George Santos

In mid-January 2020, shortly after Santos launched his first campaign for Congress in November 2019,[1][36] he began working for Harbor City Capital, a Florida-based alternative investment firm. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil suit a year and a half later accusing the company of running a $17 million Ponzi scheme.[37] In June, during his first run for Congress, Santos (under the name George Devolder) opened an office for Harbor City Capital at 1345 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan;[38] the next month he became the firm's New York regional director.[lower-alpha 4][40] He was not personally named in the lawsuit, nor were other colleagues of his, and has publicly denied any knowledge of the fraud.[1] In a 2020 interview Santos claimed to be managing $1.5 billion in funds for Harbor City, with a fixed yield income return of 12 percent and an internal rate of return of 26 percent.[37]

Harbor City paid Santos at least through April 2021, after which he founded the Devolder Organization, which he has claimed as the basis of his wealth.[41] Intrater has said Santos told him he had been let go from Harbor City before that due to conflicts with his political activities. But the company's founder has said that Santos was "definitely one of the ones that got the notice that everything we had, had been frozen".[42] Another investor Santos had pitched Harbor City to said Santos called him after the SEC suit was filed, crying that he had lost a million dollars of his own as a result.[43]

Santos has given inconsistent explanations of the company's business.[44] According to his financial disclosures, he was the sole owner and managing member of the business his campaign website had called family-owned and managing $80 million in assets.[1] On financial disclosure forms, Santos called Devolder a "capital introduction consulting" firm.[1] Although based in New York, the company was registered in Florida where it was dissolved in September 2022 for failing to file annual reports. Santos said that its accountant had missed the annual filing deadline.[45] During his 2022 congressional campaign, Santos lent his campaign more than $700,000 and reported receiving a salary of $750,000 and dividends of $1–5 million from Devolder, even though he also listed the company's estimated value as in the same range.[1] It was reinstated on December 20.[46]

Despite the claims about the company's size, Santos's financial disclosure forms did not list any clients using the company's services; three experts in election law interviewed by the Times said that this omission "could be problematic if such clients exist".[1] In July 2022, Dun & Bradstreet estimated Devolder's revenue at less than $50,000.[47] Marshall reported that Santos listed himself as the registered agent on the paperwork, which could only be done if he lived in Florida and not New York. He gave as the company's mailing address a Merritt Island apartment purchased by a couple in August,[48] an address owned by Harbor City's chief technology officer Jayson Benoit.[39]

Santos ran as a Republican for the United States House of Representatives in New York's 3rd congressional district, against Democratic incumbent Thomas Suozzi, launching his campaign in November 2019.[1] Normally, the Nassau County Republican Committee, known for the tight control that its leadership exercises over often competitive races for its nominations, would have discouraged an unknown candidate with such minimal experience. But the pandemic depressed interest in the race, and Suozzi was expected to win handily in any event. No other candidates put their names forward, leaving Santos as the nominee that year. Queens Republicans, still angry over his abortive challenge to them the year before, were unsupportive.[51] Santos raised funds, spoke to donor groups, and attended a phone-banking session at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump's children; his efforts impressed party officials. He bought entire tables at New York Young Republican events. Other candidates making the same rounds noticed that Santos repeatedly exaggerated his fundraising totals, with a wide contrast between what he said and what he reported in his campaign finance disclosure forms.[52]

Suozzi later recalled that he had no doubt he would defeat Santos, an unknown who was not well-funded and who at the time was registered to vote in an area of Queens then outside the district.[52][53] When reporters pressed him about living outside the district, Santos claimed an address that turned out to be his campaign treasurer's.[52] Suozzi recalled that during their few joint campaign appearances, Santos "came across as a phony"[53] and that because Santos was so little-known in the district, the Suozzi campaign decided not to pay for opposition research, deciding that it would be counterproductive to increase his name recognition by drawing attention to him, even negatively.[51] Suozzi won, as expected, 55.9 percent to 43.4 percent, a margin of about 46,000 votes.[54] Despite the loss, local Republicans were pleasantly surprised by Santos's performance.[55]

Santos refused to accept his 2020 defeat, and, like Trump, falsely claimed that the vote totals had been manipulated. He began raising money and hiring additional staff for a recount, insisting that half the Democratic ballots should have been discarded, and refused to leave the orientation session for new members of Congress even after his opponent's victory was certified.[52]

Santos spoke at a "Stop the Steal" rally the day before the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, telling the crowd that the election he lost by 13 points in 2020 was stolen from him.[52] On January 6, he attended Trump's Save America rally at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. He later said that Trump "was energized", gave "a great speech", and was "at his full awesomeness" that day. After the speech, a mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, disrupting the counting of the electoral votes that formalized Trump's loss in the 2020 United States presidential election.[56] Santos later said he was "never on Capitol grounds" on January 6, called it a "sad and dark day", acknowledging that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.[56][57]

Shortly after his loss to Suozzi, Santos formed GADS PAC, a Leadership PAC, and began raising money to run again.[58] Former New York state Republican chair Nick Langworthy (who was elected to Congress in 2022, along with Santos) said that "George never stopped being a candidate" and "was spending time at Mar-a-Lago, raising money in different circles".[55]

New York Representative Elise Stefanik was an early supporter.[51] She endorsed him in August 2021, and nine months later tweeted that she helped him raise over $100,000 at a lunch fundraiser.[59]

Some Republicans began to have reservations about Santos. In mid-2021, one of his former advisors found out about his connections to Harbor City and some of its business practices; he was unsuccessful in getting a newspaper to cover it. After learning that Santos falsely claimed to have been endorsed by Trump, a major New York Republican donor who could not verify his claimed work history shared her suspicions with friends close to Stefanik. Saying they were "tired of being duped", the group asked Santos for his résumé; he refused, telling them the request was "invasive".[51]

With Santos's permission, his campaign commissioned a vulnerability study on him late in the year. Some of his campaign staff were so taken aback by what the hundred-page study found (including much that subsequently became publicly known, such as questions about his educational, employment and ancestral claims, and discrepancies in his financial statements[33]) that they advised him to drop out of the race. He refused, disputing some of the study's findings and saying he would show them his diplomas. He never did, and after he told them he did not believe the information was as damaging as they did, the campaign staffers resigned.[51]

According to unnamed sources, Dan Conston, an ally of Kevin McCarthy and leader of the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main House Republican Super PAC, told congressional leaders and donors about concerns that Santos might be revealed as a fraud.[51] Through Stefanik, Santos was able to hire new staffers. He required those departed staffers to sign nondisclosure agreements.[51]

Republican officials had privately discussed the dubiousness of Santos's claimed past employment and personal wealth, but assumed he would have been vetted in 2020. Some Republicans tried to recruit state senator Jack Martins.[51] After another candidate talked about running, Santos and his PACs donated $185,000 to the county Republican committee, which soon endorsed him.[52] Republicans assumed that Santos would be running against Suozzi again, and Nassau County Republicans thus concentrated their efforts on state and local office.[51]

After Suozzi announced in November 2021 that he would not seek reelection to Congress and instead would challenge Kathy Hochul for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, the seat was left open, improving Republicans' chances.[60]

Unopposed for the Republican nomination himself, Santos ran for the open seat against Democratic nominee Robert Zimmerman,[61][62] who had run for the similar 4th district seat 40 years earlier,[63] securing the 2022 nomination in late August in a six-way primary. His campaign had access to a 78-page opposition research file on Santos the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) had compiled, which, in addition to statements of political positions anathema to Democratic voters, found some of the problems with Santos's record. Some of these were flagged as needing further research, such as whether Santos had a criminal record. Since that further research would cost thousands of dollars, Zimmerman decided that in the limited time he had until the election, his campaign would instead focus its spending on voter outreach and advertising.[51]

In September 2022, The North Shore Leader, a weekly newspaper serving the "largely wealthy local communities on the North Shore of Long Island",[64] reported on Santos's employment at Harbor City and on questions raised by Santos's personal financial disclosure forms as well as his claims of personal wealth.[64][65] In an October editorial, the paper endorsed Zimmerman, saying that Santos was "bizarre, unprincipled and sketchy" and "most likely just a fabulist—a fake".[64][66][67] No other media outlet reported on the matter until after the election.[64][68][69][70]

