Elected to an open seat in 2022, New York Republican Representative George Santos finally got into the House after a rather unsuccessful race against Thomas Suozzi in 2020. Despite the obstacles he was confronted with to earn this position, Santos was willing to put it at all at risk to commit an array of fraudulent financial schemes that led to his ultimate demise and expulsion from a vote of 311-114 on December 1, 2023.
As the first openly LGBTQ+ member elected to Congress, several members of the LGBTQ+ community strongly felt that Santos served as nothing more than a negative representation of their community. From the very beginning of his race, Santos was considered to have run a “Campaign of Deceit”. Beginning in roughly December 2021 and running to August 2022, Santos crafted a not-so-foolproof plan to steal the personal identity and financial information of those contributing to his political campaign.
As he carried out his scheme, he charged thousands from campaign contributors’ cards without their permission. Through these transactions, Santos moved additional funds to his campaign, campaigns of other candidates elected for office, and Santos’ personal bank account. However, in hopes of concealing the scandalous truth, Santos claimed that some of the contributions were made by close friends and family members as opposed to the true cardholders, according to the Department of Justice.
In addition to these fraudulent purchases, Santos also spent thousands of campaign dollars on personal items at Sephora, Hermes, and an OnlyFans subscription. Breaking federal law after federal law, The House Committee of Ethics recently released a report in November after the subcommittee that was investigating Santos, finally completed a full file on his array of crimes.
Ranging from lying numerous times on mandatory financial disclosure forms, or stealing funds from contributors to his campaign, it is beyond clear that every single one of his heinous acts has had incredibly deep intentions.
While at first glance, it appears that Santos was merely stealing these funds for his joy, several other Congress members have begun to argue that he was motivated to do this to increase his terrible credit score.
As someone with a variety of maxed-out credit cards and a plethora of debts, his consistency with these careless crimes nearly looked like an attempt to dig himself into an even deeper hole.
After getting to a point where the possibility of returning to his past position was not even a question, he made the most unpredictable decision possible. Creating a cameo account, while typically done by most B-List celebrities and social media personalities for extra cash, was certainly not the next step that the public predicted Santos would take after being expelled from Congress.
As Santos rose to become one of the most popular creators on the platform, he has reportedly been making over “80,000 a day” through nothing but Cameo videos according to Vanity Fair. While he first started charging $75 a video, he is now charging $500 per video and is reportedly living his best life after picking up a hobby that is ethical.