Former member of the United States House of Representatives George Santos has pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft after a tumultuous year plagued by scandal. The charges stemmed from inflating fundraising numbers and faking donor names to secure financial support from the Republican Party. He admitted to all wrongdoing alleged in a twenty-three count superseding indictment although he pleaded guilty to only two counts.

1. Introduction

On August 19, 2024, former United States congressman George Santos pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in the United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, before Judge Joanna Seybert. Within weeks of his election in 2022 media outlets began reporting that his personal biography was rife with lies about his education and employment history. The public scrutiny eventually led to an investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee. On December 1, 2023, the House voted 311-114 to expel him. Now, with the fabulist’s guilty pleas entered, one of the more bizarre sideshows in modern American politics is drawing to a close. Mr. Santos will be sentenced on February 7, 2025. He faces a minimum term of imprisonment of two years, an order of restitution of $373,749.97 and forfeiture of $205,002.97. It was a spectacular fall for the former Republican whose garrulous persona was finally eclipsed by the consequences of the tall tales he composed.

2. Background

Mr. Santos served as the representative for New York’s 3rd congressional district that includes part of the north shore of Long Island, northern Nassau County and northeastern Queen’s, a district with colourful place names like Great Neck, Oyster Bay and Hicksville. On December 19, 2022, The New York Times reported an exposé on Mr. Santos’ campaign biography that called into question “key parts of the resumé that he sold to voters.” (here) Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, marquee Wall Street firms on his campaign biography, told The Times they had no record of him working there. Although Mr. Santos claimed he was a graduate of Baruch College, officials at the school said they had no record of anyone by his name. And while he said his family had amassed a fortune in real estate, investigators at The Times could not find any records of his properties. Although the exposé catapulted Mr. Santos to national prominence, it was a small Long Island newspaper, The North Shore Leader, that actually broke the story. (here and here) But by the time other media picked it up, Mr. Santos had been elected.

3. The Indictments

There were two indictments filed in the Eastern District. The original indictment was filed on May 9, 2023, containing thirteen counts including seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds and two counts of making false statements to the House of Representatives. (here) A superseding indictment was filed on October 10, 2023, containing twenty-three counts including two counts of wire fraud, two counts of making false statements to the Federal Election Commission, two counts of falsifying records submitted to obstruct the FEC and two counts of aggravated identity theft in addition to the counts in the original indictment. (here)

(a) Original Indictment – May 10, 2023

In a press release dated May 10, 2023, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, “This indictment seeks to hold Santos accountable for various alleged fraudulent schemes and brazen misrepresentations […]. Taken together, the allegations in the indictment charge Santos with relying on repeated dishonesty and deception to ascend to the halls of Congress and enrich himself. He used political contributions to line his pockets, unlawfully applied for unemployment benefits that should have gone to New Yorkers who had lost their jobs due to the pandemic, and lied to the House of Representatives.” (here) Here are three specific allegations from the indictment:

• [B]etween September and October 2022, the defendant GEORGE ANTHONY DEVOLDER SANTOS devised and executed a scheme to defraud supporters of his candidacy for the House and to obtain money from them by fraudulently inducing supporters to contribute funds to Company #1 under the false pretense that the money would be used to support DEVOLDER SANTOS’s candidacy and then actually spending thousands of dollars of the solicited funds on personal expenses, including luxury designer clothing and credit card payments. (clause 6)
• On or about June 17, 2020, the defendant […] applied to receive unemployment insurance benefits through the New York State Department of Labor […]. In that application, DEVOLDER SANTOS falsely claimed to have been unemployed since the week of March 22, 2020. [The defendant] certified his continuing eligibility for unemployment benefits on a weekly basis, in each case falsely attesting […] that he was unemployed, available to take on new work, and eligible for benefits. (clause 19)
• On […] May 11, 2020, in connection with the 2020 election for the House, the defendant […] filed two House Disclosures […] in which he falsely certified that, during the reporting period: (a) his only earned income consisted of salary, commission and bonuses totaling $55,000 from Company #2 […]; and (b) the only compensation exceeding $5,000 he received from a single source in which he had an ownership interest was an unspecified commission bonus from Company #2. (clause 23)

Counts 1 through 5 of the original indictment contain the wire fraud allegations that Mr. Santos devised a scheme to obtain money from campaign contributors by false pretenses based on emails and text messages soliciting funds to support his candidacy and, in part, to purchase television advertisements. (clauses 28-29)

(b) Superseding Indictment – October 10, 2023

In a press release dated October 10, 2023, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that, “Santos is charged with stealing people’s identities and making charges on his own donors’ credit cards without their authorization, lying to the FEC and, by extension, the public about the financial state of his campaign. Santos falsely inflated the campaign’s reported receipts with non-existent loans and contributions that were either fabricated or stolen […].” (here) I will give you these two specific allegations from the superseding indictment:

• Devolder-Santos for Congress was the defendant[‘s] principal congressional campaign committee. Nancy Marks was the treasurer of the Committee. [B]etween December 2021 and November 2022, the defendant […] and Nancy Marks devised and executed a scheme to submit materially false reports to the FEC on behalf of the Committee in which they fraudulently inflated the Committee’s fundraising numbers for the purpose of misleading the FEC, National Party Committee #1 and the public. (clause 16)
• As part of the Credit Card Fraud Scheme, the defendant […] obtained the personal identity and financial information of individuals who had contributed to the Committee and then caused their access devices to be charged repeatedly without authorization for DEVOLDER SANTOS’s direct and indirect benefit, oftentimes concealing the true source of the funds by misappropriating the personal identity information of relatives and associates of DEVOLDER SANTOS without their authorization. (clause 43)

Count 6 of the superseding indictment specifically alleges that Mr. Santos used “one or more means of identification” of eleven campaign contributors knowing that the means of identification belonged to the other persons. (clause 77)

4. Conclusion

After he flipped the New York 3rd congressional district, Mr. Santos was heralded as a rising star for the GOP. But, as Edward Helmore said in a piece published by The Guardian on August 19, 2024, “[e]ven in the Republican Party of Donald Trump, where scandals over truth-telling have become an almost daily event, Santos managed to draw enormously negative attention.” (here) Described as “[y]oung, Latino and gay” by Grace Ashford, Michael Gold, Nicholas Fandos and Nate Schweber in an article for The New York Times also published on August 19, 2024, he was a “proud adherent of former President Donald Trump” who embraced his attention-grabbing style. “But even before he was sworn in,” they said, “Mr. Santos’s lies began to unravel.” (here)