A New York Federal Judge sentenced the former representative George Santos on Friday to more than seven years in prison.
Prosecutors had urged the American district judge Joanna Seybert to throw the book on Santos, the former member of the disgraced republican congress, to “reflect the gravity of the unrivaled crimes of Santos”.
“From his creation of a completely fictitious biography on the flying of the money of elderly and altered donors, the without restraint of Santos and the voracious appetite for the fame allowed him to exploit the even system by which we asked Seybert to condemn him to 87 months in the prison.
It is the sentence pronounced by the judge.
Prosecutors said that despite his guilty plea to a pair of criminal fraud charges in August – and a tearful expression of remorse for new cameras after the procedure – Santos is “a pathological liar” who is not really full of remorse about his actions.
The prosecutors noted that he had recently launched a weekly podcast entitled “Pants on fire with George Santos”, which they called “a perfect crystallization of his lack of real contrition and his deaf efforts to continue to transform lies into dollars”.
“It is quite clear that, without a substantial means of deterrent, Santos will continue to deceive and defraud for the years to come. This is particularly true given the efforts of Santos de Santos to take advantage of its revolutionary aspect as a springboard towards celebrities and wealth” while not paying the restitution to the people he struck, said prosecutors.
Santos’ lawyers had urged Seybert to condemn him at least two years. “His conduct, although implying dishonesty and breach of trust, is largely due to a misunderstanding despair linked to his political campaign, rather than an inherent wickedness,” argued his lawyers in a legal file, noting that he had no criminal history.
“In addition, the public nature of this case and Mr. Santos’ fall in a position of public confidence serve a striking warning to others who could consider similar offenses,” said their file.
Asked this month about his podcast if he planned to ask the grace of President Donald Trump, Santos said: “You bet your sweet A- I would do it.”
In an interview with NY1 this week, Santos said he had not contacted Trump, but he added that he thought that “the president was aware of my situation”.
“If he has the impression of being worthy of a switching or leniency or whatever the case, he can make this decision,” he said.
Santos was elected to the congress in 2022 when he overthrew a Long Island seat from democratic to the Republican, helping to cement a narrow majority of the GOP in the House.
Questions about his history appeared before he even started his mandate. The New York Times reported that it had lied or embellished parts of its curriculum vitae and its personal history. This led to the revelation of other manufacturing, including an assertion that he was Jewish. He later said that he was “Jewish”.
These lies were later revealed including fraud to funding the campaign. He was charged with the Federal Court of Long Island for a wide range of accusations in 2023.
The prosecutors said he had committed an identity theft and defrauded donors to get rich and live a luxurious lifestyle. Among those whose credit card information, they used to make unauthorized donations, there were three “elderly people suffering from a certain degree of cognitive impairment or decline,” said prosecutors.
He was also struck later by a scathing ethical committee report which found that he spent campaign funds on rent, luxury designer products, personal trips to Las Vegas and Hamptons, cosmetic treatments and a subscription to the adult content site only fans.
The room voted to expel it in December 2023.
Santos claims to have raked hundreds of thousands of dollars since then, thanks in large part to the personalized videos he sold on the camée of the website.
In their memo of determining the sentence, the prosecutors suggested that he could also have inflated these complaints.
“Santos told the probation service that he had gained around $ 400,000 during the first month of his career on Cameo and now receives $ 5,000 per month on average. However, he represented in a financial state in government that his life profits are only $ 358,256. Obviously, he gie to someone,” said the file.
They also said that Santos told prosecutors that he had been paid $ 200,000 by a documentary filmmaker, but that he had said in the probation service that the amount was $ 250,000.
The prosecutors noted that, under the terms of his advocacy agreement, Santos had agreed to pay a forfeiture of $ 200,000 and more than $ 373,000 in restitution to his victims.
In a legal file this month, they said that “Santos had lost none and had not reimbursed any of his victims”.
In his interview with NY1, Santos said: “To date, at the moment, I am unable to pay anything. I do not know if it will change in the next 24 to 48 hours, before the conviction, because I always work to try to do a kind of attempt at significant restitution because it is my obligation.”
