The Talented Mr. Santos: Here’s Every Single Lie Told by George Santos
by Matt Stieb, Intelligencer staff writer
Intelligencer
February, 2023
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Since the New York Times revealed that George Santos was not quite the man he sold himself as to voters, it’s been hard to track down exactly what is true about the incoming representative’s life story. Is he broke or rich? Is he Jewish or Catholic? Did his family members really die in the Holocaust or September 11? Most often, it’s best to assume what the Republican from Long Island has said about his life is bogus, but in case you need to double-check, here is the guide to everything he has made up about himself — and the few things that actually appear to be true.
He lied about where he went to high school …
Santos, whose parents emigrated from Brazil, says he attended the Horace Mann School in the Bronx during his first years of high school but had to leave the prestigious private academy in his senior year because “my parents fell on hard times, which was something that would later become known as the depression of 2008.” But a spokesperson for the school told CNN in December that there was no evidence he attended Horace Mann. Later, he obtained a high-school equivalency diploma.
… and college.
Santos claims he graduated with a degree in economics and finance from Baruch College in 2010, which suggests he would have made it through a four-year program in just two years if he actually graduated from Horace Mann in 2008. But a Baruch representative told the Times there was no record of Santos being in the class of 2010. (Nor is there a record of Santos being a “star” on the Baruch volleyball team, as he claimed to Nassau County GOP chair Joseph Cairo.) A biography of Santos on the National Republican Congressional Committee states Santos also spent time at New York University, a claim NYU could not corroborate. Later, he told the New York Post that he “didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning.”
He never worked on Wall Street either.
His campaign bio states he worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, but representatives for both companies told the Times they had no record of his employment. The lies weren’t that hard to figure out: Santos said he worked in Citi’s real-estate wing in the 2010s, though the bank sold off its asset-management operations when he was in high school. After Santos was sworn into Congress, the Times obtained a copy of his inflated resumé claiming that he graduated in the top one percent of his class at Baruch, earned an M.B.A. at NYU, and was able to double the revenue on the project he worked on at Goldman:
You can read George Santos's résumé for yourself, courtesy of reporting by the NYT:https://t.co/g5kCsz2brZ pic.twitter.com/XQlndmfk0M
— Nicholas Fandos (@npfandos) January 11, 2023
So where did his money come from?
When Santos first ran for Congress in 2020, he filed a disclosure showing a salary of $55,000 working as a vice-president at a business-development company called LinkBridge Investors, where he says he introduced investors to hedge-fund managers, claiming once that he brought in $1 million in revenue in just six months on the job. Even there, however, he was inflating his value: Newsday reports that the company’s founder testified under oath in a 2019 lawsuit that Santos was just a “freelancer” who sold sponsorships for events and worked on commission.
Soon after that failed Congressional run, he started working at a Florida investment firm called Harbor City Capital. When he was employed there in 2020, Santos said he managed a $1.5 billion fund and bragged of “record returns” of 12 to 26 percent, depending on the type of investment. That year, according to CNN, a customer told Santos that the company’s promise that they had a full bank guarantee on investments was bogus: “Deutsche Bank claims [it] is a complete fraud and not signed by the bank officer on the document,” they wrote. Santos replied that they were “100% legitimate.”
But in April 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused Harbor City of being a Ponzi scheme that stole $17 million from investors. The company’s assets are currently in mediation with an independent receiver appointed to manage them.
Santos wasn’t accused of wrongdoing by authorities, and the next month he incorporated his own company called Devolder. In an interview with Semafor, he said he helped rich people buy the expensive toys they wanted. If a client wanted to sell a plane or a boat, Santos would “go look out there within my Rolodex and be like: ‘Hey, are you looking for a plane?’ ‘Are you looking for a boat?’ I just put that feeler out there.” Within six months, he claims to have “landed a couple of million-dollar contracts.” Financial disclosures from his 2022 congressional campaign show he claimed to have made between $3.5 million and $11 million from the company before it was dissolved last year.
Is the money legit?
