Central ISLIP, New York – A federal judge sentenced the former disgrace representative George Santos on Friday to more than seven years in prison for fraud by wire and an aggravated identity theft in a case that led to his expulsion from the Congress and closed a colorful flame for the first republican mandate.
The 87 -month sentence for Santos, who cried as it was announced, comes after a memorable one year at the Congress in which he was exposed, in the words of the prosecutors, as a “pathological and fraudster liar”.
By imposing the long punishment, the American district judge Joanna Seybert denounced his “blatant flight”, describing him as “an arrogant fraudster speaking on both sides of his mouth”.
His trembling voice, Santos said in court: “I betrayed the confidence that was entrusted to me by voters, donors, colleagues and this court.”
He must present himself to the prison by July 25. Seybert also ordered him to pay more than $ 373,000 in restitution, due immediately, and to serve two years of supervised release.
Santos' political saga seized Washington and New York, where he overturned a seat of the house of Long Island in a race little viewed in 2022 which led to its rise in power and its ultimate fall. After the prosecutors charged him in May 2023, he refused to resign, supported by the support of many Republicans in the Chamber. This support finally decreased, however, and Santos became the first member since the civil war to be put in the house without conviction.
In August 2024, he pleaded guilty to two crime accusations and admitted to having used his campaign collection apparatus for personal purposes. He admitted to having submitted false reports to the FEC during his congress race and stealing personal identity and financial information from elderly and cognitively altered campaign donors. He has fraudulently billed their credit cards, making unauthorized contributions to his campaign and others.
He also admitted to having persuaded donors to contribute money to a company which, according to him, was a social protection organization or a super CAP, when in fact he used their contributions to put himself at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas, shopping in Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Brooks Brothers, reimbursing his credit cards and offering himself thousands of dollars in cash.
In his guilt advocacy, Santos also fraudulently recognized unemployment benefits during the Pandemic COVID-19. On Friday, in court, the commissioner of the New York State Labor Department, Roberta Reardon, made a declaration of impact on the victim, saying that “Santos' criminal actions demonstrate an insensitive contempt for his voters and other citizens”.
“His Congress campaign did not transform him into fraudster,” prosecutor Ryan Harris told the judge. “It simply revealed him for what he was already.”
The criminal investigation and a separate investigation of the congress, associated with significant media coverage, revealed that Santos had promoted dozens of lies On his educational and professional history, as well as many other lies, especially that his mother died in terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The House of Representatives voted to expel Santos in 2023 after the ethics committee published an explosive report that found “Significant proof” Santos 'criminals' criminal acts. Democrats last year won its headquarters in Long Island during a special election.
“From its creation of a completely fictitious biography in its flight of money from elderly and altered donors, the unhealthy greedy of Santos and the voracious appetite for the fame allowed it to exploit the system itself by which we select our representatives”, the prosecutors, the prosecutors, the prosecutors written in their memo of determining the sentence.
They had recommended to receive an 87 -month sentence, largely because, they argued, it was not full of remorse. In fact, after the prosecutors submitted their memo of determination of the sentence, they provided an additional deposit In court highlighting Santos' publications on social networks to demonstrate that he remains “unrepentant”.
In an article, he qualified as “scapegoat” and in another, he denied having used campaign contributions to shop in Hermès. “No matter how much the Doj comes for me,” he wrote in another article, “they are crazy because they will never break my mind.”
In a letter to the courtyardSantos argued that he was “deeply sorry for the criminal conduct I pleaded guilty”, but that he had the right to “protest” the request of the Ministry of Justice for the long punishment. Santos himself suggested He served two years, the legal minimum for one of the charges he pleaded guilty.
In the first minutes of Friday's conviction, the judge targeted Santos' criticism with regard to the Ministry of Justice, calling the case “barely a prosecution of the vindictive government” and his plea for the lightest pain available, saying empty: “It will not be possible”.