Campaign workers later described the organization as "sloppy" and the workplace as "toxic". Santos preferred hiring younger, less experienced workers who would be less likely to second-guess him. A former staffer described Santos as "very high-maintenance" and demanding, saying there was a feeling of paranoia throughout the campaign. Though he drove Santos to the office daily, the former staffer recalled being confused that Santos boasted of owning property in Nantucket while being picked up from a small apartment in Queens. Another employee recalled that her phone calls and emails were not answered for several days after she sent them.[71]

Late in the campaign, both parties realized the elections on Long Island would be close and could decide control of the House. A Democratic political action committee spent $3 million in the 3rd district race to support Zimmerman. On the Republican side, the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) spent nothing, while at the same time committing $1.5 million to the neighboring 2nd and 4th district races, also ultimately won by Republicans.[72] Sources told the Times that the CLF's leadership had been made aware of the problems with Santos.[51]

Santos defeated Zimmerman in the November 2022 election[61][62] by an 8 percent margin,[73] flipping the district (in what observers saw as a "mild upset") and helping Republicans retake control of the House by a narrow margin.[1] His election made him the first LGBT non-incumbent Republican elected to federal office.[1]

When the Santos campaign announced in April 2023 that he was seeking reelection the next year, their news release called him a "first-generation American". Asked for clarification, the campaign told Vice that he was a "first-generation American" in the sense that he was born to immigrant parents in the U.S.[74]

Since he had reported raising more than $5,000 in campaign contributions as of the end of January 2023, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) gave him until mid-March to declare his candidacy in the next election.[75] On March 14, Santos filed a formal statement of candidacy with the commission, which did not mean that he would seek reelection, but only that he then planned to do so.[76] A month later he formally declared he would run again in 2024; the state's Conservative and Republican party chairs declared they would offer him no assistance.[77]

On January 11, four Republican New York congressmen who had also been elected in 2022—Anthony D'Esposito, Nick LaLota, Nick Langworthy, and Brandon Williams—called for Santos to resign.[78] The other two freshman Republican members of Congress from New York, Marc Molinaro and Mike Lawler, followed suit.[79] Joseph Cairo, the chair of the Nassau County Republican Party, also called for Santos to resign, saying that he had "disgraced the House of Representatives, and we do not consider him one of our congresspeople".[78]

Santos refused to resign,[80] and has kept the support of Republican House leadership, including former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, House majority leader Steve Scalise, and Representative Elise Stefanik (the fourth-highest-ranking House Republican), who rely in part on Santos's vote to support their very narrow (four-seat) House majority.[81][82] McCarthy did not deny Santos committee assignments or impose any penalty on him for the misrepresentations he made during his campaign.[82] Santos was assigned to the committees on small business and science, space, and technology. On January 31, he announced at a meeting of House Republicans that he was vacating his committee memberships, but said the move was temporary.[83]

In February 2023, Santos co-sponsored a bill to designate the "AR-15-style rifle" the National Gun of the United States.[84][85]

In 2023, Santos voted in favor of the key bills supported by the House Republican leadership.[81] After his indictment in May, House Republican leadership reiterated that they would not seek to force Santos to resign or expel him from the House.[81] A subsequent attempt by Democrats to force a vote on an expulsion resolution was blocked and referred to the Committee on Ethics.[86]

Later in 2023, House Democrats announced they would introduce a resolution to censure Santos. Unlike an expulsion, the measure would need only a simple majority to pass. Democrats said that Republicans who had informally criticized Santos should have no problem with a censure vote.[87] Five New York Republicans who had already called on Santos to resign—LaLota, Molinaro, D'Esposito, Langworthy and Lawler—said they would vote for censure, as did Ohio Republican Max Miller.[88]

Roll Call reported in July 2023 that Santos's office considerably lagged those of members from neighboring districts in handling constituent service requests. Neither the Internal Revenue Service nor the Small Business Administration, the federal agencies that handle the bulk of those requests, reported having received or processed any from Santos's office. The seven cases his office claimed were or had been before those agencies were few compared with neighboring members D'Esposito and LaLota. While the latter had announced he would handle requests from Santos's constituents, House ethics rules limit the amount of services members can perform for non-constituents and so most were referred to the offices of senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, who did not say how many were coming from the 3rd district.[89][lower-alpha 5]

Santos was among the 71 Republicans who voted against final passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 in the House.[90]

In October, Santos voted to keep McCarthy as Speaker when eight Republicans joined with House Democrats to remove him. He refused to support Steve Scalise as McCarthy's replacement, since the Louisiana congressman had not personally sought Santos's support. "I’ve come to the conclusion that my VOTE doesn’t matter to him," he said.[91] After Scalise dropped out of the race Santos did not say whether he would support Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan. He did promise to resign and reduce the party's majority if Republicans worked with Hakeem Jeffries or other Democrats to elect a Democrat, or a Republican beholden to Democrats.[92]

Withdrew on January 31, 2023[83]

• Committee on Small Business[93][94]
• Committee on Space, Science, and Technology[93][94]

In 2020, Santos claimed that he was biracial and that his Brazilian-born father had roots in Angola, a claim Jewish Insider could not confirm.[1][100]

Santos was raised a Catholic, but at various points in his career claimed to be "Jewish"; "Jew-ish"; "half Jewish"; a non-observant Jew; "a proud American Jew"; and a "Latino Jew"; at other points, Santos has described himself as a Catholic.[108]

In a January 2020 appearance on Talking GOP, a cable TV show he co-hosted, Santos claimed his maternal grandfather grew up Jewish, converted to Catholicism before the Holocaust, and raised his children Catholic. Santos said "I'm Catholic" and that he was not "trying to claim Jewish heritage", but also, "I believe we are all Jewish, at the end – because Jesus Christ is Jewish. And if you believe in Jesus, and we're all brothers in Christ, I mean."[109] The video was resurfaced in early 2023.[109]

Appearing on an October 2020 radio show, Santos claimed that Democrat Steve Israel, who represented the congressional district which included portions of Long Island's North Shore and a part of northeastern Queens from 2001 through 2017, offered him his support during an event hosted by the Council for a Secure America, a bipartisan group co-chaired by Israel. Santos claimed that Israel told him: "You're going to be the first Republican I am voting for in my life." Israel denied saying anything of the kind, and Santos did not appear on the event's guest list.[110][108] Santos did not otherwise make much mention of his purported Jewish ancestry during his 2020 run, but referred to it frequently in 2022 when all the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination to replace Suozzi were Jewish.[52]

At a meeting at the U.S.-Israel PAC a month before his 2022 election, Santos courted pro-Israel activists by falsely claiming to be "halakhically Jewish", according to attendees.[108] A co-chair of the organization said this served to give the impression that Santos's mother was Jewish, getting "a chuckle out of the crowd".[108]

Santos's former roommate said Santos frequently made antisemitic jokes, claiming it was acceptable because he was Jewish, and corroborated an account that Santos previously joked online about Adolf Hitler killing Jews and Black people.[111][112]

In 2023 media appearances, Santos claimed that his claim to Jewish ancestry was vindicated by DNA test kits, but he did not reveal the results.[113][114][115] Santos told the hosts of a podcast in May 2023 that he was raised Catholic but considered himself a "member of the tribe" because (according to him) his mother's ancestry was predominantly Jewish. Santos said he had many Jewish friends among his constituents and went to Shabbat dinners "more often than most".[115]

On his campaign website, Santos wrote that his mother was "the first female executive at a major financial institution", worked in the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and died "a few years later" after surviving the September 11 attacks.[116] But on her 2003 visa application to return to the U.S. from Brazil, his mother stated she had not been in the country since 1999.[117] His mother's actual occupation has been described as domestic worker[118] or home care nurse.[119][120]

Upon her death, a Brazilian newspaper described her as a cook. Santos's former roommates and friends said she spoke no English.[30] In July 2021, Santos wrote that "9/11 claimed my mothers [sic] life". In an October 2021 interview, he said his mother was "caught up in the ash cloud" during 9/11 but "never applied for relief" because the family could afford the medical bills. In December 2021, he wrote that his mother died five years earlier. In December 2022, he claimed his parents survived being "down there" at the World Trade Center during 9/11.[121][122] A priest at the family's Catholic church reported that Santos told him the family could not afford a funeral when his mother died in 2016. The priest recalled that a collection at a memorial Mass raised a "significant" amount for the family, which he gave to Santos.[116] He also had a friend set up a GoFundMe.[123]

