Disgraced former Representative George Santos (R., N.Y.) was sentenced Friday to 87 months in federal prison for wire fraud and identity theft, completing his remarkable rise and fall from a newly elected swing-seat congressman to widely ridiculed conman whose colleagues expelled him from the House.
Santos’s sentence came after he pleaded guilty last year to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges in New York following accusations that he stole campaign funds for personal use and told outlandish lies about his personal history before being elected to Congress. Santos falsely claimed he worked at two Wall Street firms and received a college education.
He also falsely identified as Jewish and claimed he had relatives who died in the Holocaust. Moreover, Santos lied about his mother being present at the World Trade Center during the September 11, 2001, terror attack and has been accused of defrauding an Amish dog breeder and a disabled veteran.
Between his election and swearing in, Santos’s long and bizarre history of lying about his backstory, education, and family history turned him into a national celebrity and the subject of extensive ridicule. The allegations led to criminal charges and a damning House ethics investigation into how he exploited his congressional campaign for personal profit.
The Ethics Committee’s report on Santos lays out how he spent campaign funds on lavish personal expenses such as flights, hotels, Ubers, and meals associated with expensive trips that were not for political purposes. Santos also spent campaign funds on botox procedures, spa trips, OnlyFans subscriptions, and other non-campaign expenses.
The flamboyant, openly gay Republican seemed to relish the infamy and spotlight, even when it culminated in a bipartisan vote to remove him from the House despite the GOP’s extremely tight majority. Santos had become a political liability for New York Republicans in toss-up seats, causing his state colleagues to repeatedly condemn his lies and attention-grabbing antics. He was the sixth lawmaker ever expelled from the House and only the third since the civil war.
Representative Tom Suozzi (D., N.Y.) won the special election in 2024 to replace Santos, recapturing his old Nassau County, Long Island, seat after vacating it to run for governor in 2022. In November, Suozzi retained the competitive seat even as Republicans maintained their tight House majority.
Before his fall from grace, Santos flipped New York’s third district in the 2022 midterms, defeating Democrat Rob Zimmerman. His crucial toss-up victory helped Republicans narrowly flip the House in what was considered an underwhelming GOP midterm performance compared to expectations.
Once he left Congress, Santos attempted to parlay his celebrity into a career as an online influencer on Cameo and other platforms. Santos charged users hundreds of dollars for personal videos on Cameo, a gig prosecutors said earned him $400,000 as of January. Santos stopped recording Cameo videos ahead of his sentencing and thanked fans for their support.
Last night, Santos joined former Representative Matt Gaetz’s (R., Fla.) show on One America News Network to speak about his sentencing. Santos accused federal prosecutors of trying to “drop an anchor on my head” and making it “very personal,” while voicing regret for his actions. He said seven years would be too long of a prison sentence and disputed prosecutors’ assertions that he is unrepentant about what he did.