Not everyone is buying the story that Santos earned his money how he says he did. As the Times notes, Devolder had no public website or LinkedIn page, and on his campaign financial disclosure, he did not list any clients. In a campaign bio, Santos once described Devolder as his “family’s firm” and said it was managing $80 million in assets. At times, Santos would even go by the name Anthony Devolder.
“Where did that money come from?” asked Representative Dan Goldman of Brooklyn, referring to the $700,000 Santos lent his own campaign.
When asked about the money during an appearance on Stephen Bannon’s show “War Room,” Santos dodged the question, instead quipping, “Well, I’ll tell you where it didn’t come from. It didn’t come from China, Ukraine or Burisma.”
On January 24, Santos admitted in a new filing that $500,000 of that sum was not actually a personal loan, but he did not reveal the source of the money. Santos filed another amended report stating that a $125,000 loan Santos gave his campaign also was not a personal loan. “I have never been this confused looking at an F.E.C. filing,” Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, told the New York Times.
There are other concerns about campaign donations, like the $25,000 Santos received from a group called RedStone Strategies — which never registered with the Federal Election Commission as a political group. Santos also had a habit of spending $199 or $199.99 at restaurants and hotels, just shy of the threshold for expenses that campaigns are legally required to track. And loads of so-called donations come from people who don’t actually exist or claim not to have sent him any money, like Santos’s cousin who was “dumbfounded” by their alleged $5,800 pledge.
Any skepticism about Santos’s finances has been amplified by his alleged fraud. In 2008, when Santos was 19 and living in Brazil, court records show he was charged with stealing the checkbook of a man his mother was caring for and wrote $700 in fraudulent checks, including for a pair of shoes. (It’s not the only theft allegedly on his record: Two former roommates claim he stole a Burberry scarf from one of them and wore it a year later to the Stop the Steal rally.) Santos’s lawyer in the fraud case in Brazil was reportedly convicted in connection to a paid execution and was studying law on house arrest when he defended Santos.
George Santos’ Brazil Lawyer Did Time for Gang Execution: Report
NEW BOMBSHELL
by Dan Ladden-Hall
News Correspondent
Daily Beast
Published Feb. 02, 2023 6:32AM ET
The lawyer Rep. George Santos (R-NY) chose to defend him in his fraud case in Brazil was convicted and jailed in connection with a gang execution, according to a report. Jonymar Vasconcelos, 47, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2007 for his role in the fatal shooting of a mechanic three years earlier, São Paulo’s Folha newspaper reported Wednesday. Vasconcelos, who was reportedly paid for the hit, went with three other men to the home of Aristeu Vieira de Mattos in the early hours of Dec. 3, 2004. Vasconcelos, who was in Brazil’s Navy at the time, remained on a motorcycle while the killing took place, the newspaper reports. In 2009 he was moved to house arrest and began studying law. It’s unclear how Santos found Vasconcelos to defend him in his fraud case—in which it’s alleged the congressman paid for goods with a stolen checkbook in 2008—given that Vasconcelos is reportedly not affiliated with any law firm and does not list contact information online. When approached by Folha, the newspaper says Santos replied that he doesn’t understand Portuguese—despite speaking Portuguese fluently in interviews—and then did not respond to questions sent in English.
Meet the Contract Killer who Now Represents George Santos in Brazil
by Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo
February 2, 2023 10:07 p.m.
I’m not sure the George Santos stories keep getting worse. But they do get weirder, more bizarre.
As we learned way back at the beginning of the Santos saga, he remains a wanted man in Brazil for check fraud he committed back in 2008. After he became an international celebrity in December, Brazilian authorities decided to reinitiate the case which had stalled when they couldn’t locate him. After the case was reopened, Santos hired a Brazilian lawyer to represent him in the revived case. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, since it’s George Santos, that he managed to find a lawyer who’s a convicted murderer. In fact, he’s a convicted contract killer.
This account is based on an article published yesterday in the Brazilian daily Folha and some limited additional reporting of my own.