In his Piers Morgan interview, Santos insisted his mother had been at the World Trade Center the day of the attack. "It's quite insensitive to try to rehash my mother's legacy", he said. "She wasn't one to mislead me ... I stay convinced that's the truth."[124]

Santos claimed in 2019 and 2020 to have attended the Horace Mann School, an elite preparatory school in the Bronx, before withdrawing because of family hardship. The school has no record of Santos.[125][30] Later, Santos claimed that he attended ninth grade at Horace Mann for six months, at age 14–15, suggesting he had attended under one of his other names; the school reiterated that it had "checked all the records and all the names, and he did not attend."[126]

Santos falsely claimed to hold a bachelor's degree in finance and economics from Baruch College and to have graduated in the top percentile of his class with a 3.89 grade point average; his claimed period of attendance overlapped with his time in Brazil.[1][32] Friends of his have recalled times when he claimed to be taking classes at Baruch but never seemed to study.[30] In January 2023, Nassau County Republican Party Chairman Joseph Cairo said during a press conference that Santos falsely told him that he was a "star player" on the Baruch volleyball team, as his LinkBridge supervisor had been,[127] and that it had won the league championship.[128] In a pre-election radio interview, Santos claimed that his supposed volleyball career led to him needing both knees replaced.[129][130] He has admitted to lying about graduating from any college.[2]

Santos also falsely claimed to hold a master of business administration from New York University (NYU), to have scored 710 on the Graduate Management Admission Test,[98][32] (GMAT) and to have paid off his supposed student loans by 2020.[131] A prospective Harbor City investor recalled that Santos told him he had turned down an offer to attend Harvard Business School.[43] Gregory Morey-Parker, a roommate who lent Santos money in 2014 that has not been repaid despite a judgment to that effect, recalled Santos claiming to be a graduate of NYU's business school but seeming not to know its name;[118][lower-alpha 6] he also later recalled how Santos's personal financial situation fluctuated wildly: "[He] would go to bars with rolls of hundred dollar bills and, three days later, he would have no money."[132]

In his interview with Morgan, Santos admitted that he lied about his college experience, calling it the "biggest regret of his life". He explained that he did so because of the "expectation on society" to have that as part of his biography, but that he couldn't afford to actually attend.[124] He disclaimed any responsibility for the GMAT score appearing in the résumé published by the Nassau County Republican committee, saying, "I didn't supply it and nobody associated with me supplied it." Morgan asked why Santos thought he could get away with lying about his education in a congressional election, and Santos replied that since no one had raised any questions about those claims during his 2020 campaign, he believed they would not be an issue in a later campaign.[133] Santos blamed his résumé lies on the local Republican Party, saying in a February 2023 Newsmax interview, "I would have never gotten the nomination from the Nassau County GOP if I had not concluded college."[134]

Santos has used various aliases, including "Anthony Zabrovsky" and "Anthony Devolder".[135][125][123] A 2011 Wikipedia userpage created under the latter name claims the account holder acted in Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.[27]

After returning from Brazil, Santos told friends that he had worked as a journalist for Brazilian media conglomerate Globo.[136] The New York Times could not find his name on the organization's website.[30] Santos also told a roommate in late 2013 that he was a model who had worked at New York Fashion Week and would be appearing in Vogue.[136]

Santos called himself a "seasoned Wall Street financier and investor" and said he had worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, but neither company has any record of him.[1] His campaign website stated that he was "an associate asset manager in the real asset division" of Citigroup,[2] but the company sold its asset management division in 2005, before his claimed employment.[1] On a 2022 podcast, Santos claimed that while employed at Goldman he attended the SALT Conference seven years earlier and criticized the company for investing in renewable energy, calling it a taxpayer-subsidized scam. Anthony Scaramucci, who runs the conference, said there is no record that Santos ever attended.[125]

Santos worked as a customer service representative at a call center for Dish Network in College Point, Queens, from October 2011 to July 2012, overlapping the time he said he worked at Citigroup.[31][118] He later told the Post that his Citigroup claim was "a poor choice of words" and that a subsequent employer had been in "limited partnerships" with those companies.[104] Acquaintances and coworkers said that Santos claimed his family was wealthy and had extensive real estate holdings in the U.S. and Brazil.[118] He repeated this claim during his 2022 congressional campaign, saying that he and his family owned 13 rental properties in New York. No such properties were listed on his campaign's financial disclosure forms or in public records.[1] Santos later admitted to the Post that the claim was false and he owned no properties as of the end of 2022.[104]

In a November 2022 interview, Santos discussed the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando that year, saying that his company "lost four employees" there.[70] The New York Times found no connection between the 49 victims killed in the attack and any company named in Santos's biography.[1] In a December 2022 interview, Santos changed his story, saying, "We did lose four people that were going to be coming to work for the company that I was starting up in Orlando".[2]

During his 2022 congressional campaign, Santos told prospective donors that he was a producer for the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Michael Cohl, Spider-Man's lead producer, denied that Santos was involved with the show, and the musical's playbills did not contain his name. Santos was living in Brazil in 2011 when the show opened, and his alleged time as producer overlaps his employment at Dish Network.[137]

In August 2023, Santos downplayed the significance of the many false or exaggerated claims he had made related to his job history, saying he had not posted his résumé online during his campaign. He also noted that "studies show that most people lie on their resumes. It’s just unfortunately ... the reality."[138]

During his 2020 campaign, Santos listed his residence in Elmhurst, Queens, outside the district in which he was then seeking office.[118][lower-alpha 7] Santos and his partner later moved to a rowhouse in Whitestone, Queens; its owner said they had moved there in July 2020.[118] In March 2022, Santos told Newsday that he left Whitestone because of an alleged January 2021 vandalism incident.[118] He was registered to vote at the Whitestone address during his congressional campaigns, but did not appear to live there.[1]

Santos's landlord said he moved out of the Whitestone residence in August 2022, leaving $17,000 in damages,[118] but records showed he was still registered there when he voted that November. He continued to receive mail there after the election, including the certificate of his election victory, according to the landlord, who had disposed of most of it.[139] Santos told reporters he planned to move to Oyster Bay, but he and his partner apparently moved into a house in Huntington, outside his congressional district's boundaries, in August 2022.[118][lower-alpha 7] He told the Post the house was his sister's, but the Times later found she lived in Elmhurst.[140]

On at least three occasions Santos has claimed to have been the victim of a crime that he apparently never reported to the police. In January 2016, he claimed to have been robbed of the money he was on his way to give his former landlady's attorney in settlement of her eviction claim against him.[141] Five years later, Santos claimed he and his partner had found stones and eggs thrown at their Whitestone apartment after they returned to it from a party at Mar-a-Lago. The owner, who lived in the building's lower unit, did not recall any such incident and the Times found no relevant police report.[118]

After his election victory, Santos told two Brazilian journalists on a podcast that during mid-2021, he had again been mugged in New York City, this time as he walked out of a building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 55th Street in midtown Manhattan in mid-afternoon. A group of thieves, he said, made off with his briefcase, watch, and shoes and fled the scene before anyone, even the police, noticed anything. Vanity Fair noted that the intersection in question is one of the busiest in the city, crossed by roughly 27,000 pedestrians every three hours during the day. Additionally, The Peninsula New York luxury hotel is on one of the corners, with a Harry Winston jewelry store opposite, resulting in a heavy security presence that likely includes many security cameras. Santos has not provided a police report of the incident as the podcast hosts requested.[142] His description of the alleged assault included a comment that has been characterized as an "overtly racist" stereotype about Black people being likely to commit crimes.[143]

In October 2023, Santos told the Times that a few months earlier his niece had vanished from a Queens playground, only to be found 40 minutes later in the company of two Chinese men. He suspected the incident was retaliation for his opposition to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a member of Congress. The newspaper found that while the incident had been reported to police, investigators found no evidence to support the story and suspected it had been invented.[144]

