Lying Rep. George Santos hit unsuspecting donors with tens of thousands of dollars in phony credit card charges, according to new court documents, the latest twist in the surreal series of scandals enveloping the freshman pol.
The accusations were laid out in a new superseding indictment against the New York pol on Tuesday evening, coming a week after his campaign manager pleaded guilty to one of the schemes alleged by the government.
Nancy Marks admitted she conspired with Santos to falsify Federal Election Commission filings to make it look like he got enough donor cash to qualify for financial and logistics support from an unnamed national campaign committee.
She admitted that 10 donations attributed to her and Santos’ respective family members didn’t really happen. Another fabrication she confessed was a fake $500,000 loan from Santos to his campaign, according to court documents. He actually had less than $8,000 in his personal business account at the time of the phony transaction, prosecutors allege.
New Tuesday are charges stating Santos participated in the scheme and, further, repeatedly charged his contributors’ credit cards without their authorization from December 2021 to August 2022. He also allegedly lied about where the influx of campaign cash was coming from.
One contributor was hit with at least $44,800 in unauthorized charges — including a single $12,000 charge that mostly went into Santos’ personal bank account — federal prosecutors said.
Santos hid what he was doing by listing himself, his relatives and other people as the sources of the contributions, according to the new indictment.
Santos, 35, was initially indicted in May on 13 criminal counts, including wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements to Congress.
He faces 10 new criminal counts, including conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, wire fraud, making false statements and submitting false records to the FEC, aggravated identity theft and access device fraud.
“As alleged, 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,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement. “Santos falsely inflated the campaign’s reported receipts with nonexistent loans and contributions that were either fabricated or stolen.”
He is due back in Long Island Federal Court on Oct. 27. His lawyer, Joe Murray, declined comment Tuesday.
Santos was previously accused of collecting COVID-related unemployment funds while working as an investment firm director, running a bogus political action committee and using campaign donor money to buy designer clothes and pay his personal debts, plus a string of lies to Congress about his assets and income.
A staffer, Sam Miele, was also indicted on charges he impersonated former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s now-retired chief of staff to dupe donors into giving Santos money during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.
The congressman from Long Island and part of Queens won his 2022 congressional race on a foundation of fabrications about his education, religion, family history, professional experience and property ownership.
His lies unraveled shortly after his arrest, making him a national punchline, but he has so far resisted calls to resign from Congress.
