Long Island Representative George Santos, who has faced a range of fresh accusations on Tuesday, including allegations of misappropriating the identities of campaign contributors and incurring substantial unauthorized charges on their credit cards. Federal prosecutors have presented a new indictment, which brings forth an additional ten charges against the embattled Republican. These new counts are in addition to the existing allegations of misappropriation of campaign funds and providing false information to Congress that he was already confronting.
In a statement released on Tuesday, US Attorney Breon Peace conveyed the following, “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. Santos falsely inflated the campaign’s reported receipts with non-existent loans and contributions that were either fabricated or stolen.”
Reportedly, at the age of 35, Santos purportedly made unauthorized charges of over $44,000 to his campaign using donors’ cards, without their knowledge, as detailed in the amended indictment.
On one occasion, an amount of $12,000 was charged, with the majority of it being directed into his personal account. With the latest indictment, the total number of charges against Santos now reaches 23. This development follows the guilty plea of his former campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, last week. She admitted to a conspiracy related to fraudulent activities, supposedly involving cooperation with the congressman to manipulate financial records.
According to prosecutors, they also assert that Santos and Marks collaborated in a plan to secure the politician’s eligibility for a national party committee program. This program provides campaign assistance and financial support to those who have raised a minimum of $250,000 from donors within a single quarter. As part of this scheme, it is alleged that the two of them falsely indicated in financial reports that a minimum of 10 members of the Santos family had made substantial contributions to the campaign, despite their awareness that this was not the case.
Furthermore, they asserted that Santos had loaned his campaign approximately $500,000, despite having less than $8,000 in his personal and business accounts, as per the prosecutors’ claims.
Santos has previously attempted to shift responsibility for financial irregularities onto Marks, asserting that she acted independently. Marks was a trusted associate of Santos during his two congressional campaigns.
The additional charges against Santos encompass one charge related to conspiring to commit offenses against the United States, two charges of wire fraud, two charges of providing significantly false information to the Federal Election Commission, two charges of aggravated identity theft, one charge of access device fraud, and two charges of tampering with records submitted in an attempt to hinder the FEC’s proceedings.
In addition to the 13 charges levied against him earlier this year, which included seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of misappropriation of public funds, and two counts of providing materially false information to the House of Representatives, these new charges have been added.