In addition to his claim in October 2020 of having both knees replaced,[129][130] Santos said in an interview earlier that year that he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and received radiation treatment. He also claims to suffer from an immunodeficiency and acute chronic bronchitis. When asked in 2022, his campaign did not give details or answer questions about his purported brain tumor.[145]

In his 2020 campaign online biography, Santos claimed he and his family had worked charitably on behalf of children born with the rare genetic skin disorder epidermolysis bullosa (EB). Vice News found that no one involved with the few charities that specifically work with EB patients in the U.S. or Brazil had ever received contributions, or heard of him (under any name Santos is known to have used) or his family being involved with efforts in that area.[146] Sometime during 2022, the campaign changed the website so it no longer mentioned EB to language saying his family's charitable efforts were directed at "helping at-risk children and America's veterans".[147]

Santos filed personal financial disclosure forms the House requires of congressional candidates in early September, 20 months past the due date,[lower-alpha 8] when he had raised $5,000 in campaign funds. The Leader took note of the contrast between them and similar forms he had filed for the 2020 elections. In 2020, he had listed a net worth of $5,000 and claimed his only income was his $50,000 Harbor City Capital salary. By 2022, he said he was worth between $2.5 and $11 million, including $1–5 million in personal bank accounts, a Rio condominium valued between $500,000 and $1 million, and business interests accounting for the rest. He reported no real property in the U.S., at odds with past claims that he owned two mansions on Long Island, one of which, in the Hamptons, he had reportedly told fellow Republicans he was selling for around $10 million because he rarely used it (the Leader reported that at the time, someone with no connection to Santos owned it, and it was valued at $2 million).[65]

A $600,000 loan Santos had reported making to his campaign earlier in the year on his required campaign financial disclosure forms was not listed as a liability on his personal forms, even as he had disclosed a $20,000–50,000 car loan he took out for the Nissan he drove. Federal prosecutors later said Marks told them that loan had been fictitious.[149] Santos said later that the loan was real and he had been the source; he said it was made in September and October of 2022 and could not explain why Marks had recorded the transaction as having taken place six months earlier.[144] He claimed no income.[65] In July 2023 his campaign reported repaying Santos $85,000, more than half the money he had raised during the second quarter of the year, and said he was still owed $530,000.[150]

In a later interview, Santos said he was able to take advantage of a network of around 15,000 "wealthy investors, family offices, 'institutions' and endowments" after leaving Harbor City Capital and forming Devolder Organization LLC to get contracts worth several million dollars. "If you're looking at a $20 million yacht, my referral fee there can be anywhere between $200,000 and $400,000", he said. He did not identify any of his clients when asked to do so.[45]

In March 2023, it was reported that Santos had brokered the sale of a yacht the previous October, just before the election, between two of his major campaign contributors. He had negotiated the sale of the 141-foot (43 m) Namaste, with cabins for 12 guests and seven crew plus a waterfall, infinity pool, and outdoor shower, for $19 million. The seller was a Florida lawyer whose wife had given over $10,000 to one of Santos's campaign committees, the buyer was a Long Island car dealer who has given $17,000 to Santos's committees (the man's former wives also gave $10,000). It is not known how much Santos received as a commission on the deal. The transaction is not itself illegal, but the timing and participants could suggest an effort to circumvent campaign finance limits or condition his services on receipt of campaign contributions, each of which would be criminal. Federal and state authorities are investigating the circumstances.[151] Santos's lawyer later said he was not involved in the sale in any way.[152]

After spending more money than he raised in the first quarter of 2023, Santos reported receiving $133,000 during the second quarter, a low amount for a candidate in a swing district at this point in the cycle and considerably less than his challengers in both parties had raised, much less than other Republican freshman incumbents in the region. All but four named donors were from outside the 3rd district; many were from California. Donors who reported their occupations as "part-time cashier" or "student" gave $3,300 each. Many had never made political contributions before. A large group had Chinese or Asian last names; they told the Times that they were supportive of Santos's opposition to the CCP,[153] and were also supporters of indicted exiled Chinese billionaire Miles Guo, whom Santos has defended.[154] Others said they made the donations as a joke or because they admired his conservative voting record.[153]

Santos was granted a 90-day extension on the deadline to file his second-quarter financial disclosure. He had still not filed it by August, when it expired, a lapse which could lead to fines against him from the House Ethics Committee.[155] In September, when the 30-day grace period expired and Santos had still not filed it, he said he would "rather be late, accurate, and pay the fine than be on time, inaccurate, and suffer the consequences of a rushed job." He said that since he had until November to file his amended 2022 income tax return, it was preferable to wait until then to make sure the information on both forms was consistent.[156]

The campaign nonetheless filed its third-quarter report in mid-October. It reported having refunded $17,000 in contributions while receiving $674 over the 90 days ending September 30, a very low sum for a campaign in a swing district where multiple challengers have been raising money a year in advance of the election. Expenditures came to $42,000, leaving the campaign with $23,000 on hand. It also reported $120,000 in new debt, which a note from the treasurer indicated appeared to have predated that reporting period.[92]

During his campaign, Santos spent prodigiously; he used campaign funds to pay for shirts for staff from Brooks Brothers, meals at the restaurant at the Bergdorf Goodman department store, and $40,000 in airline fares, including to locations in California, Texas and Florida, and a stay at The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida,[1] part of $30,000 in hotel bills, $14,000 paid to car services,[157] and an equivalent sum spent at a Queens restaurant.[158] That much airfare, the Times later noted, is far more than most candidates spend on their first election and closer to the amounts spent by party leaders who have served in Congress for years. Two campaign aides told the Times that staff were increasingly concerned during the campaign that Santos was more interested in spending the $3 million raised for the race "frivolously" than on winning the election.[140] The October 2023 indictment suggests that at least $11,000 in spending on luxury items was money obtained through credit card fraud and identity theft, by Santos allegedly using donors' credit card information without their knowledge or consent, representing himself as them, and diverting those funds to a company he controlled.[159]

Santos's campaign finance reports listed a company called "Cleaner 123" as receiving $11,000 over four months in rent for campaign staff housing in the district. Neighbors of the house said that Santos and his partner appeared to have been living there during that time.[140]

Santos's campaign and GADS PAC reported making a combined $180,000 in contributions to other Republican campaigns. A review by the Times of those other campaigns' financial reports found many instances where theirs and Santos's do not match.[160]

The PAC reported making two $2,900 donations to Michelle Bond's unsuccessful primary campaign for the Republican nomination in the neighboring 1st district. Her campaign's reports show a single donation of $5,000, $800 less than Santos's PAC reported. The PAC's donations to Blake Masters's unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate in Arizona are acknowledged by the recipient, but a subsequent $2,000 from Santos's campaign committee is not, and the Masters campaign says it can find no records of it. The address Santos's campaign gave for that contribution, like some of the donations Santos reported, was apparently fictitious, this one in the Florida Panhandle.[160]

This pattern also extended to Republican candidates for state office. Disclosure reports for those campaigns on file with the New York State Board of Elections in Albany show over 20 donations to them from Santos's campaign and his PACs during the 2020–22 election cycle. There are no corresponding reports of those donations on Santos's and GADS PAC's FEC filings.[160]

Politico later looked at Santos's 2020 campaign finance reports, and found similar discrepancies in both state and federal reports. Shortly after being formed in 2019, Santos's campaign committee made its first donations, $9,000 total, to Trump's presidential campaign committee and two local Republican organizations. The first, at $2,800, is not reported in the Trump campaign's filings and exceeds the cycle limit for contributions from one campaign to another. The second is to the "Town of Oyster Bay Republican Club", a nonexistent entity. The New York state records of two Republican organizations that do use the town's name show no contributions from Santos. Similarly, a $2,000 contribution to the Nassau County Republican Committee is not reflected on that organization's records. "It's impossible to believe that all three of these political committees independently lost track of political donations from Santos's campaign during this period", a campaign finance lawyer the website spoke to said.[161]

