Federal prosecutors on Tuesday accused Rep. George Santos of engaging in multiple fraud schemes including identity theft, wire fraud and making false statements as part of a conspiracy to mislead donors, the Federal Election Commission and his constituents.
The set of 10 new criminal charges were included in a superseding indictment filed on Tuesday by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York and come on top of the 13 charges Santos already faced in May. At the time, he pleaded not guilty to those charges.
The new indictment also comes less than a week after Nancy Marks, his former campaign treasurer, accepted a plea deal where she admitted to working with Santos to make his campaign appear to be more successful at raising money than it actually was.
“As alleged, Santos is charged with stealing people’s identities and making charges on his own donors’ credit cards without their authorization, lying to the FEC and, by extension, the public about the financial state of his campaign,” United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace said in a statement. “Santos falsely inflated the campaign’s reported receipts with non-existent loans and contributions that were either fabricated or stolen. This Office will relentlessly pursue criminal charges against anyone who uses the electoral process as an opportunity to defraud the public and our government institutions.”
Santos did not immediately respond to a request for comment. His attorney, Joseph Murray, declined to comment.
In the new indictment, prosecutors alleged that Santos engaged in two distinct fraud schemes.
The first involved Santos and Marks agreeing to file documents with the FEC that purported to show that 10 of their family members made donations to the campaign, even though those individuals did not make the contributions, prosecutors alleged.
The goal was to secure additional funding for the Santos campaign from a program administered by the national party…
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