Federal prosecutors are urging a choose to condemn disgraced former U.S. Rep. George Santos to seven years and three months in jail, calling his conduct a “brazen net of deceit” that defrauded donors, misled voters, and fueled his political rise by lies, theft, and identification fraud.
The federal government outlined the extent of Santos’s fraudulent activity throughout the 2020 and 2022 election cycles in an in depth sentencing memo filed on Friday.
Prosecutors allege Santos, 35, with the assistance of former Marketing campaign Treasurer Nancy Marks, falsified Federal Election Fee filings, fabricating donor contributions and inflating fundraising totals to fulfill the $250,000 threshold required to hitch the Nationwide Republican Congressional Committee’s (NRCC) coveted “Younger Weapons” program. Marks pleaded responsible and is awaiting sentencing in June.
When knowledgeable he hadn’t reached the NRCC benchmark, Santos texted an affiliate, “We’re going to do that a bit in another way. I acquired it.”
That “totally different” method included submitting pretend donations attributed to relations, fictitious people and even identities stolen from aged supporters, in keeping with the submitting.
Rep. George Santos walks into the Home Republican cloakroom on the Capitol, Nov. 28, 2023.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Photos
In tandem, Santos was working a fraudulent political consulting agency, Redstone Methods LLC, falsely presenting it as a registered Tremendous PAC or 501(c)(4) nonprofit. It was neither, in keeping with prosecutors.
Prosecutors say Santos used Redstone to launder donor cash, maintain commissions and fund private bills. In a single scheme, he used an aged girl’s bank card — initially offered for a one-time donation — to cost $12,000 by Redstone’s service provider account, netting himself $11,580 after charges. He wired the cash straight into his private checking account.
When questioned by his enterprise companion, Santos lied, claiming the lady — who suffers from a mind damage — was a consulting shopper, in keeping with the submitting. Between February and August 2022, prosecutors say Santos used her bank card repeatedly, attributing donations to her, her daughter, or fictitious names.
One other sufferer, known as “Particular person 2” within the submitting, had their bank card charged at the least 5 instances in March 2022, totaling greater than $30,000 in pretend marketing campaign contributions, together with some attributed to Santos’s uncle and to individuals who did not exist. These donations had been strategically routed to different campaigns that had been shoppers of Redstone, making certain Santos earned a monetary kickback whereas boosting his political visibility.
In July 2020, he used one other sufferer’s bank card to contribute $28,400 to his personal marketing campaign, some underneath the identify of a private pal who neither donated nor gave consent, in keeping with the submitting.
In April 2022, prosecutors say Santos falsely reported a $500,000 private mortgage to his marketing campaign, enabling him to boast an $800,000 Q1 fundraising haul. He authorised a press launch selling the lie and pitched the narrative in conversations with Republican leaders, together with a sitting congresswoman. Based on the prosecution, the mortgage by no means existed.
That lie, mixed together with his doctored FEC filings and a fabricated resume claiming levels from NYU and jobs at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, helped Santos safe Younger Weapons standing from the NRCC in June 2022. The designation introduced important assist: $103,000 in promoting, $33,000 in polling, and direct contributions from joint fundraising efforts.
Nevertheless, by fall 2022, marketing campaign staffers found the reality. When confronted concerning the nonexistent mortgage, Santos admitted it wasn’t actual and scrambled to fill the hole by soliciting a $450,000 mortgage from a donor known as “Particular person 1” within the submitting. Santos wired $400,000 of it to his marketing campaign, by no means reported it to the FEC, and by no means repaid the donor. He lined the remaining $100,000 by misappropriating extra funds from the identical donor by way of Redstone.
Santos was expelled from Congress in December 2023 and has pleaded guilty wire fraud and aggravated identification fraud.
Protection attorneys mentioned in their very own memo Santos deserves not more than two years in jail, arguing he “accepted full duty for his actions.”
“This plea is not only an act of contrition,” Santos advised reporters in August. “It is an acknowledgment that I should be held accountable like every other American that breaks the regulation.”
The previous congressman’s sentencing is on April 30.