In April 2023, Texas Representative Beth Van Duyne reported that her campaign had never received its share of a joint fundraising committee (JFC) created for a fundraiser held with Santos in July 2022. In a report filed by its treasurer, Nancy Marks, the JFC reported raising $11,600. Around $2,000 was spent on the event, at a Garden City, New York, restaurant; the rest was, according to the report, divided evenly between the two campaigns, with each receiving almost $5,000. A spokesman for the Van Duyne campaign said that money was never disbursed to them and that it will not hold further fundraisers with Santos through it. Santos's campaign had no comment.[162]

Campaign finance lawyer Brett Kappel speculated that the failure to share the money might indicate that Santos's campaign was using the JFC to evade campaign contribution limits. He noted that two contributors gave a combined $5,800 to it in August, equal to the amount they had already contributed directly, the legal maximum, to Santos's campaign. There could be more innocent explanations, Kappel allowed, such as the check getting lost in the mail, but in that case, the campaign treasurers should have long ago resolved that. He also noted that although Santos's campaign treasurers had both filed termination reports with respect to the JFC earlier in 2023, the FEC had not obliged by mid-April, suggesting that the JFC may be the subject of complaints to the commission.[162]

In a later article, the Times noted that Santos's campaign spent more than $5,000 on flights to and hotel stays in Washington and West Palm Beach, Florida, for Republican fundraisers in the first quarter of 2021, a time when the next congressional election was almost two years away and he had no primary challenger. By the end of the year, Santos's reported expenses for those trips had reached $90,000 and had become more lavish, with hundreds of dollars spent on transportation, hotels, and food around the country.[160]

In early 2022, the campaign filed amended reports. Among the changes made were upward adjustments to some of the expenses he had reported at the end of 2021. A $60 meal at a Michigan sushi restaurant was now reported as having cost $199.99, along with three additional expenses of that exact amount on that date. Five previously reported Uber and taxi rides went from $267 total to $445. A subsequent amended report, in May, reported no transactions on the date to which the sushi dinner had previously been attributed.[160]

Santos's campaign financial disclosures went on to include many other expenses of $199.99—one cent below the $200 threshold at which campaigns are legally required to provide receipts and disclose recipients.[140][163] An election law expert the Times talked to suggested that this could indicate awareness of the law and intent to violate it.[140] One of those expenses was for a Miami hotel where rooms rarely rent for under $600 a night.[164] The Times later reported that other Miami businesses where the campaign reported spending money could not find receipts for those amounts or said the expenses did not reflect the prices of the products allegedly purchased.[165]

Politico later compared Santos's campaign reports to other congressional campaigns that spent similar total amounts, and found that only 9 percent of them had recorded any expenses in the $199–200 range. Most of those were to the videoconferencing service Zoom, which offers a business plan for $199.90. Of 4,300 campaigns that filed reports during the cycle, only 25 reported any expenses of exactly $199.99; of those, the most times that amount was claimed was four, while Santos's campaign claimed it 37 times. Politico called this "a statistical improbability".[164]

The Times noted that the $199.99 transactions reached a total of 1,200 separate payments in Santos's early 2022 amended report, totaling over $250,000. They were still in the amended report from May of that year, which had removed the larger sushi-dinner bill and taxi expenditures. By the end of the campaign, the total unitemized expenditures had exceeded $365,000, 12 percent of his total campaign expenses and six times that of any other member of Congress from New York. Since federal election regulations require that campaigns itemize all transactions with a particular vendor once the amount exceeds $200, the Times calculated that Santos's campaign would have to have done business with over 1,800 separate concerns for all the unitemized transactions to be lawfully reported as such. His campaign lists 270. An expert at the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) said the campaign's reporting was "so ludicrous that it's completely wrong" and suggested the campaign was covering up its actual expenses.[160]

Santos suggested in a subsequent interview that the recurrences of "$199.99" could have been clerical errors that could be "rectified if there is any discrepancy."[166]

During his two congressional runs in 2020 and 2022, Santos reported having spent over $25,000 at Il Bacco, an eatery popular for New York City Republican events;[163] he had also entertained prospective Harbor City clients there.[43] Santos's 2022 campaign reports owing Il Bacco nearly $19,000 for its election night victory party, in addition to seven of the instances where the campaign had reported spending exactly $199.99.[163]

Santos appointed Il Bacco's owner, Joe Oppedisano, along with his daughter, the restaurant's manager, to his campaign's "Small Business for Santos" Coalition; Oppedisano in turn donated $6,500 to his campaign and its associated PACs. Oppedisano's brother Rocco also gave Santos's campaign $500. Because Rocco is not a U.S. citizen and his permanent resident status was revoked after guns and drugs were seized from his properties in 2009, he cannot legally make campaign contributions.[163]

In July 2021, Santos loaned GADS PAC $25,000, five times what it had on hand at the time; the next day, the PAC donated the same amount to the campaign of Lee Zeldin, a Republican congressman from Long Island who became the party's gubernatorial nominee in 2022. Starting in April 2022, GADS PAC, by then flush with donations from Santos supporters, repaid him in four installments over the next two months. Effectively, Santos had arranged for his campaign contributors to repay the loan.[58]

Robert Maguire, an expert on the subject at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), found several aspects of the transaction "extremely strange", including Santos's loan to a PAC (rather than his campaign committee, as is more typical) and his establishment of a leadership PAC for himself before even being elected to Congress (such PACs are used by party leaders and committee chairs or ranking members, to support colleagues).[58]

During 2021–22, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) wrote over 20 letters to Santos's campaign about problems with its disclosure reports. Fourteen concerned either contributors who had apparently exceeded the $2,900 per cycle limit and insufficient information on the terms and any co-guarantors or collateral of loans to the campaign. Some original reports also unlawfully described contributions as coming from anonymous donors. The campaign responded with amended reports, ultimately filing 36 in total[160] for the 10 periods in which reports were required.[167]

In December 2022, the FEC wrote to Marks, then Santos's campaign treasurer, about the same problems, as well as other potential violations, including contributions from apparent political organizations not registered with the commission and insufficient disclosures regarding other contributions, such as the 48-hour notice required for contributions of more than $1,000 during the last 20 days before the election, after the last required report has been filed. The campaign had until January 24, 2023, to correct those violations by filing an amended report listing all required information and any corrective actions taken, such as returning the excess funds or applying them to a different candidate or cycle.[168] Santos's attorney denied that the Santos campaign "engaged in any unlawful spending of campaign funds".[169]

Also in January 2023, the CLC filed a complaint with the FEC over the Santos campaign's apparent violations. The complaint alleged that Santos used campaign funds to pay personal expenses; concealed the source of $700,000 he had given his campaign; and falsified campaign expenditures.[170] End Citizens United (ECU) filed separate complaints with the FEC, Department of Justice, and Office of Congressional Ethics.[171] Accountable.US filed an additional FEC complaint by the end of the week, alleging over $100,000 in contributions over the limit.[172]

On January 24, the campaign filed amended reports with the FEC addressing the concerns it raised. The amendments largely consisted of unchecking the boxes that said two loans to the campaign, including the $750,000, had come from Santos's personal funds and did not provide required explanations of who had lent the campaign the money. Other loans, in earlier reports that were amended, were still marked as having come from Santos. Campaign finance experts to whom the Times spoke said that was very unusual, as was the number of times the Santos campaign had to file amended reports.[173] In a mid-February interview, Santos said the money had come from his own finances and "I continue to not understand why there is this enormous inquisition and inquiry into my business practices and the legitimacy of it."[166]

On January 27, it was reported that the Justice Department asked the FEC to suspend its probe while federal prosecutors conduct a parallel criminal investigation.[174] Also on January 27, five members of the House requested that the Attorney General open an investigation into violations of campaign law and the Foreign Agent Registration Act.[175] Four days later, the campaign filed year-end reports signed by a third treasurer, including a resignation letter from Marks dated January 25, although her signature remained on some reports dated later. There was also no paperwork from the campaign confirming the new treasurer's hiring.[165] The position was offered to Thomas Datwyler, who refused the job. On January 27, Datwyler requested the FEC to refer the situation to the "appropriate law enforcement agency to determine whether a crime has occurred."[176]

