EXCLUSIVE
George Santos lied to a judge in 2017 bid to help
a ‘family friend’ charged with fraud
POLITICO obtained an audio recording of the proceeding
where Santos falsely says he worked for Goldman Sachs.
By
JACQUELINE SWEET
02/24/2023
12:56 PM EST
NEW YORK —
George Santos lied to a Seattle judge about working for Goldman Sachs while
speaking at a 2017 bail hearing for a “family friend” who later pleaded guilty
to fraud in an ATM skimming scheme, according to an audio recording of the
proceeding and court records.
“So what do
you do for work?” King County Superior Court Judge Sean O’Donnell asked Santos
at the May 15, 2017 arraignment of defendant Gustavo Ribeiro Trelha.
“I am an
aspiring politician and I work for Goldman Sachs,” Santos replied.
“You work
for Goldman Sachs in New York?” the judge asked.
“Yup,”
Santos responded.
The New
York Republican did indeed have a political future. He was elected to the U.S.
House of Representatives in a Long Island swing district last November based on
a largely fabricated résumé that included the claim he worked for Goldman
Sachs, one of the largest investment banks in the world.
A
spokesperson for the bank told The New York Times in its original investigation
into Santos’ background that there was no record of him working there. He later
admitted in a New York Post interview he “never worked directly” for Goldman
Sachs, but claimed a financial firm he was employed at, LinkBridge Investors,
had “limited partnerships” with the bank.
Rep. George
Santos (R-N.Y.) is chased by members of the press as he walks from the
Longworth House Office Building.
Rep. George
Santos has refused to resign from Congress despite bipartisan calls for him to
step down, arguing he never broke any laws. | Francis Chung/POLITICO
Santos now
faces investigations by state, federal and international agencies on a range of
potential crimes from campaign finance violations to pet charity fraud. He has
refused to resign from Congress despite bipartisan calls for him to step down,
arguing he never broke any laws, but he did forgo committee assignments citing
the “ongoing attention surrounding both my personal and campaign financial
investigations.”
Santos’
attorney Joe Murray did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Santos appeared
at the 2017 hearing on behalf of Trelha using his full name, George Anthony
Devolder Santos. He told the judge he would secure “a long extended-stay
apartment through Airbnb” in Seattle during the case if the defendant was
released on bail.
“How do you
know this man?” the judge asked.
“We’re
family friends. Our parents know each other from Brazil,” Santos said.
Trelha was
ultimately deported to Brazil in early 2018 after serving seven months in jail
and pleading guilty to felony access device fraud. In a telephone interview,
Trelha said Santos lied about their relationship, too. Trelha, through a
translator, said he met Santos in the fall of 2016 on a Facebook group for
Brazilians living in Orlando, Fla., and that his mother died in 2012.
Trelha eventually
moved into Santos’ Winter Park, Fla., apartment in November 2016, according to
a copy of the lease viewed by POLITICO. Santos had moved south from New York
City, after he was transferred to a new position at the hospitality website
HotelsPro, according to Lilian Cabral, a coworker at HotelsPro in Orlando.
A federal
prosecutor who ultimately handled the case described the fraud as
“sophisticated,” saying Trelha’s three-day skimming spree in Seattle was only
“the tip of the iceberg,” according to a court transcript first reported by CBS
News.
A person
close to the investigation who is not authorized to speak publicly said
prosecutors ultimately didn’t dig much deeper. The person didn’t remember
seeing any forensic reports on Trelha’s phone and said prosecutors didn’t seem
eager to pursue any international or domestic co-conspirators.
New
York-based lawyer Tiffany Bogosian, a former friend of Santos who helped him
duck a theft charge in 2020 involving the use of canceled checks to purchase
puppies from Amish farmers in Pennsylvania, told POLITICO in a Feb. 7 interview
that Santos said he was an “informant” in Trelha’s case.
Santos told
Bogosian a warrant for his arrest in the Pennsylvania case was somehow tied to
his work as an informant in the Trelha investigation, she said. Bogosian, believing
his story at the time, said she called Seattle police detective Lawrence Meyer,
who didn’t verify the term “informant” but confirmed Santos had “pointed them
in the right direction” and offered some names of people involved in the credit
card fraud. POLITICO could not reach Meyer to confirm the exchange.
When Trelha
was arrested on April 27, he was caught on a security camera removing skimming
equipment from a Chase ATM on Pike Street in downtown Seattle. He had a fake
Brazilian ID card and 10 suspected fraudulent cards in his hotel room,
according to arrest documents. An empty Fed-Ex package police found in his
rental car was sent from the Winter Park apartment he shared with Santos.
Trelha declined to say who sent the package from the apartment.
His plan
was to spend a week skimming numbers and making fraudulent cards using gift
cards bought at stores, Trelha said, and then another week taking out the
maximum ATM withdrawals with pin numbers captured by the skimmers and cameras
he installed.
“You go at
11 p.m. so you can max it out and then when it turns midnight you take the max
amount again,” he said.
A
spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Emily Langlie, said sometimes
identity and credit card thieves go far from home to collect numbers, so there
is less chance of the stolen numbers being connected to the perpetrators later.
Langlie told POLITICO she didn’t have any information about Santos’ involvement
in the Trelha investigation.
Trelha said
that after he was arrested in Seattle he reached out to a friend who contacted
Santos to help him, he said. “He was American and spoke English, so we thought
he could help me the most,” Trelha recalled. By then, Santos had moved back
north to help care for his sick mother.
“Mr.
Devolder lives in New York,” Trelha’s public defender Virginia Branham said at
the bail hearing. “I have spoken to him multiple times over the last few weeks.
This is the second time he’s flown out here to assist Mr. Trelha. He has
arranged an extended Airbnb for Mr. Trelha to stay at during the pendency of
this case,” Branham said in the recording.
Santos told
the judge he’d known Trelha “for a few years,” adding they’d “lost touch [but]
got back in touch in September last year in Orlando when I was relocated from
New York.”
Santos said
he was staying at a hotel “by the Space Needle” until the judge’s bail
decision. At the hearing, Trelha’s bail was reduced from $250,000 to $75,000 —
still well above the $10,000 requested by his counsel. Trelha said he was
unable to post bail because he didn’t have a local guarantor.
A Google
account under the name George Devolder, with reviews of Brazilian restaurants
in Queens and rental car companies in Miami, left a negative review of a
Seattle Domino’s Pizza location in 2017, two miles from King County Jail and
close to the Space Needle.
“1 hour
viewing the tracker not move! very very very slow giving the time ordered (late
night) called the store was on hold for 35mins with no answer!!!! NEVER
order from this store, not worth the agrevation!!!”
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