In 2004 Jonymar Vasconcelos, then a low-ranking sailor in the Brazilian navy, was part of what the Folha termed a “death squad” behind a mob execution. This was more organized crime than anything backed by the state per se, involving criminal gangs run by rogue elements in the military police. Vasconcelos was sentenced to 18 years in prison but ended up serving only five. He was released to house arrest and supervised release in 2009. Two years later the judge who sentenced him, Patrícia Acioli, was herself murdered.
The 2004 murder was, needless to say, an ugly affair. As described by Folha, it was a standard gangland killing. An auto mechanic got on the wrong side of the organized crime syndicate that ran what amounted to an alternative transport system in Rio de Janeiro. Four guys drive up to his house on two motorcycles. They shoot him in front of his family. Vasconcelos himself stayed with the motorcycles waiting for the killing to be done. Then they all drove off.
It wasn’t Vasconcelos’ first or only rodeo. He was either investigated for or arrested in connection with a number of other violent crimes including at least one other contract killing.
The judge in the case, Acioli, was known as the “people’s judge” for standing up to just these sorts of criminal gangs. It was one of these groups who murdered her two years after Vasconcelos’ release from prison in 2009. She was shot 21 times in an ambush outside her home for which eleven members of the military police were eventually convicted.
In other words, the same kind of underworld criminal gangs run by rogue elements in the military police were behind both Vasconcelos’ contract killing and the subsequent death of the judge who sentenced him. There were even reports that Vasconcelos threatened Acioli’s life while he was standing trial in her court.
Given this background, how is it that Vasconcelos was able to get released from prison after five years behind bars — and just two years after his conviction — when he was sentenced to 18 years?
The timeline goes like this: Vasconcelos was arrested shortly after the murder in December 2004 and incarcerated while awaiting trial. He was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to 18 years in prison but was then released into a halfway house and supervised release in 2009. He was then able to enroll in law school during his supervised release. I spoke to a knowledgable observer of the Brazilian legal system who told me it was very hard to explain Vasconcelos’ quick release from custody and entry into law school without some corrupt machinations in the background.
The most interesting part of the story is how Santos managed to end up with this lawyer. There’s no clear or good explanation. The Folha reporter couldn’t find any record of Vasconcelos being connected with any law firm or listed anywhere as a lawyer. He’s not findable. So how did Santos find him? Santos has been busy for the last month and he hasn’t been able to travel to Brazil to retain counsel. So, again, how did he manage to come up with Vasconcelos? According to Vasoncelos, it was because of his outstanding trial record and a personal recommendation.
Small world.
When Santos was asked for comment about Vasconcelos and how he came to retain him, Santos first said he didn’t speak Portuguese and then never replied when the questions were restated in English.
He also appears to have made up a history as a landlord, claiming in a campaign bio that he and his family ran a real-estate portfolio of 13 properties. The Times found no evidence of the buildings, and they were not listed on required campaign financial disclosures. Santos, who decried New York’s eviction moratorium during the pandemic, has been evicted twice.
He also lied about founding an animal charity.
Santos’s campaign bio claimed he ran a foundation called Friends of Pets United, saving 2,500 dogs and cats between 2013 and 2018. But there were no social-media accounts for the organization, no IRS records, and no evidence of the charity being registered in New York or New Jersey, where Santos claimed to have operated. The Times found that Friends of Pets United held one fundraiser with a rescue group in New Jersey in 2017, for which he charged $50 entry. But the group that threw the event said that it never received any funds and that Santos made up several excuses for why he didn’t have the money. According to the Times, Santos would take checks written to his charity and cash them out under his pseudonym, Anthony Devolder.
He allegedly swindled a disabled vet whose dog was dying.
Santos also allegedly stole money from a disabled veteran who came to him for help fund a life-saving surgery for his dog, according to Patch. In May 2016, Richard Osthoff, who was living in a tent in central New Jersey, learned that his pit mix would need a $3,000 surgery. A veterinary technician told him that a man named Anthony Devolder could help him raise the funds. After Friends of Pets United put together a GoFundMe that got the money for the surgery, Santos then refused to give the money to Osthoff, whose dog died less than a year later. Santos has denied the story, though the FBI is reportedly investigating the matter. “I was worried that what happened to me was too long ago to be prosecuted,” Osthoff told Politico.
