Federal prosecutors on Tuesday filed a significant array of additional charges against Representative George Santos of New York, accusing him of new criminal schemes, including stealing the identities and credit cards of donors to his campaign.
The new accusations were made in a 23-count superseding indictment that laid out how Mr. Santos had charged his donors’ credit cards “repeatedly, without their authorization,” distributing the money to his and other candidates’ campaigns and to his own bank account.
The new indictment filed in the Eastern District of New York added 10 charges against Mr. Santos: conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, access device fraud, false statements to the Federal Election Commission and falsifying records to obstruct the commission.
The accusations against Mr. Santos, a first-term Republican of New York, seem vastly different from the typical corruption cases that ensnare politicians. Many of those have hinged on intricate quid pro quos and complex legal questions about the nature of a political bribe.
Mr. Santos’s alleged misdeeds, in contrast, have more in common with those of a run-of-the-mill grifter.
Among other things, prosecutors say that Mr. Santos stole a donor’s credit card number to transfer more than $11,000 to his own bank account, and swindled $50,000 from two other donors using a fake nonprofit — using the money to buy designer goods and settle personal debts. They say he faked being wealthy to impress Republican leaders, reported a fictitious $500,000 campaign loan to get their financial support and made up tens of thousands in donations to give the impression of runaway political success.
The updated indictment came five days after Mr. Santos’s campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, pleaded guilty to a felony count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and admitted to her role in fraudulently reporting the fictional $500,000 loan .
Ms. Marks said in court that she and an unnamed co-conspirator agreed to making reports of false donations and falsifying the loan. The superseding indictment made clear what was already widely surmised: The co-conspirator was Mr. Santos.
“Santos falsely inflated the campaign’s reported receipts with nonexistent loans and contributions that were either fabricated or stolen,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District, said in a statement.
Mr. Santos refused to comment on the new charges, telling reporters in Washington that he had not recently checked his phone. A lawyer for Mr. Santos, Joseph Murray, declined to comment.
The original indictment filed in May against Mr. Santos, 35, whose district includes parts of Long Island and Queens, accused him of being involved in three separate financial schemes. Prosecutors charged him with 13 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, stealing public funds and lying on federal disclosure forms.
Mr. Santos, who is seeking re-election in 2024, has pleaded not guilty to the previous charges. He has consistently denied any involvement in his campaign’s finances, laying blame for any issues or discrepancies on Ms. Marks.
The new charges may place more pressure on Mr. Santos to reach a plea deal. In September, prosecutors disclosed that they had begun talks about “possible paths forward” with Mr. Santos in his fraud case; Mr. Santos has denied there being any such negotiations.
If Mr. Santos were to resign and vacate his seat, a special election to replace him would be held. On Tuesday, Thomas R. Suozzi, the Long Island Democrat who held Mr. Santos’s seat for six years, announced that he would run to replace Mr. Santos in the House of Representatives.
In Mr. Santos’s new indictment, prosecutors lay out several new schemes they say he used to obtain money for himself and his political campaign.
The indictment describes how Mr. Santos, desperate to reach campaign benchmarks set by a national Republican Party campaign committee, defrauded donors to bolster campaign coffers.
Prosecutors describe how he used the credit card of a donor, identified only as “Contributor No. 12,” repeatedly, without the person’s awareness or approval, charging $15,800 to Mr. Santos’s campaign and associated committees.
In the following months, prosecutors say, Mr. Santos charged that same donor an additional $44,800, some of which was routed through a Florida company associated with the Devolder Organization.
At least $11,000 of that money was transferred directly into Mr. Santos’s bank account, prosecutors said in the indictment.
Much of the updated indictment overlaps with the accusations prosecutors made against Ms. Marks. They said that she and Mr. Santos agreed to falsely inflate the fund-raising numbers in order to hit a $250,000 benchmark that would qualify the campaign for a program run by a Republican Party committee that would allow Mr. Santos to get campaign support.
The indictment cites text messages and emails in which the two agreed to file reports that said the campaign had raised the money it needed to after all, by including $53,200 in fake contributions from relatives who had never actually donated.
Mr. Santos sent a list of family members’ addresses and occupations that were associated with these false donations, which ultimately allowed Mr. Santos to be selected for the program.
Later, Mr. Santos told the Republican committee that he had made the $500,000 loan to his campaign that Ms. Marks has since admitted was fraudulent. He assured the committee in a presentation that he had the “personal and political capital” to fund his campaign.
At the time, Mr. Santos “had less than $8,000 in his personal and business bank accounts,” prosecutors said. But his assurances to the contrary, prosecutors said, allowed him to receive financial and logistical support.
In their initial indictment, federal prosecutors accused Mr. Santos of working with an unnamed associate in 2022 to solicit at least $50,000 in donations for what they claimed was a super PAC nonprofit. They said that Mr. Santos then pocketed the money for personal expenses, including luxury designer clothing and credit card payments.
The original indictment also accused Mr. Santos of fraudulently applying for and receiving more than $24,000 in pandemic unemployment benefits while he was actually employed, and of knowingly making false statements on financial disclosure forms.
Mr. Santos was scheduled to return to court on the original indictment on Oct. 27.