At the end of January, ECU filed another FEC complaint against the Santos campaign. It pointed to $260,000 it had raised after the 2020 election as a recount fund. New York allows for recounts at public expense when the margin is close, but Santos lost that election by a much wider margin, and the state does not allow candidates to request recounts even if they are willing to pay for them. The recount fund was thus unnecessary, but it reported paying several workers to observe the nonexistent recount. ECU also noted that several expenses appear to be duplicates of those the campaign reported before the election. Asked about amended campaign reports and the true source of the loan, Santos said that he "didn't touch any of my FEC stuff" and that "Every campaign hires fiduciaries."[165]

In February, the FEC informed Santos that, as in 2021, according to its records his campaign had raised more than $5,000 without any outstanding debts, thereby making him a candidate in the 2024 elections. It gave him until March 14 to declare whether he would be a candidate then;[177] on that day, Santos formally filed a statement with it that he would be.[76]

The campaign's amended reports from late January 2023 also listed a new campaign treasurer, Thomas Datwyler, who had worked in that capacity for Josh Mandel's 2022 campaign for the Ohio U.S. Senate seat later won by J. D. Vance until he was replaced because of what the campaign told the FEC were "a stunning number of inexplicable reporting errors". Santos's chief of staff had also worked for Mandel's campaign.[178] Datwyler said he had nothing to do with the Santos campaign beyond declining the job,[179] and that someone else had signed his name to the filings.[180] The FEC sent another letter to the Santos campaign asking for clarification of the issue.[179]

In mid-February, the FEC gave Santos's campaign until March 14 to name a new treasurer or it would be suspended from raising or spending money until it did.[181] A week later, the campaign reported it had hired a new treasurer, Andrew Olson, who gave the same Elmhurst address that Santos had when he ran for office,[182] and where Tiffany Santos had lived until mid-January after she settled an eviction case with the landlord. Businesses on the building's ground floor told CNN they knew no person by that name working at that address. "I've never seen this before: Having a complete mystery as a treasurer for a sitting member of Congress", said CREW's Jordan Libowitz.[183]

Olson had never worked for any other campaign and did not give a phone number on the form.[184] Local Republican officials had never heard of him either.[183] The form also incorrectly described the committee as a national committee of the Republican Party. Campaign finance lawyer Brett Kappel called that a "mind-boggling" mistake. "I was frankly shocked that someone would file that in this situation".[185]

In late May 2023, after he was indicted, Santos made a new FEC filing listing himself as treasurer. This is legal, but candidates rarely do it.[186] In a filing a day later he announced that he had hired Jason D. Boles, Greene's former campaign treasurer.[187] Four days later CREW filed another complaint with the FEC over the campaign's changes in treasurer in the preceding months, alleging that Datwyler's electronic signature had been forged and that Olson was entirely fictitious. It also sent a copy of the complaint to Peace, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, and the director of the New York FBI office.[188]

Mother Jones reporters found in late January 2023 that many contributions to Santos's 2020 campaign were from people whose names and addresses were fictitious or nonexistent, all reported as having given through WinRed, an online processor of small-donor contributions for Republicans. Some were from real people who denied having donated the amount claimed. These accounted for 12 donations totaling $30,000 of the $338,000 Santos reported raising from individual contributors. Nine of those donors were among the 45 listed as having given Santos the maximum allowed under law for both the primary and general cycles.[176] The magazine later found that relatives of Santos in Queens who had been reported to have given his campaign over $45,000 denied having made those donations; one said he could not have afforded the amount.[189]

As part of its investigation into the $365,000 in unitemized campaign expenditures, the Times found some Santos donors who said they were reported to have given more than the legal limit and more than their own records showed, sometimes in ways that suggested an attempt to make the contributions appear legal. One donor said the $20,000 the campaign reported he gave ($7,000 more than his records showed in contributions to Santos and related organizations) was in 24 separate transactions, all of which used his former address but different versions of his name, and incorrectly claimed he had a spouse.[160]

Federal prosecutors later said Marks had told them she made up contributions from members of Santos's family and hers in 2021 so the campaign could appear to have raised more than $250,000 from third parties in the third quarter of that year. By doing so the campaign qualified for financial and logistical assistance from the Republican National Committee (RNC).[149] Those numbers also helped dissuade other candidates from entering the race for the nomination.[190] Shortly after Marks's guilty plea Santos was indicted on charges related to the scheme.[159]

TPM reported on a contributor to Santos's 2020 campaign who had, after repeated contacts and an assurance from Zeldin's campaign staff that Santos was a credible candidate, given $1,000 by credit card, over the phone. They decided not to contribute to Santos after that but found their credit card bill recording additional donations to Santos through WinRed during 2021 and 2022, almost $15,000 total, some of which exceeded cycle limits. WinRed, which has been accused of signing donors up for recurring contributions they never agreed to, was unable to find any record of those transactions and eventually refunded $2,000 to them, which the Santos campaign FEC filings do report. The donor, who does not believe the charges were accidental since they were for different amounts, was ultimately given a full refund by American Express.[191]

In August and September 2021 the donor told TPM that their card had also been used to make two unauthorized contributions of the $2,900 maximum to Tina Forte, the Republican challenger to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the district neighboring Santos's, whom they had never heard of. They were not the only donor to experience this. One woman who gave Forte $25 through WinRed found the next day that her card had been charged $5,800, an amount more than 10 times any donation she had ever made through the site; she received a full refund the next day.[191]

In July 2023 Jen Remauro, Forte's campaign manager, told the Times that she believed Red Strategies USA, the consulting firm (partly owned by Santos) that the campaign had hired, had inflated fees charged by WinRed in its reports. Two years earlier, Forte's campaign had raised $42,000 in the preceding quarter, an amount greatly reduced by the $35,000 Red Strategies reported paying to WinRed in "credit card fees". Remauro knew that WinRed charged only 4 percent per transaction, and thus for Forte's campaign to owe that much it would have to have raised over $800,000. The next quarter, the pattern continued, with Red Strategies paying WinRed $51,000 out of the $86,000 raised. After Remauro complained, the filings were amended in October 2021 to show a payment of $6,200. Santos's lawyer Murray blamed those errors on Marks, Santos's former campaign treasurer, and said his client regretted ever having done business with her.[152]

NBC News found a similar discrepancy related to the Santos campaign's own use of WinRed.[192] The platform charges a standard 3.94 percent fee for processing contributions. WinRed reported handling almost $800,000 in contributions for Santos, so the Times calculated that the campaign should have paid WinRed around $33,000. Instead, the campaign reports having paid WinRed $206,000, leaving $173,000 unaccounted for.[160] Similarly, NBC calculated that for Santos's campaign to have actually owed that money, it would have had to have raised $5.2 million through WinRed; it reported raising $1.7 million in total individual contributions from all sources.[192]

The discrepancy might just have been the mistaken inclusion of fees paid to outside vendors through WinRed, a practice the platform explicitly warns against. Kappel told NBC that "the treasurer [seems to have had] access to little, if any, supporting documentation" when preparing Santos's FEC reports. "[This] might merely be another example of the campaign's poor accounting practices."[192]

The October 2023 superseding indictment alleges a scheme involving the unauthorized use of donor credit cards to make contributions without identifying the donors involved or explaining how the campaign obtained their credit information. It charges Santos with aggravated identity theft, access device fraud and credit card fraud, all felonies.[159]

Santos's campaign paid $50,000 in fees to a consultant who had called Republican donors falsely claiming to be Kevin McCarthy's chief of staff and asking them to support Santos.[51] In mid-January 2023, McCarthy said though he had "some questions about it", he had "no idea" about the falsity of Santos's résumé when he ran, nor that a Santos fundraiser had posed as McCarthy's chief of staff, Dan Meyer.[193][194] Some contributors to the Santos campaign said they were motivated to give to him because of his supposed Wall Street experience or his claim to be Jewish, both later found to be fictitious, and felt cheated in the wake of those disclosures.[193] In August, Santos fundraiser Samuel Miele was indicted by Brooklyn prosecutors on wire fraud, identity theft, and money laundering charges.[195]

RedStone Strategies, a super PAC supporting Santos in the race that told potential donors a month before the election that it had raised $800,000 and was seeking to raise another $700,000, did not register with the FEC as a campaign organization. It was thus not known who donated to RedStone or ran it; the Devolder Organization and Jayson Benoit, one of Santos's former Harbor City coworkers who lived at and owned the Merritt Island address,[39] were listed as officers of a similarly named concern in Florida records. There is no record that RedStone spent any money on advertising in support of Santos. It also described itself as a 501(c)(4) organization, which means that while it can spend on political advocacy as long as that is not its primary purpose, it cannot support candidates directly.[158]

