On November 16, the Ethics Committee released its Investigative Subcommittee's report, accusing Santos of fraud similar to what he had already been criminally charged with,[246] such as diverting campaign funds for personal use, as well as money raised for RedStone Strategies that donors were told would be used on campaigns. The subcommittee listed some of those personal purposes, including over $4,000 to Hermès, plastic surgery and Botox, payments of personal credit card bills and other debts, travel to Atlantic City and Las Vegas that had no campaign purpose, and a small amount on OnlyFans subscriptions. In a news release accompanying the report, the committee said "[it]s investigation revealed a complex web of unlawful activity involving Representative Santos's campaign, personal, and business finances ... [He] sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit." It believed "there was substantial evidence that Representative Santos violated federal criminal laws, some of which are the subject of the pending charges filed against him in court."[247] Santos subsequently announced he would not run for reelection, although he would remain in Congress for the rest of his term. He called the report "a disgusting politicized smear that shows the depths of how low our federal government has sunk."[80]
Brazilian check fraud charges
After obtaining his high school equivalency diploma, Santos spent time in Brazil. In 2008, he forged checks, stolen from a man his mother was caring for, to buy R$1,313 (about US$700) worth of clothing.[13] He gave his name as Délio.[26] When writing the checks, Santos presented identification bearing his photo but the check owner's name. The store owner became suspicious when the signatures on two checks did not match.[13] A few days later, another young man came in to return a pair of shoes that Délio had bought; the store clerk, who had had to cover the loss, traced Santos through the man's Orkut profile.[26] Santos later admitted to the theft in a message to the clerk and confessed to police before he was charged with check fraud in 2010.[41][22] The case was archived by a Brazilian court in 2013 because authorities there were unable to locate Santos.[248][249]
In January 2023, Rio de Janeiro prosecutors announced that they would revive the fraud charges since they knew where Santos was.[250][248] In March 2023, prosecutors announced a plea bargain with Santos,[251] and in May 2023, Santos formally settled the bad check charges; under the agreement, agreeing to pay 24,000 Brazilian reais (almost US$5,000), with most compensating the defrauded salesman and the remainder donated to charity.[252]
Evictions and unpaid judgments
Santos was evicted from rented Queens properties (in Jackson Heights, Whitestone, and Sunnyside) three times in the mid-2010s over unpaid rent. Yasser Rabello, a onetime roommate, described moving into the first apartment in December 2013 after befriending Santos; it had only two bedrooms and one bathroom, and Santos shared it with his mother, sister, then later his boyfriend and often another roommate.[164] One of those roommates, Gregory Morey-Parker, recalls that eviction notices were sent monthly,[253] that new roommates rapidly cycled through the apartment,[254] and that Santos' personal finances fluctuated wildly: "[He] would go to bars with rolls of hundred dollar bills and, three days later, he would have no money."[255] Santos was locked out of the apartment in the summer of 2014 and told the housing court that he needed access to the apartment to feed pet fish, which Rabello could not recall ever existing.[253]
Santos signed a lease on an apartment in Whitestone in 2014.[253][170][143] In 2023, Pedro Vilarva, who had been Santos's boyfriend at the time, told the Times that Santos claimed he was expecting money from his investment work at Citigroup, so Vilarva paid most of the bills, but Santos "never ever actually went to work".[41] The relationship soured in early 2015 when Vilarva stopped believing Santos's promises, and after Vilarva came to believe Santos had taken his cell phone to pawn it, he discovered the 2013 Brazilian charges against Santos and moved out.[256][41]
Santos remained in the apartment through November of that year, owing a month and a half's rent. His landlady filed for eviction, and he agreed to leave by December 24 and pay her $2,250 in back rent,[170] telling the court that his mother's illness had hindered his ability to work but he would soon be able to repay the money from "business loans".[253] In mid-January 2016, he told Queens Housing Court that he was mugged on his way to make the payment, but police were unable to take a report at the time, telling him to return later. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has no record of the incident.[170]
In October 2015, a small claims court judge ordered Santos to pay Peter Hamilton $5,000 plus interest to repay a loan Hamilton made to Santos in September 2014 for moving expenses. In December 2022, Hamilton told The Times that the judgment had not been paid.[143] The matter was subsequently settled after public investigations into Santos began.[257]
In his third known eviction case, a Queens court entered a civil judgment of $12,208 against him in 2017.[22][258] In housing court, he said he would seek emergency rental assistance.[253] Santos told the Post that his mother's illness had forced his family into debt at the time; as of December 2022 he had yet to pay the rent he owed, saying he "completely forgot about it".[126]
Friends of Pets United
