George Santos
The UK-based newspaper The Independent and several other news outlets are reporting breaking news that prosecutors in Brazil are reviving fraud charges against U.S. Representative-elect George Santos.
Santos, due to be sworn in Tuesday, Jan. 3, made history last November as the first openly gay non-incumbent Republican elected to Congress. He defeated gay Democratic candidate Robert Zimmerman to flip New York’s previously blue 3rd congressional district to red.
But Santos has been under fire since mid-December when the New York Times published an article highlighting Santos’ apparent lies about everything from his ethnicity — he claimed to be Jewish — to his education and his employment background. There are also questions regarding how he went from being thousands of dollars in debt to lending his own campaign for Congress more than $700,000, even though he had claimed to have no assets and an annual salary of only $55,000.
In December, Santos denied having a criminal past, telling the New York Post, ““I am not a criminal here — not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world. Absolutely not. That didn’t happen.”
But that also appears to be a lie, based on the fact he admitted to the New York Times that had committed fraud and in 2010 told police that he and his mother stole a checkbook from his mother’s former employer in Brazil and used the checks to make fraudulent purchases.
Brazilian prosecutors say that in 2008, at the age of 19, Santos used the stolen checkbook and a false name to make fraudulent purchases totaling at least $700 at a clothing store in the city of Niterói. Those charges were put on hold when Brazilian officials were unable to locate Santos, but now, with his “whereabouts identified,” the prosecutor’s office in Rio de Janeiro told the New York Times, the court process will continue.
— Tammye Nash