Did he rip off an Amish dog breeder with a bad check?
Politico reports that in late 2017, a checking account in Santos’s name wrote nine canceled checks to eight different accounts owned by dog breeders, writing in the memo section: “puppy” and “puppies.” That November, he was charged in Pennsylvania with theft by deception for the alleged crime. Santos claims that his checkbook was stolen and the charge was expunged in November 2021 after an old friend helped him out.
Whether or not Santos wrote the bad checks, the report also reveals another angle of the congressman’s scams. With his charity Friends of Animals United, Santos would hold adoption events for dogs, pawning off the animals for a fee to people who thought they were adopting an animal in need, not a puppy straight from the breeder.
What’s the deal with his marriage(s)?
When Santos flipped New York’s Third Congressional District in November, he became the first openly gay nonincumbent Republican elected to Congress. His campaign bio discussed his husband, with whom he lives in Long Island along with four dogs. But Santos never appeared on the campaign trail with his partner, and the Daily Beast could not find a marriage record in New York. (When he arrived at the House in January, he was not wearing a wedding ring.)
In 2019, however, Santos did divorce a woman in Queens. “I’m very much gay,” he told the New York Post in December. “I’m OK with my sexuality. People change. I’m one of those people who change.”
The Daily Beast soon uncovered more on that first marriage, which lasted from 2012 to 2019, according to their marriage license and divorce records. In 2014 — five years before his divorce from the woman — Santos sent Facebook invites to friends celebrating an “engagement dinner” with his boyfriend at the time. Santos’s former boyfriend said the party never happened because he did not say yes to the proposal.
It’s unclear [LC: it's very clear that it was not!] if his mother’s death was related to 9/11.
In July 2021, Santos wrote on Twitter that the September 11 attacks “claimed my mother’s life.” On December 23, 2021, he said it was the fifth anniversary of his mother’s passing, a loss confirmed by her obituary. On his campaign website, Santos claimed his mother, Fatima Devolder, “was in her office in the South Tower on September 11” and that she “passed away a few years later when she lost her battle to cancer.” Aside from the fact that people rarely refer to 15 years as a “few years,” there is no record of Santos’s mother suffering from the well-documented health problems caused by toxic debris following the attacks. There is no evidence she was at the World Trade Center on 9/11, and though Santos has claimed she was a finance executive, public employment records obtained by NBC News list her only known employer as an imports business in Queens that folded in 1994. The Times reported that she once worked as a nurse in Brazil.
Weeks after Santos’s lies were made public, two genealogists found documents showing that his mother was in Brazil in September 2001. In 2003, Fatima Devolder applied for a visa to enter the U.S. In the document, she wrote that she had not been in the country since 1999.
His grandmother was definitely not a Holocaust victim.
In an interview with a conservative podcast in May 2022, Santos said his “grandparents survived the Holocaust,” and his campaign bio claimed that they “fled persecution during WWII.”
“For a lot of people who are descendants of World War II refugees or survivors of the Holocaust, a lot of names and paperwork were changed in name of survival,” Santos told Fox News last year, claiming he had Ukrainian heritage on his mother’s side.
Apparently according to genealogy records reviewed by CNN and the Forward, this did not apply to his family. “There’s no sign of Jewish and/or Ukrainian heritage and no indication of name changes along the way,” genealogist Megan Smolenyak told CNN. Multiple family records show that Santos’s maternal grandparents were born in Brazil. The name is common among Catholic families in Brazil.
Santos’s lies about his family’s connections to the Holocaust did not stop him from delivering remarks on the House floor on January 27 to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day.
And he did not have employees who died in the Pulse shooting.
In an interview with WNYC following his election, Santos said he “lost four employees” in the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016. But the Times found that he lied about yet another historic tragedy: None of the 49 victims at the Orlando club worked at any of the companies he has named in his biographies.