Santos claimed to have rescued over 2,500 animals as founder and operator of a charity called Friends of Pets United (FOPU) from 2013 to 2018. FOPU activities are poorly documented, and in 2022, The Times found little evidence of its existence other than a closed Facebook account; former volunteers and associates described it as disorganized and said that far fewer animals were saved. FOPU held fundraising events and donated money to other rescue groups, but several recipients said they received significantly less than what Santos promised. Santos told many people that FOPU was a legitimate charity, but it never received non-profit tax-exempt status from the IRS, was not registered as a charity with the state of New York, and never registered with the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets as required of animal rescue groups from September 2017. The contractor providing animal-related services to New York City said that it never dealt with FOPU, and the group was not authorized to take dogs from city shelters. Santos said in February 2023 that he "never handled the finances" of FOPU, although its volunteers and groups that dealt with FOPU said that he seemed to be the only person who did so. All mentions of FOPU were removed from Santos's official biographies as his other claims began to be widely questioned by the media.[259] Santos's biographer described FOPU primarily as a vehicle for selling puppies from Santos's personal Golden Retriever and those he obtained from commercial breeders, and as a means for Santos to conduct unaccountable fundraising in the name of other, better known rescue groups.[260]
Theft charges
In November 2017, Santos was charged with theft by deception in York County, Pennsylvania, after bad checks were written to an Amish dog breeder from his account. Days after he gave the breeder a $15,125 check for "puppies", Santos and FOPU hosted an adoption event at a pet store. After the check bounced, the Pennsylvania charge was brought against him. Tiffany Bogosian, a school friend of Santos's from Queens, assisted in getting the charges dropped after he told her that his checkbook had been stolen in 2017 and he had received an extradition warrant from Pennsylvania at his New York address in 2020. She successfully argued that the signatures on the checks were not Santos's, and the case against Santos was dismissed in May 2021, after Santos ultimately paid the farmer who lodged the police report.[261][262][263][264] Santos's record was expunged in November 2021.[261]
In February 2023, The Washington Post reported that three other Amish dog breeders allegedly were never paid by Santos but never filed police reports.[264]
Allegations of mishandling funds
In January 2023, retired U.S. Navy veteran Richard Osthoff and retired police officer Michael Boll accused Santos of having stolen funds that were donated to a GoFundMe fundraiser. In May 2016, Osthoff was homeless and was told that surgery to remove a life-threatening stomach tumor from his service dog would cost $3,000. A veterinary technician recommended that he contact the owner of FOPU, Anthony Devolder, one of Santos's aliases, who then set up a GoFundMe page. After the fundraiser had reached its goal of $3,000 in June, Santos closed it and withdrew the money. Osthoff, Boll, and GoFundMe received no funds, and the dog died in January 2017.[265][266][267] GoFundMe banned Santos, who had organized the fundraiser, at the end of 2016.[267] Santos denied swindling Osthoff;[268] in October 2023 he denied even knowing him to the Times, which reported having text messages suggesting otherwise.[173] The FBI is investigating Osthoff's allegations.[269]
The veterinary technician who had recommended Santos to Osthoff said that Santos later offered to raise funds to repair her farm in New Jersey so that it could be used for animal rescue.[259] FOPU held a 2017 fundraiser event, charging $50 per attendee, eventually raising $2,165, with Santos controlling the money.[259] The veterinary technician said that Santos was elusive and never gave her any of the proceeds, instead only giving excuses for not transferring the money.[22][259]
The owner of a Staten Island pet store told the Times that, after a successful series of fundraisers, Santos, known as Anthony Devolder to the store owner, asked the owner to make the check out to him personally rather than FOPU. The owner refused but later saw that on the payee line of the canceled check, "FOPU" had been crossed out and replaced with "Anthony Devolder".[259]
A pet rescue operator in the Bronx told the Times that after Santos had boasted of his Wall Street experience and connections to her to assure her he could raise thousands of dollars for her organization, he held a fundraiser in March 2017 and then sent her a check for $400. She stopped working with him, believing he was either overpromising or skimming.[259]
Credit-card skimming
CBS has reported that Santos's name came up in a 2017 international credit card skimming scheme perpetrated by Brazilians in Seattle. After Gustavo Ribeiro Trelha, a Brazilian living in Orlando, was arrested using a card skimmer at an automatic teller machine, a search of his car found an empty FedEx box with the return address written being one of Santos's former residences in Winter Park,[270] which Trelha was later reported to have jointly leased with Santos,[271] the same one given on a Florida traffic ticket issued to Santos in October 2016.[270] CBS later reported that two Secret Service agents interviewed Santos in New York; he voluntarily surrendered two of his cellphones to them. The case remains open, but as of February 2023 Santos has not been identified as a suspect.[272]
After the story was reported in 2023, Trelha made a sworn declaration to the FBI that he had committed the crime at the urging of Santos, who had also taught him how to set up the skimmer and camera necessary to steal passwords and how to clone ATM and credit cards. The two had an agreement to split the proceeds, Trelha said, but after his arrest Santos kept all the money for himself, reneging on a promise to hire a top defense lawyer and pay Trelha's bail. At the time he said he declined to tell federal authorities as Santos had threatened to report his Orlando roommates to immigration authorities, who were in the U.S. illegally.[273][y]
Santos told reporters the day after Politico reported the declaration that he was innocent, saying, "Never did anything of criminal activity, and I have no mastermind event." He said he had only met Trelha "a couple of times in my life" and that he had willingly assisted every law enforcement agency that contacted him: "Got information for them. Got everybody arrested and deported."[276]
"The Snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Tuesday, August 5, 2025. Chump is shocked to learn that We The People don't roll over, we fight back to save democracy.