RedStone received $110,000 in a series of 76 payments over 2021 from Tina Forte's campaign, whose treasurer was the same former Harbor City coworker of Santos's and a co-owner of RedStone along with Marks and the Devolder Organization. Forte's campaign's FEC reports have some issues as well, such as many unnamed donors and $14,000 in reimbursements to the candidate for ], unnamed personal expenses, along with the allegations from donors of unauthorized credit charges via WinRed.[191]

Demauro, Forte's campaign manager, said that Santos recommended that they hire the similarly-named Red Strategies USA as a consultant in 2021 without disclosing that he had an interest in the firm, and even seemed to have pretended to be meeting its principals, former Harbor Hill associates, for the first time along with Demauro. The agreement between the campaign and Red Strategies called for the firm to keep 80 percent of any funds it raised, an amount Demauro believes the campaign was trying to obfuscate with its initially inflated statements of WinRed credit card fees. She recalls that Marks, the campaign treasurer, repeatedly ignored her requests for bank and account statements; her own paychecks were frequently late.[152]

On October 5, 2023, Marks pleaded guilty in a federal court in Long Island to numerous campaign finance violations. Her plea agreement recommends she serve between 42 months to four years in federal prison.[196] Santos was indicted five days later on charges of wire fraud related to the diversion of funds to RedStone under the pretense that it was to buy television advertising when in fact none of it was, or could have been.[159]

In late 2020, after Santos had lost the election to Suozzi,[197] Marks and Tiffany Santos established a PAC called Rise NY, which paid RedStone $6,000 in April 2022. It later raised money from many Santos donors who had exceeded the $2,900 limit for direct campaign contributions. PACs are allowed to receive unlimited contributions to candidates and parties, but cannot coordinate efforts with campaigns. Rise NY's Twitter account posted accounts of voter registration events and rallies it claimed to have organized during the campaign; Rise NY reported paying salaries to some Santos campaign staff, $10,000 to a company Marks runs, and a $20,000 salary to Tiffany Santos. It also reported multiple expenditures at Il Bacco, the Queens Italian restaurant where Santos's 2022 campaign spent $14,000, and at a gas station near Santos's Whitestone apartment.[158][lower-alpha 9] Newsday reported later that, for two months in 2021, Rise made Santos's $2,600 rent payments, and it later paid $1,800 for three tickets for Santos and two guests to attend a gala sponsored by the Liberty Education Forum, a group the PAC gave over $50,000. It also reported $6,500 in payments to Santos.[197]

Andrew Intrater, the financier who had lost most of the $625,000 Santos persuaded him to invest in Harbor City, said his $175,000 contribution to Rise NY was underreported to the state by $95,000 until a later amended report.[160] Later he learned that his contributions had amounted to 40 percent of the organization's funding.[199] A $25,000 donation he made to RedStone Strategies, purportedly for a large television ad buy, was never reported to the FEC because RedStone had never registered with it.[160]

Mother Jones reported at the end of February 2023 that despite no official connection to Rise, Santos regularly solicited contributions to it and in some cases personally delivered checks from it, including two for $62,500 each to the Nassau County and Town of Hempstead Republican committees, suggesting that he had some role with Rise. In late 2021, over $55,000 Santos raised by telling donors the money would be used to register voters was diverted to Outspoken Middle East, an LGBTQ-themed news platform aimed at that region of the world.[199]

Outspoken founder Charles Moran said he had approached Santos asking for financial help; since the contribution was legal for Rise to have made, he accepted it. Richard Grenell, a prominent gay Republican who served as U.S. Ambassador to Germany during the Trump administration, was also involved with starting Outspoken; he spoke at a Santos fundraiser around the same time and formally endorsed Santos in July 2022. Intrater told Mother Jones that he had only learned from them about the diversion and that Santos had told him repeatedly during 2021 that contributions to Rise were being spent to build the Republican Party in New York.[199]

In January 2023, Ritchie Torres and Dan Goldman, House Democrats from New York, filed an ethics complaint with the House Ethics Committee over Santos's financial disclosure reports. In March, the House Ethics Committee announced a formal inquiry and created a subcommittee to investigate allegations of having failed to provide proper financial disclosures to the House, sexual misconduct, and conflict of interest.[200]

In May 2023, after Santos was indicted on federal charges, Robert Garcia and other House Democrats introduced a resolution to expel Santos from the House, which requires a two-thirds vote in favor. Because an expulsion motion is privileged, the Republican House leadership was required to either schedule a vote within two legislative days, table the proposal or refer it to the Ethics Committee. They introduced a motion to send the resolution to the Ethics Committee.[201][86] The House approved the motion by 221–204 along party lines; seven Democrats voted "present".[86] After Santos was indicted on additional charges in October, D'Esposito introduced a second expulsion resolution, cosponsored by the other five Republican House freshmen from New York.[202] Later that month, when Santos threatened to resign, narrowing the tenuous Republican majority, if Republicans compromised with Democrats in any way to elect a replacement Speaker for McCarthy, one of the other cosponsors of the resolution, Marc Molinaro, said it was because Santos knew he would have to face an expulsion vote on the floor.[92] After Rep. Mike Johnson was elected to the position, the sponsors moved to force a floor vote on the resolution.[203]

In June, the committee announced that it was expanding its investigation to cover the unemployment fraud alleged in the May 2023 federal indictment of Santos.[204] It announced that it had sought the voluntary cooperation of about 40 witnesses and subpoenaed 30 others.[205]

Two months later, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the most senior Democrat in the House and a former member of the party's leadership, wrote the Ethics Committee asking they make public whatever they had found so far about Santos. "More than enough time has passed for the [committee] to conduct a fair and accurate assessment of the veracity of the allegations against Rep. Santos and of the scope of his misconduct", he said.[206]

After obtaining his high school equivalency diploma, Santos spent time in Brazil. In 2008, he forged checks, stolen from a man his mother was caring for, to buy R$1,313 (about US$700) worth of clothing.[3] He gave his name as Délio.[20] When writing the checks, Santos presented identification bearing his photo but the check owner's name. The store owner became suspicious when the signatures on two checks did not match.[3] A few days later another young man came in to return one of the pairs; the store clerk, who had had to cover the loss, traced Santos through the man's Orkut profile.[20] Santos later admitted to the theft in a message to the clerk and confessed to police before he was charged with check fraud in 2010.[30][1] The case was archived by a Brazilian court in 2013 because authorities there were unable to locate Santos.[207][208]

In January 2023, Rio de Janeiro prosecutors announced that they would revive the fraud charges since they knew where Santos was.[4][207] In March 2023, prosecutors announced a plea bargain with Santos,[5] and in May 2023, Santos formally settled the bad check charges; under the agreement, agreeing to pay 24,000 Brazilian reais (almost US$5,000), with most compensating the defrauded salesman and the remainder donated to charity.[209]

Santos was evicted from rented Queens properties (in Jackson Heights, Whitestone, and Sunnyside) three times in the mid-2010s over unpaid rent. Onetime roommate Yasser Rabello described moving into the first apartment in December 2013 after befriending Santos shortly after moving to the city. It had only two bedrooms and a single bathroom; Santos shared it with his mother, sister, and later his boyfriend;[136] Roommate Morey-Parker recalls that eviction notices were sent every month.[6]

Santos signed a one-year lease on a single-family house in Whitestone in 2014.[141][118] In 2023, his boyfriend, Pedro Vilarva, told the Times that he had dated Santos for several months before they moved in together; that Santos had claimed that he would get money from an investment he had done with Citigroup, so Vilarva paid most of the bills; and that Santos "never ever actually went to work".[30] The relationship soured in early 2015 when Vilarva stopped believing Santos's promises that he would pay for a trip to Hawaii in order to propose marriage.[210] After Vilarva came to believe Santos had taken his cell phone to pawn it, he searched the Internet for Santos's name and found the 2013 Brazilian charges against him, leading him to move out.[30]