“Jew-ish” or Jewish?
Putting aside Santos’s Holocaust fabrications, the representative has also said a few times over the years that he’s a “conservative Roman Catholic.” On Facebook, his mother posted Catholic prayers and discussed the Virgin Mary. And a priest in Long Island City said that he knows the Santos family well and that they occasionally attended Catholic mass.
“I never claimed to be Jewish,” Santos said in an interview with the Post in which he also copped to his lies about his education. “I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”
In January, Patch also unearthed a Facebook post from Santos from 2011 in which he wrote “hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh hiiiiiiiiiiiitlerrrrrrrrrrr.” A former roommate said that Santos would frequently make anti-Semitic jokes: “He’d always say that it was okay for him to make those jokes because he was Jewish.”
Was he a drag queen in Brazil?
As Santos’s bizarre scandal unfurled, more figures from Santos’s past came forward revealing details about his life — like Brazilian drag queen Eula Rochard, who claims she was friends with Santos in 2005 when he was also performing as a drag queen in the Rio de Janeiro area. According to Reuters, another friend said Santos aspired to be Miss Gay Rio de Janeiro and that he was regularly participating in drag pageants.
NEW: I just spoke by phone with Eula Rochard, a Brazilian drag queen who was friends with George Santos when he lived near Rio. She said everyone knew him as Anthony (*never* George), or by his drag name, Kitara, and confirms this photo is from a 2008 drag show at Icaraí Beach. pic.twitter.com/1MeeDR1O2O
— Marisa Kabas (@MarisaKabas) January 18, 2023
Santos, the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent, initially denied the story on Twitter, saying the story was “categorically false.” Later, as people identified the story was one of the few relatable things Santos has ever done, he stopped contesting it, saying “I had fun at a festival. Sue me for having a life.”
There’s another twist in the drag queen plot line. According to a friend at the time who spoke with Insider, Santos was a supporter of leftist politician Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was just elected president of Brazil.
Was George Santos on Hannah Montana?
Santos’s resumé inflation keeps getting more absurd: A Wikipedia bio for a user named Anthony Devolder claims that, following a successful drag career, he landed roles on Disney Channel shows such as Hannah Montana and Suite Life of Zack & Cody. After his stint in TV, the Santos bio then states that he hit the big screen with a role in a movie called The Invasion starring Uma Thurman — even though Thurman never appeared in a movie under that name.
Was he a Broadway producer?
During his 2022 congressional bid, Santos claimed to some donors that he helped produce Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, a 2011 rock musical revisiting the plot of the first two movies starring Tobey Maguire. As usual with Santos, the timeline doesn’t really make sense: If we were to take his word for it, this would have been at the same time that he was a volleyball star at Baruch College.
The real producers of the play deny the representative’s involvement. But Santos picked a strange play to stake his name on: Turn Off the Dark was a notorious flop that was severely delayed, lost millions of dollars, and resulted in several serious injuries to actors.
And was he really a journalist in Brazil?
In an interview with Curbed, a former roommate said when he lived with the now-congressman back in 2013, Santos would was ” at home all day on his computer, just browsing the web, probably chatting with people.” At the time, he said he was a reporter for the Brazilian media giant Globo. Another former roommate told the Columbia Journalism Review that Santos even claimed to be an “executive” there, which Globo’s director-general of journalism said was a “lie, pure and simple.”
His campaign has reportedly caused a lot of trouble.
After Santos was sworn in, CNBC reported that a campaign staff member named Sam Miele impersonated the chief of staff of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during the 2020 and 2022 cycles to raise money.
‘We were duped’: How George Santos raised money from wealthy GOP donors while lying about his resume
by Brian Schwartz
@SCHWARTZBCNBC
PUBLISHED MON, JAN 9 202310:25 AM ESTUPDATED MON, JAN 9 20236:19 PM EST
KEY POINTS
** George Santos would flaunt or hint at key pieces of his resume that have turned out to be false as he raised money for his successful congressional campaign.
