George Santos accused of scamming fellow GOP candidates in fraud scheme

The New York congressman is now under federal indictment

Embattled lawmaker George Santos has been accused of allegedly defrauding fellow Republican candidates running for office, a report says.

Mr Santos, a Republican first-term congressman from New York has been accused of a string of lies and falsehoods about numerous parts of his background.

He was indicted in federal court last week for, among other things, having an associate tell a donor that a contribution to a firm Mr Santos owned would go to support his campaign. Much of the money allegedly went to Mr Santos’s personal accounts instead.

But deep-pocketed donors are reportedly not the only people Mr Santos allegedly conned into donating to his firm.

According to The Daily Beast, Mr Santos also allegedly took money from his fellow Republican candidates.

The firm in question, identified only as “Company #1” in the indictment, is believed to be Redstone Strategies — a limited liability company founded in Florida in 2021 that listed Mr Santos’ Devolder Organization as one of its managers.

Mr Santos has denied that Redstone Strategies is the company in question in the indictment but said he was unsure what that company could be.

Other people seem to recall more details. Redstone reportedly served as a vendor for multiple New York Republican candidates during the 2022 election cycle and was given a substantial amount of money by Rise NY PAC, a political action committee run by Mr Santos’s sister.

“George didn’t only lie to his voters, but also to fellow candidates around him for his own alleged financial gain,” Stefano Forte, a Queens Republican who ran unsuccessfully for the New York state Senate last year, told The Daily Beast.

Mr Forte told the publication that Mr Santos approached him personally and pitched him on hiring Redstone, which he did — parting ways with the firm only after he’d paid it $14,000.

Mr Forte said he never knew that Mr Santos had a stake in the company, meaning Mr Santos did not disclose that information when he pitched him on hiring the firm.

Mr Santos confirmed to The Daily Beast that he had pitched fellow candidates on hiring Redstone, but said he never personally profited from the resulting transactions and dismissed Mr Forte’s criticism as a political attack.

Mr Santos is facing a bevvy of legal issues that have made his position in Congress tenuous.

Following his indictment, House Democrats introduced a resolution to have him expelled from the chamber. The House voted along party lines on Thursday to refer the resolution to the House Ethics Committee, with Mr Santos himself voting against his explosion.