Parizzi and her daughter also lived with Santos and Vilarva during that time; their friendship likewise deteriorated after she accused Santos of having stolen jewelry from her. When she begged him to return it, he accused her of attempting to break him and Vilarva up. Eventually the Parizzis moved out of the house and into a homeless shelter, then back to Brazil when their money ran out.[20]

Santos remained in the house through November of that year, owing a month and a half's rent. His landlady filed for eviction, and he agreed to leave by December 24 and pay her $2,250 in back rent,[141] telling the court that his mother's illness had drastically impacted his ability to work but he would soon be able to repay the money from "business loans".[6] In mid-January 2016, he told Queens Housing Court, in a statement signed under oath, that he was robbed of the money on his way to pay the back rent, and that police were unable to take a report at the time, telling him to return later. There is no record he ever did.[141]

In Santos's third eviction case, in 2017, a Queens court entered a civil judgment of $12,208 against him.[1][211] Again, in housing court, he said he would seek emergency rental assistance.[6] Santos told the Post that his mother's illness had forced his family into debt at the time; as of December 2022 he had yet to pay the rent he owed, saying he "completely forgot about it".[106]

Santos claimed to have rescued over 2,500 animals as founder and operator of a charity called Friends of Pets United (FOPU) from 2013 to 2018.[212] The claims are unsubstantiated; former volunteers and associates described the group as disorganized, and said that far fewer animals were saved.[212] FOPU never received non-profit tax-exempt status from the IRS, was not registered as a charity with the New York state government, and was not registered with the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets (as all rescue organizations in the state were required to do starting in September 2017). The contractor responsible for providing animal-related services to New York City said that it did not deal with FOPU, and the group was not authorized to take dogs from city shelters.[212] Santos said in December 2022 that he "was the guy picking up poop, cleaning, getting people, doing campaigns online" and that there was "a broader group of folks who helped out" FOPU; in February 2023, he said he "never handled the finances" of FOPU.[212]

A New Jersey rescue operator who said Santos had placed a few dogs legitimately with her help grew suspicious of him when he repeatedly claimed throughout 2018 to be closing his organization down and needing a location to place FOPU's last few dogs; the rescue operator said she conversed with a friend who worked in animal rescue who had shared similar experiences with Santos.[212]

In November 2017, Santos was charged with theft by deception in York County, Pennsylvania after regarding bad checks to an Amish dog breeder from his account. Days after he had given the breeder a $15,125 check for "puppies", Santos and FOPU hosted an adoption event at a pet store with a variety of purebred dogs. After the check bounced, the Pennsylvania charge was brought against him. A lawyer who had befriended Santos in his youth assisted in getting the charges dropped after Santos told her that his checkbook had been stolen in 2017 and he had received an extradition warrant from Pennsylvania at his New York address in 2020. The lawyer successfully argued that the signatures on the checks were not Santos's, and the case against Santos was dismissed in May 2021, after Santos ultimately paid the farmer who lodged the police report.[7][213][214][215] Santos's record was expunged in November 2021.[7]

In February 2023, The Washington Post reported that three other Amish dog breeders alleged that they did not file police reports against Santos and were never paid.[215]

In January 2023, retired U.S. Navy veteran Richard Osthoff and retired police officer Michael Boll accused Santos of having stolen funds donated to a GoFundMe fundraiser. In May 2016, Osthoff was homeless and was told that surgery to remove a life-threatening stomach tumor from his service dog would cost $3,000. A veterinary technician recommended that he contact the owner of FOPU, Anthony Devolder, one of Santos's aliases, who then set up a GoFundMe page. After the fundraiser had reached its goal of $3,000 in June, Santos closed it and withdrew the money. Osthoff, Boll, and GoFundMe received no funds, and the dog died in January 2017.[216][217][218] GoFundMe banned Santos, who had organized the fundraiser, at the end of 2016.[218] Santos denied swindling Osthoff;[219] in October 2023 he denied even knowing him to the Times, which reported having text messages suggesting otherwise.[144] The FBI is investigating Osthoff's allegations.[220]

The veterinary technician who had recommended Santos to Osthoff said that Santos later offered to raise funds to repair her farm in New Jersey so that it could be used for animal rescue.[212] FOPU held a 2017 fundraiser event, charging $50 per attendee, eventually raising $2,165, with Santos controlling the money.[212] The veterinary technician said that Santos was elusive and never gave her any of the proceeds, instead only giving excuses for not transferring the money.[1][212]

The owner of a Staten Island pet store told the Times that, after a successful series of fundraisers, Santos, whom the store owner knew under the name Anthony Devolder, asked him to make the check out to him personally rather than FOPU. The owner refused but later saw that on the payee line of the canceled check, FOPU had been crossed out and replaced with "Anthony Devolder".[212]

A pet rescue operator in the Bronx told the Times that after Santos had boasted of his Wall Street experience and connections to her to assure her he could raise thousands of dollars for her organization, he held a fundraiser in March 2017 and then sent her a check for $400. She stopped working with him, believing he was either overpromising or skimming.[212]

Adriana Parizzi, a Santos family friend from Brazil who moved to the U.S. with him in 2011 after the check-fraud incident, believes that Santos stole cash from an inheritance she had received on several occasions, despite his denials when confronted. She also said he later used her Brazilian tax information to buy jewelry on credit, never repaid her and threatened her physically. Santos and his sister deny these accusations.[20]

CBS has reported that Santos's name came up in a 2017 international credit card skimming scheme perpetrated in Seattle by Brazilians. After Gustavo Ribeiro Trelha, a Brazilian living in Orlando, was arrested using a card skimmer at an automatic teller machine, a search of his car found an empty FedEx box with the return address of one of Santos's former residences in Winter Park,[221] which he was later reported to have jointly leased with Santos,[222] the same one given on a Florida traffic ticket issued to Santos in October 2016.[221] CBS later reported that two Secret Service agents interviewed Santos in New York; he voluntarily surrendered two of his cellphones to them. The case remains open, but as of February 2023 Santos has not been identified as a suspect.[223]

After the story was reported in 2023, Trelha made a sworn declaration to the FBI that he had committed the crime at the urging of Santos, who had also taught him how to set up the skimmer and camera necessary to steal passwords and how to clone ATM and credit cards. The two had an agreement to split the proceeds, Trelha said, but after his arrest Santos kept all the money for himself, reneging on a promise to hire a top defense lawyer and pay Trelha's bail. At the time he said he declined to tell federal authorities as Santos had threatened to report his Orlando roommates to immigration authorities as they were in the U.S. illegally.[224][lower-alpha 10]

Santos told reporters the day after Politico reported the declaration that he was innocent. "Never did anything of criminal activity, and I have no mastermind event." He said he had only met Trelha "a couple of times in my life" and that he had willingly assisted every law enforcement agency that contacted him: "Got information for them. Got everybody arrested and deported."[227]

Also in February 2023, Derek Myers, the prospective staffer who secretly recorded Santos admitting "errors of judgment" in making some of his claims, filed a sexual harassment complaint against Santos with the House Ethics Committee, alleging Santos had touched his groin inappropriately while inviting him out to a karaoke bar and telling Myers that his husband was out of town. Myers also alleged that Santos had violated House rules by having him work as a volunteer for a week before his paperwork was processed.[228] Santos denied the allegation. In June, Myers told the Ethics Committee that he had gotten the job after sending seven payments of $150 each to Santos's director of operations.[229]

Superseding indictment filed October 10, 2023 (document number 50 of the case)

Five days after Marks's plea, prosecutors filed a superseding indictment, alleging 10 additional felonies committed by Santos including conspiracy against the United States, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, credit card fraud and money laundering. These charges stemmed from not only the same effort to deceive the RNC Marks had admitted to, but the unauthorized use of donor credit cards, the money raised by RedStone by misrepresenting its political status and the purpose of the spending, much of which Santos allegedly converted for personal spending on clothing and other luxury items. Santos is next due to appear in court on October 27.[159]

Santos learned of the additional charges when questioned by reporters after leaving a House Republican conference meeting where he said he had not had access to his phone. He called them "bullshit" and explained that he had not handled any of his campaign finance reports. "I didn't even know what the hell the FEC was" when he first ran for office, Santos said.[240] Later he attributed them to Marks's mistakes and malfeasance.[144]