** A Santos campaign fundraiser impersonated Kevin McCarthy’s chief of staff to help raise campaign cash.
** One board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition said he supported Santos in part because of the congressman’s false claim that he was Jewish.
** Santos impressed another donor with his claims that he worked on Wall Street, which firms have no record of him doing.
A member of George Santos’ political team had a plan to raise money for the Republican congressman’s campaign: Impersonate the chief of staff of now House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Wealthy donors received calls and emails from a man who said he was Dan Meyer, McCarthy’s chief of staff, during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles, according to people familiar with the matter. His name was actually Sam Miele, and he worked for Santos raising money for his campaign, according to one GOP donor who contributed to Santos’ campaign. This financier and some others in this story declined to be named in order to speak freely about private discussions.
The impersonation of the top House Republican’s chief of staff adds to an emerging picture of a winning congressional campaign propelled by fabrications and questionable tactics. Santos now finds himself in the sights of investigators and in danger of losing his political career even after he’s been sworn into office. In raising money for his campaign, Santos fed donors the same falsehoods he gave voters, campaign fundraisers and others say.
At private events with GOP donors and political leaders, Santos would flaunt or hint at key parts of his resume that have turned out to be false, according to records and people familiar with the matter. The Republican would also tout his business record that’s now in question, including claims that he worked on Wall Street, as a way to encourage donors to contribute to his campaign, according to financiers and party operatives familiar with the matter.
“We were duped,” said a Republican political strategist close to GOP donors and the leadership of the Republican Jewish Coalition. The group banned Santos from future events after the revelation that the congressman falsely claimed to be Jewish.
The lies and embellishments helped Santos and his allies raise nearly $3 million for his winning 2022 campaign to represent New York’s 3rd District. The donations were spread between Santos’ campaign, a pro-Santos leadership PAC and two joint fundraising committees that were created to bring in money for his campaign, his leadership PAC and the Nassau County Republican Committee, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
Some of the tactics deployed by campaign fundraisers have raised eyebrows among ethics and legal experts. Brendan Fischer, a deputy executive director of the watchdog Documented, and Robert Maguire, a research director at campaign ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, each told CNBC that the impersonation of McCarthy’s chief of staff could have broken the law.
“A person who misrepresented themselves as speaking on behalf of a candidate in order to raise money may have committed a criminal violation, and any other person who knowingly and willfully participated in the plan could also face criminal charges,” Fischer said in an email.
The Washington Times reported last month that one of Santos’ staffers was impersonating Meyer, but didn’t identify who it was. McCarthy’s team first learned about a Santos staffer impersonating the speaker’s chief of staff in August 2021, the Times wrote. The publication said the staffer would call donors pretending to be Meyer and send follow-up emails from a fake address.
Neither Santos nor anyone mentioned in this story has been charged with a crime. Santos’ lawyer would not say when asked whether Santos knew Miele pretended to be McCarthy’s chief of staff.
Santos has said in interviews that he is only guilty of embellishing his resume and never committed any crimes. He has apologized for embellishing his past.
Santos’ attorney, Joe Murray, did not respond to follow-up requests for comment. Calls to Santos’ congressional office were not answered and emails to the incoming lawmaker were not returned.
McCarthy’s spokesman did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Miele also did not respond to repeated calls and emails for comment.
Embellishing his past to donors
Santos had major New York-area donors in his corner during a congressional bid that helped Republicans flip control of the House. John Catsimatidis, a billionaire and founder of the New York grocery chain Gristedes, donated at least $4,650 to the Santos campaign between the primary and general elections, according to FEC records. Catsimatidis, who told CNBC he has no plans to help Santos again if he runs for reelection, also said he had never heard from a purported member of McCarthy’s staff trying to raise money for the Santos campaign.
When asked if he felt duped by Santos’ claims about his past and why he chose to support him in the first place, Catsimatidis only wrote back, “I wait for all the facts.”
