits a larger pattern readers should care about
This lawsuit does not exist in a vacuum. It fits a recognizable arc:
A charismatic figure with elite financial backing launches a values-driven enterprise.
Capital flows quickly.
Narratives harden.
Compliance becomes “flexible.”
When reality intervenes, losses concentrate downward while reputational damage flows nowhere.
That is not ideology. It is incentive structure.
The civil RICO statute exists precisely because ordinary fraud frameworks often fail to capture coordinated conduct across multiple actors who individually claim distance while benefiting collectively.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to see the whole machine.
What happens next, factually
As of the latest docket entries, the case remains procedurally tethered to bankruptcy proceedings, with instructions for status updates and potential reopening depending on outcomes elsewhere.²
That means the allegations have not been tested at trial.
It also means they have not been dismissed on the merits.
The record is live.
Why this article exists
This reporting does not ask readers to decide guilt.
It asks readers to look at documents powerful people would prefer you never read.
And once you do, it becomes much harder to pretend these stories are isolated.
Footnotes
WPI Collateral Management, LLC et al. v. Ramaswamy et al., Civil Action No. 1:24-cv-02148-ELR (N.D. Ga.), Complaint and docket entries, filed May 16, 2024.
Northern District of Georgia CM/ECF docket entries reflecting administrative stay and closure pending related bankruptcy proceedings, 2024–2025.
Vivek Ramaswamy, Kriya Therapeutics, and the Billion-Dollar Question Nobody Will Answer, The Allen Analysis.
Vivek Ramaswamy Didn’t Just Hype a Drug. He Sold the Story Around It., The Allen Analysis.
Outstanding documentation of the enterprise-level coordination allegations. The point about civil RICO requiring structure and continuity versus isolated wrongdoing is what makes this filing substantively different from typical business disputes. I've seen alot of cases where elite capital networks privatize upside while externalizing downside, but the plaintiffs mapping the relationships and decision hierarhcy here is ambitious. What's particularly interesting is how the narrative control piece ties into the broader pattern of aggressive capital formation you've covered before.