Santos Indictment Leaves Many Lies, Mysteries, and Scandals Unaddressed

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(Mother Jones) Thirteen criminal counts later, there’s still a lot we don’t know about George Santos. Where did the more than $700,000 he loaned his most recent campaign come from? Were some of the top donors to his 2020 congressional bid as fake as his volleyball career? Did Santos’ campaign treasurer know about his many schemes? These are some of the questions that aren’t answered by the indictment unsealed on Wednesday.

But federal prosecutors have already revealed more than enough to potentially send Santos to prison. He is now in custody at the federal courthouse in Central Islip, New York, and is expected to be arraigned this afternoon. The Justice Department has said that the top counts on the indictment carry a maximum sentence of 20 years.

The indictment can be divided into three sections. The first focuses on how Santos allegedly conned donors into giving money to a company he claimed was a super PAC supporting his campaign. That was not at all true, the indictment states. Santos allegedly pocketed the donations then used the money to buy luxury goods, make car payments, and pay off personal debts. The potential contours of this scheme were first revealed in a January report from the New York Times.

The second section focuses on previously unknown unemployment insurance fraud. In 2020 and 2021, Santos worked as a regional director at Harbor City Capital, an investment firm that was shut down by the SEC for allegedly running a $17 million Ponzi scheme. According to the Justice Department, Santos received more than $24,000 of pandemic-era unemployment insurance between June 2020 and April 2021 after falsely claiming to be unemployed. The indictment states that he was making about $120,000 per year at the time while working at “Investment Firm #1,” an apparent reference to Harbor City.

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This is where it gets murky. The Justice Department has not said how much in cash and assets Santos really had. Did Santos own a home in Rio de Janeiro worth up to $1 million, as he claimed in the 2022 disclosure? Did he make anywhere close to the amount that would have been needed to loan more than $700,000 to his 2022 campaign? If not, where did the money for the loans come from? How did he convince the cousin of a Russian oligarch to become one of his biggest financial backers? The indictment does not say. .............(more)

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/05/george-santos-indictment-leaves-many-lies-mysteries-and-scandals-unaddressed/