Americans are overwhelmingly skeptical of Donald Trump's handling of information related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. In a new UMass Amherst national poll, 70 percent of respondents said Trump is not handling the Epstein case well, while only 18 percent said he is.
Among respondents who were aware of Epstein, the deceased billionaire and convicted sex offender, 63 percent agreed that the Trump administration "is hiding important information" about the case. Of those who said the administration is hiding information, a staggering 81 percent blamed Trump for it. Others in Trump's orbit also received blame, including Attorney General Pam Bondi (59 percent), FBI Director Kash Patel (49 percent), and House Speaker Mike Johnson (47 percent). Just 16 percent blamed Democrats in Congress.
The president's overall approval rating also took a dive to 38 percent, down six points since April.
This new data seems to back up reports that Trump has lost significant ground with his MAGA base over the Epstein issue. He came to power in part because his followers believed he would root out corruption and the deep state. But as news continues to break about his years-long friendship with Epstein amid reports that Trump is named multiple times in the files, the president's credibility is fading. Fifty-nine percent of poll respondents aware of Epstein said they believe he and Trump were "once good friends."
Trump isn't helping himself either. He complained last week that Epstein "stole" one of his victims from her job at Trump's Mar-a-Lago property. And the Bureau of Prisons under Trump recently transferred Epstein's longtime partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, to a lower-security facility after she met with Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche. Her move to a less strict prison has drawn scrutiny, considering Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
Lawrence O'Donnell brought the receipts last night on MSNBC explaining what Maxwell had done, how she was a pedophile, how she was a sex trafficker, how she preyed on young girls -- you know, what she was convicted of in a US court of law and sentenced to 20 years in prison for.
Josh Fiallo (THE DAILY BEAST) notes Chump's moved Maxwell from an actual prison to Club Fed:
Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell is enjoying cushy new digs at a prison camp that has no cell blocks or guard towers but does offer a full gym, yoga classes, and a “puppy program.”
Maxwell, 63, was quietly transferred last week from a prison in Florida to a minimum-security camp in Bryan, Texas. Oversight at her new facility is so lax, it partially relies on the honor system to keep inmates from—quite literally—walking off its wall-free campus, as three women did in 2017.
Federal Prison Camp, Bryan has been nicknamed “Club Fed,” as its inmates have access to an outdoor running track, music programs, intramural competitions, social and cultural events, and activities like table tennis, prison consultant Michael Santos says.
At the facility, Maxwell will be permitted to buy mascara ($13.10), eyeliner ($1.70), concealer ($7.75), powder ($17), lip gloss ($3.40), makeup wipes ($9.25), and, the priciest luxury available, L’Oréal Revita anti-aging cream ($26.00), according to a comissary list obtained by the Daily Beast. Inmates are allowed to spend $360 a month there.
We all know Maxwell is not American, right? So while Chump works overtime to make life better for Maxwell -- an exploiter of women -- he works just as hard to destroy the lives of immigrants who have come to this country and worked hard to make a life for themselves and their families.
He can do that because he has no core, no belief system. Donald Chump has no religion. I also tend to doubt the faith of grown women who try to draw attention to their cleavage with crosses so I dismiss Pam Bondi and Karoline Leavitt's attempts to promote themselves as alleged Christians. But does no in the administration grasp religion?
Let's note this from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's office:
Mike covered the topic last night in "They're coming after Social Security when they're not trying to rescue Pedophile Maxwell."
The following sites updated: