Federal prosecutors on Tuesday filed a significant array of new charges against Representative George Santos of New York, accusing him of new criminal schemes, including stealing the identities and credit cards of donors to his campaign.
The new accusations were made in a 23-count superseding indictment that laid out how Mr. Santos had charged his donors’ credit cards “repeatedly, without their authorization,” distributing the money to his and other candidates’ campaigns and to his own bank account.
The new indictment filed in the Eastern District of New York added 10 charges against Mr. Santos: conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, access device fraud, false statements to the Federal Election Commission and falsifying records to obstruct the commission.
The updated indictment came five days after his campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, pleaded guilty to a felony count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and admitted to her role in fraudulently reporting a fictional $500,000 loan that Mr. Santos claimed to have made to his campaign.
Ms. Marks said in court that she and an unnamed co-conspirator understood to be Mr. Santos, a Republican from New York, agreed to making reports of false donations and falsifying the loan.
“Santos falsely inflated the campaign’s reported receipts with nonexistent loans and contributions that were either fabricated or stolen,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
A lawyer for Mr. Santos did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The original indictment filed in May against Mr. Santos, 35, accused him of being involved in three separate financial schemes. Prosecutors charged him with 13 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, stealing public funds and lying on federal disclosure forms.
Mr. Santos, who is seeking re-election in 2024, has pleaded not guilty to the previous charges against him. He has consistently denied any involvement in his campaign’s finances, laying blame for any issues or discrepancies on Ms. Marks.
Prosecutors cited text messages and emails between Ms. Marks and Mr. Santos, who was not named in court documents, saying that the two agreed to falsely inflate the fund-raising numbers in order to hit a $250,000 benchmark for a program run by a Republican Party committee that would allow Mr. Santos to get campaign support.
But prosecutors said in Ms. Marks’s court documents that he provided a list of his and Ms. Marks’s relatives under whose names the campaign falsely reported $53,200 contributions on a 2021 filing.
In their initial indictment, federal prosecutors accused Mr. Santos of working with an unnamed associate in 2022 to solicit at least $50,000 in donations for what they claimed was a super PAC. They said that Mr. Santos then pocketed the money for personal expenses, including luxury designer clothing and credit card payments.
The original indictment also accused Mr. Santos of fraudulently applying for and receiving more than $24,000 in pandemic unemployment benefits while he was actually employed, and of knowingly making false statements on financial disclosure forms.
Mr. Santos was scheduled to return to court on the original indictment on Oct. 27.