Santos also received $2,900 in September from Elliott Management founder Paul Singer, according to the FEC. Groups supporting Santos also saw more than $41,000 in donations during the two-year election cycle from Andrew Intrater, an investor and cousin of Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. Intrater and a representative for Elliott Management did not respond to requests for comment.Andrew Lewis Intrater (born 1962) is an American capital investor. He was rumored to be closely linked to the rise of George Santos, a controversial right-wing congressman of the Republican Party; the NY Times investigated and
Intrater manages the investment firm Sparrow Capital, formerly known as Columbus Nova, which was the American affiliate of the Russian Renova Group, where he also served on the board of directors. Renova Group is owned by Intrater's cousin, the Russian oligarch Victor Vekselberg. Columbus Nova's biggest asset at the time was a controlling stake in CIFC, a publicly-traded company that managed credit investments. Together with Israel's former prime minister Ehud Barak, Intrater was on the board of CIFC. CIFC was sold in 2016 for US$333 million to F.A.B. Partners, an investment vehicle of Qatar's royal family. Vekselberg's assets were frozen due to the economic sanctions against Russia.
He serves on the executive committee of Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation. He holds a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from Rutgers University.
Intrater gained wider public attention in 2023, when it was revealed that he was a major donor to George Santos, a right-wing freshman congressmann of the Republican Party. Santos was later caught lying to the public on multiple occasions, in particular involving his résumé. The Washington Post reported that Santos’s main campaign committee received the maximal individual amount of USD 5,800 from Intrater as well as his wife. On top of that committees with connections to Santos received ”tens of thousands” of Dollars. Intrater's personal holding company invested “hundreds of thousands of Dollars“ into a bond fund run by Santos former employer Harbor City, which was accused by regulators of running a Ponzi scheme. Intrater claims to have been a victim of the fraud.
Intrater had close ties with Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s long time personal lawyer, who received a USD 1,000,000 consulting contract from Intrater’s firm Columbus Nova. Intrater also paid USD 250,000 to attend the inauguration ceremony of Donald Trump. The lawyers of Stormy Daniels believed that he contributed to her hush money payment. Intrater also donated to the campaign of Madison Cawthorn, another right-wing newcomer of the Republican Party.
Intrater was born in New York and raised in New Jersey. His family originates from Drohobych in today's Ukraine. His father was a survivor of the Holocaust. He speaks English, Russian and Polish. His brother Frederick was accused of being involved with alt-right politics after purchasing web domains deemed to have alt-right name connotations, with Frederick explaining he only intended to "flip" them for a profit.
-- Andrew Intrater, by Wikipedia
Santos’ pattern of misrepresenting his biography at times contributed to fundraising success. It extended to falsehoods about his religion.
Santos attended the RJC’s annual leadership meeting in November and claimed there that he was Jewish. Weeks later, he went to an RJC “Hanukkah Party” in Sands Point, New York, according to an invitation to the event and photo that Santos posted on Twitter. The invitation encouraged members known as “RJC Leaders” — who donate at least $1,000 to the larger organization — to attend.
His campaign took even more steps to portray Santos as Jewish. It shared a position paper with Jewish and pro-Israel leaders that called the then-candidate a “proud American Jew,” according to a copy shared by The Forward.
Santos is not Jewish. He recently told the New York Post that he “never claimed to be Jewish. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background, I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”
The RJC is considered the most prominent group of Jewish Republican donors, making gatherings such as the Hanukkah event key networking platforms for politicians. While the Hanukkah party was not a fundraising event, RJC members can donate anywhere between $100 and $25,000 to join the group and attend such gatherings, according to the group’s website.
One RJC board member who donated to Santos’ campaign told CNBC that the Republican’s claims of being Jewish appealed to him. Attorney Eric Levine gave $500 to Santos in May, according to an FEC filing. Levine said he donated to the campaign at the request of a friend.
Levine told CNBC that he later “soured” on Santos after the incoming lawmaker started aligning his views with ultraconservative House members such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. Levine recently wrote in an emailed essay to colleagues that what “Santos did is disgusting. He deserves to be humiliated and held in contempt.”
