Former congressman George Santos pleads guilty to wire fraud, identity theft

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. – Republican George Santos, who was expelled from Congress last year, pleaded guilty Monday to federal charges of aggravated identity theft and wire fraud.

Sentencing guidelines indicate that Santos could face more than six years in prison, U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert said during an afternoon court hearing. She sent a sentencing date of Feb. 7.

Santos was accused of defrauding donors to his 2022 campaign by taking their money for his personal use and charging thousands of dollars on their credit cards without authorization, among other charges. In all, he faced 23 charges.

As part of his agreement, he pleaded guilty to two charges – wire fraud and identity theft – and prosecutors said they would ask the judge to dismiss the remaining counts at his sentencing. He admitted in court to wrongfully claiming unemployment benefits for nearly a year and making false statements to Congress on his required disclosure statements.

Santos is required to repay more than $300,000 to the donors and others he defrauded. He also must refund the government for the $24,000 in unemployment benefits he stole.

“I understand that my actions have betrayed my supporters and constituents,” Santos said during the court hearing, his voice emotional. “I am committed to making amends and learning from this experience.”

Santos also apologized in a news conference outside the courthouse after he pleaded guilty.

“I allowed ambition to cloud my judgment,” he said. “You also trusted me to represent you with honor and to uphold the values that are essential to our democracy, and in that I failed you.”

Santos, now 36, had just been elected to Congress in 2022 when news reports began exposing a slew of lies he had told about his background. He claimed to have studied at educational institutions he never attended for high school, college and business school. He said he worked at the Wall Street firms Goldman Sachs and Citigroup; he did not. He falsely said that his mother was inside the World Trade Center during the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that his grandparents fled the Holocaust.

Months into his term, in May 2023, he was charged with 13 counts of defrauding donors and falsely claiming unemployment benefits. Prosecutors accused him of spending donors’ money on designer clothes for himself and telling the state of New York he was unemployed for almost a year starting in the summer of 2020, when he was in fact working for a Florida investment firm.

He allegedly collected more than $24,000 in public benefits to which he was not entitled.

The Florida investment firm, Harbor City Capital, was forced to shut down in 2021 by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which called the company “a classic Ponzi scheme.” Santos has said he was unaware of any wrongdoing at Harbor City.

In his brief time in Congress, where he represented Queens and Long Island, Santos co-sponsored legislation cracking down on abuse of unemployment insurance – one of the crimes with which he was later charged.

In October, prosecutors expanded the indictment to include aggravated identity theft, allegedly that Santos used the personal information of his family members without their permission to make it appear to the Federal Election Commission that his campaign had more donors than it had. Prosecutors also alleged that Santos repeatedly charged his campaign donors’ credit cards without their permission.

Nancy Marks, who was treasurer of Santos’s campaign, pleaded guilty earlier to related charges.

Santos was expelled from Congress in December by a vote of 311-114. It was a rare action taken only five times in history: Three members were expelled in 1861 for supporting the Confederacy, and one each in 1980 and 2002 for bribery convictions.