CENTRAL ISLIP, New York — A federal judge on Friday sentenced disgraced former Rep. George Santos to more than seven years in prison for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in a case that resulted in his expulsion from Congress and capped a colorful flameout for the first-term Republican.
The 87-month sentence for Santos, who wept as it was announced, comes after a memorable one-year stint in Congress in which he was exposed, in prosecutors’ words, as a “pathological liar and fraudster.”
In imposing the lengthy sentence, U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert decried his “flagrant thievery,” describing him as “an arrogant fraudster talking out of both sides of his mouth.”
His voice shaking, Santos told the court, “I betrayed the confidence entrusted to me by constituents, donors, colleagues and this court.”
He must report to prison by July 25. Seybert also ordered him to pay more than $373K in restitution, due immediately, and to serve two years supervised release.
Santos’ political saga gripped Washington and New York, where he flipped a Long Island House seat in a little-watched 2022 race that led to his prominent rise and ultimate downfall. After prosecutors charged him in May 2023, he refused to resign, buoyed by the support of many House Republicans. That support eventually dwindled, however, and Santos became the first member since the Civil War to be booted from the House without a conviction.
In August 2024, he pleaded guilty to two felony charges and acknowledged he used his campaign fundraising apparatus for personal gain. He admitted to submitting false reports to the FEC during his congressional run and to stealing the personal identity and financial information of elderly and cognitively impaired campaign donors. He fraudulently charged their credit cards, making unauthorized contributions to his campaign and others.
He also admitted to persuading donors to contribute money to a company that he claimed was a social welfare organization or super PAC, when in fact he used their contributions to put himself up at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, shop at Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Brooks Brothers, pay off his credit cards and gift himself thousands of dollars in cash.
In his guilty plea, Santos also acknowledged fraudulently obtaining unemployment benefits during the Covid-19 pandemic. In court on Friday, New York state Department of Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon delivered a victim impact statement, saying Santos’ “criminal actions demonstrate a callous disregard for his constituents and fellow citizens.”
“His campaign for Congress didn’t turn him into a fraudster,” prosecutor Ryan Harris told the judge. “It simply revealed him for what he already was.”
The criminal investigation and a separate congressional inquiry, coupled with significant media coverage, revealed that Santos had promoted scores of lies about his educational and professional background, as well as numerous other falsehoods, including that his mother died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The House of Representatives voted to expel Santos in 2023 after the ethics committee released an explosive report that found “significant evidence” of Santos’ criminal wrongdoing. Democrats last year won back his Long Island seat in a special election.
“From his creation of a wholly fictitious biography to his callous theft of money from elderly and impaired donors, Santos’s unrestrained greed and voracious appetite for fame enabled him to exploit the very system by which we select our representatives,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo.
They had recommended he receive an 87-month sentence, in large part because, they argued, he wasn’t remorseful. In fact, after prosecutors submitted their sentencing memo, they provided an additional filing to the court highlighting Santos’ social media posts to demonstrate that he remains “unrepentant.”
In one post, he referred to himself as a “scapegoat,” and in another, he denied having used campaign contributions to shop at Hermès. “No matter how hard the DOJ comes for me,” he wrote in another post, “they are mad because they will NEVER break my spirit.”
In a letter to the court, Santos argued that he is “profoundly sorry for the criminal conduct to which I pled guilty,” but that he had the right to “protest” the Justice Department’s request for the lengthy sentence. Santos himself suggested he serve two years, the legal minimum for one of the counts to which he pleaded guilty.
In the first few minutes of Friday’s sentencing, the judge took aim at both Santos’ criticism of the Justice Department, calling the case “hardly a vindictive government prosecution” and his plea for the lightest sentence available, telling him curtly, “that’s not going to be possible.”