A spokesman for the RJC pointed CNBC to the group’s recent statement on Santos, which declared “he will not be welcome at any future RJC events.”
At least one other Santos supporter felt compelled to help the campaign based on the candidate’s embellished resume. Charles Vallone told CNBC that he met Santos at a GOP fundraiser, and the candidate impressed him with claims that he worked on Wall Street at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Neither firm has any records that he worked there, according to The New York Times. Spokespeople for both firms declined to comment further.
“I met George at a Republican fundraiser and now looking back with what we know today, [I] unfortunately believed in him and was duped like all others who supported him and believed in his representations,” said Vallone, founding partner at tax and accounting firm Frankel Loughran Starr & Vallone.
He said Santos would speak to supporters and donors “about his financial background and experience on Wall Street. That he was a true immigrant story, coming from nothing and working his way up. ... Now we know that is not the case.”
Vallone gave $17,900 in August between Santos’ campaign, his leadership PAC and a joint fundraising committee, according to FEC records. The Santos campaign also paid $11,000 in August to 33 West Main Street Holdings, a company owned by Vallone, to rent a house in Oyster Bay, New York, for office space, FEC records show. Vallone said he would not rent to the Santos campaign again.
The house includes a one-bedroom apartment that the campaign rented. Vallone said he does not know how the Santos team used the apartment. The FEC prohibits spending campaign funds for personal use, including on rent for a personal residence. No public records could be found to show if Santos or anyone else lived in the residence.
A string of questionable tactics
Santos has come under fire from Democratic lawmakers and some Republican officials for lying about key elements of his resume. Prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York are examining Santos’ finances, including potential irregularities involving financial disclosures and loans Santos made to his campaign while he was running for Congress, according to NBC News.
The nonprofit watchdog Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Santos on Monday, accusing the new lawmaker of violating campaign finance laws in his run for Congress.
Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who was chosen as the next chairman of the House Oversight Committee, recently said on Fox News that he’s “pretty confident” the House Ethics Committee will investigate Santos.
The larger federal probe appears to focus, in part, on a loan of over $700,000 Santos made to his campaign.
The headaches facing the campaign are even broader. The Federal Election Commission flagged more than a dozen donations in letters to the Santos campaign over the course of the 2022 election cycle, including two made by a Chinese immigrant named Cheng Gao, who was a prolific donor to former President Donald Trump’s first presidential run. The commission said it appears Gao exceeded the legal limit for campaign donations, as he gave $11,200 to the Santos campaign during the primary season, records show.
Gao could not be reached for comment.
The odd behavior includes payments to the campaign fundraiser who was said to impersonate McCarthy’s chief of staff on fundraising calls. The campaign paid Sam Miele almost $50,000 for fundraising consulting during Santos’ failed 2020 run for Congress, and over $42,000 during the successful 2022 cycle, FEC records show.
Miele’s payments from the Santos campaign during the 2022 midterms went through an obscure limited liability company called The One57 Group, according to FEC records. Florida business records show that Miele is the manager of the company. The final $5,995 payment to the Miele-led company came in January 2022, according to an FEC filing.
Santos’ lawyer Murray said that Miele’s company was ”let go about a year ago.”
An archived version of the company’s website boasts clients in New York, Washington, Florida and California. Yet, FEC records indicate that the The One57 Group has picked up very few political clients since it was first formed in New Jersey in early 2021.
Republican Tina Forte, who ran unsuccessfully against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., paid The One57 Group $500 in 2021 for what the filing calls “campaign consulting,” according to an FEC filing. A search through federal and state campaign finance records in New York, Florida and California shows that the company has seen only a few payments from any other political operation other than the Santos and Forte campaigns.
The One57 Group received only two payments in 2021 totaling $9,965 from the Rise NY PAC, a GOP-aligned group, according to New York state campaign finance records. Intrater donated $80,000 to the PAC over the course of the 2022 election cycle, state records show.
The payments to The One57 Group are just a fraction of the moves made by the Santos campaign that experts said were, at the very least, bizarre.