Hey Nassau County, Turns Out You Elected A Criminal After All

Congressman-elect George Santos told his constituents in Nassau and Queens counties that he’s “not a criminal.” But that was just another in a long and growing list of lies he's been spewing as though he just can't help himself. In fact, though he was allowed to vote in the speaker election Tuesday and Wednesday, he is a criminal and is wanted by Brazilian law enforcement for theft. He admitted to them he stole a dying man’s check book and ID and then forged checks to buy himself clothing in 2008. He also told them that he was a professor.

Yesterday, CNN reported that in 2010 the police had collected 150 pages of documents in the case. Police stopped looking for him when he fled the country and wound up in America. He claims to be a dual citizen, but no one has seen and proof of that. “Santos’ mother,” CNN reported, “told the police in November 2010 that the checks were stolen from a checkbook she had in her purse belonging to Delio da Camara da Costa Alemao, who died a year prior to her speaking with police, and that her son had used four checks. Santos’ mother was Costa Alemao’s nurse prior to his death.”

Speaking with the police for the first time that month, Santos confessed he stole the checkbook from his mom’s purse and that he used “some sheets” to make purchases. Santos confessed to forging the man’s signature on two checks to purchase clothes and shoes costing approximately $1,313.63 on the date of the forgery, and confirmed it was his signature on the forged checks.

He also told police he was an American with dual citizenship, was White and a professor, police documents show.

Santos said his mother, who only learned of the stolen checks around a month after he took them, asked him “with despair” to return the checkbook, but he had already ripped up the remaining checks and threw them in a manhole.

“He [Santos] acknowledged having been responsible for forging the signatures on the checks, also confirming that he had destroyed the remaining checks,” authorities wrote in an inquiry report about Santos. The document containing the confession was signed by Santos on November 18, 2010.

…In June 2011, investigators filed a request with the Civil Police to take immediate judicial measures against Santos. In September, a judge summoned him to respond to the complaint through an attorney. Neither Santos nor an attorney ever responded. Three months later, authorities tried to deliver a summons for Santos at the prior home of his mother but he was not able to be located and she no longer lived there.

Again in 2013, neither Santos, nor his mother or grandmother at their former addresses, were able to be located. In October of that year, an edict was published in Rio de Janeiro’s justice gazette summoning him to appear in court after authorities were unable to locate him. Santos was given 10 days to offer his defense but he never appeared. A judge eventually suspended the statute of limitations in order for the case to be reopened later if Santos was found, the documents show.

As recently as October 2020, a document from the judiciary said they still had never been able to locate Santos to prosecute him for the crime.

Brazilian authorities, having now verified Santos’ location, will make a formal request to the US Justice Department to notify Santos of the charges, Maristela Pereira, a spokeswoman for the Rio de Janeiro prosecutor’s office, told CNN. The prosecutor’s office told CNN the request will be filed upon reopening on Friday.

In an interview with the New York Post last week, Santos denied that he had been charged with any crime in Brazil, saying: “I am not a criminal here– not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world. Absolutely not. That didn’t happen.”