Reply To: George Santos – NY District 3

Current List of George Santos’ lies, deceptions and fabrications.

His religion

On his campaign websites, Santos noted that his “grandparents fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII.” His biography on his campaign website has since been changed.

Santos described himself as “a proud American Jew” in documents to pro-Israel groups. But six weeks after he was elected to office, he admitted to misleading voters about his cultural and religious background. Santos told The New York Post during a Dec. 26 interview that he “never claimed to be Jewish,” only “Jew-ish.” He said his grandmother told him she was Jewish but had converted to Catholicism.

The Forward looked into ancestral records, and found evidence that Santos’ maternal grandparents were born in Brazil before the Nazis rose to power in Europe.

His education

Santos told the Post during the Dec. 26 interview that he never graduated from college, retracting previous statements claiming that he received a degree in economics and finance from CUNY’s Baruch College in 2010.

When he ran for Congress in 2019, Santos claimed on his campaign website that he graduated from the prestigious Horace Mann School in the Bronx. Ed Adler, a spokesman for the school, said officials there “checked all the records and all the aliases. He (Santos) did not attend Horace Mann.”

His work experience

On the campaign trail, Santos billed himself as a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” and claimed he worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. But during the Post interview, the soon-to-be-lawmaker clarified that he “never worked directly” with either of the financial institutions.

Around the same time Santos claimed that he was working his way through the financial sector, a Times investigation shows that he was a customer service agent at a Dish Network call center in Queens.

His real estate portfolio

Santos tweeted in February 2021 that he owned 13 rental properties where tenants had not paid rent for a year. “We worked hard to acquire these assets. Now it almost feels like we are being punished,” he wrote. But in the Post interview he admitted he does not own any real estate and lives at his sister Tiffany’s home in Huntington.

Santos’ tweet railing against his fictitious tenants came four years after he was evicted for at least the third time in Queens, according to housing records surfaced by The New York Times.

In court eviction records, he claimed to have been mugged in 2016 on his way to pay $2,250 in back rent on his Queens apartment. The NYPD says it has no record of the attack.

His mother’s death

As of at least October, Santos’ campaign website stated that his mother, Fatima Devolder, was “in her office in the south tower” of the World Trade Center on the day of the 9/11 attacks. The website stated “she survived the horrific events of that day, but unfortunately passed away a few years later.” An online obituary shows Santos’ mother passed away more than 15 years after 9/11, in December 2016.

His Health History

In a March 2020 video episode of the Empire State Conservatives Podcast — which has since been made private on YouTube — Santos tells the hosts that he “battled a brain tumor a couple of years ago.”

“I had radiation done, which really, really lowers your immunity in general,” Santos said, recounting his experience with COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic.

Santos’ campaign did not respond to questions about when he was diagnosed, what treatment he received and where.

His Charity

The political newcomer claimed not only to be an ex-banker but also a lover of animals: Mr Santos previously claimed to have founded a charity group called Friends of Pets United, taking credit for supposedly saving thousands of dogs and cats. But no IRS records of the group could be found, and Mr Santos himself even backed away from the claim that he founded the group, later telling reporters that he only campaigned for the group and tried to find foster homes for some animals.