George Santos new superseding indictment alleges that he participated in a scheme with his campaign treasurer Nancy Marks to defraud the Republican Party.
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Playlist of Sam Bankman-Fried Trial Coverage:
America’s Top Liar Arrested: George Santos
How to Get Rich Quick with George Santos
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“Loping Sting” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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00:00:00:00 - 00:00:15:22 Bennett Tomlin Hello, everyone, and welcome back to my personal channel where we remember that the powerful are to blame. I know I've been gone for a while and that I'm late to this story and I'm going to say is go watch all the great coverage of the Sam Bankman-Fried trial that I've been hosting and editing over on Crypto Critic's Corner. 00:00:16:00 - 00:00:38:01 Bennett Tomlin But today we are once again talking about my favorite congressman, drag queen Ponzi schemer George Santos. A new superseding indictment has been filed which alleges that George Santos did a bunch more crimes, including a scheme to steal from the Republican Party, a scheme to steal from his campaign donors, and he even fucked over his family. 00:00:41:19 - 00:00:42:22 Bennett Tomlin The scheme involving him 00:00:42:22 - 00:01:11:12 Bennett Tomlin defrauding his donors involved him taking personal and credit card info from donors and charging their credit cards repeatedly, then pretending those donations were actually coming from his family. The indictment specifically alleges that George Santos texted his campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, a list of family members of himself. And Nancy, along with how much to pretend each one donated. And this information was added to their 2021 year end report to the Federal Election Committee. 00:01:11:14 - 00:01:17:09 Bennett Tomlin Besides these utterly fake donations, there was a separate scheme to repeatedly charge actual donors. 00:01:17:09 - 00:01:27:17 Bennett Tomlin Some of these donations put contributors above their legal maximum. And so Santos falsely attributed these donations to family members instead of from the cards they were actually from. 00:01:27:19 - 00:01:38:07 Bennett Tomlin Besides sending these donations to his campaign, George allegedly also sent them to his personal bank account, I believe related to the previously discussed designer clothing and paying off credit card debt. 00:01:38:07 - 00:01:50:17 Bennett Tomlin What's funny is that George Santos’ former roommate, told the FBI that back in college, Santos was the mastermind of an ATM skimming scheme where they charged credit cards that they stole from an ATM. 00:01:50:17 - 00:02:13:19 Bennett Tomlin I talked to the previous episode about how George Santos was being charged literally unbelievable fees by WinRed the fundraising platform for Republicans. Santos campaign had filings where they claimed they had raised $800,000 through Winred, an amount which should have resulted in about $33,000 in fees, but at the time inexplicably resulted in $200,000 in fees. 00:02:13:19 - 00:02:15:22 Bennett Tomlin I now believe that I have figured out what happened here. 00:02:16:03 - 00:02:37:03 Bennett Tomlin Credit Card Chargebacks. Credit card chargebacks are where if your credit card is fraudulently charged, you have a window to open a dispute and your card processor will reclaim the funds. I think much of this 200 K in fees was actually chargebacks. And rather than reduce the apparent amount raised, it was better for them to be classified as extraordinarily high fees. 00:02:37:05 - 00:03:00:11 Bennett Tomlin What's fascinating is that Tina Forte, the QAnon conspiracy theorist, former congressional candidate and client for Santos’ firm Red Strategies USA, had a very similar experience, and like Santos, attempted to lay the blame at the feet of Nancy Marks, Santos's campaign treasurer who has already pleaded guilty to felonies. However, that's going to be a little bit harder now that Santos has been explicitly indicted for it. 00:03:00:16 - 00:03:04:08 Bennett Tomlin And they have these text messages between Santos and Marks. 00:03:04:08 - 00:03:09:19 Bennett Tomlin Now, let's talk about how this related to George Santos stealing from the Republican Party. 00:03:13:13 - 00:03:25:16 Bennett Tomlin George Santos is alleged scheme to steal from the Republican Party is one of the more clever schemes that he was a participant in. You see, when a campaign starts fundraising well, the Republican Party starts providing funds to the campaigns to help them. 00:03:25:16 - 00:03:48:19 Bennett Tomlin George Santos and his treasurer, Nancy Marks, who was previously indicted and has already pleaded guilty, allegedly came up with a scheme to get those funds from the Republican Party. They submitted those fraudulent donations in the year in 2021 report we already talked about, which meant they qualified in the beginning of 2022. February 23rd, 2022. Santos texted Marks excitedly to let her know that they had made it. 00:03:49:01 - 00:04:08:11 Bennett Tomlin They had hit the contribution level required. However, they wanted to stay in the program and hit the higher levels for it. We've talked on this channel before about the loan from the Devolder Organization run by George Santos to the Santos campaign. And at the time I was confused because Santos should not have had enough money to make the loan. 00:04:08:13 - 00:04:15:05 Bennett Tomlin And, well, it turns out he did not have the money. They allegedly faked it and submitted it to the Federal Election Committee. 00:04:15:05 - 00:04:30:09 Bennett Tomlin So what happened is they faked this $500,000 loan from the Devolder Organization to the campaign for George Santos. The Republican Party sees this and notes that Satnos' campaign is now eligible for some funds from the National Party and starts providing support to his campaign. 00:04:30:11 - 00:04:57:17 Bennett Tomlin So he fake $500,000 loan becomes actual money from the actual Republican Party. The end result of these schemes is that George Santos was able to steal funds allegedly from the Republican Party in order to help his campaign by lying about these finances. Now, before you feel bad for the GOP, I do want to remind you that a New York Times report details how at least some Republican figures knew he was a liar before it was broadly reported. 00:04:57:19 - 00:05:18:05 Bennett Tomlin The report says that the head of the House Republican super PAC did not believe in him. Some of his own vendors recommended he drop out. And other key New York figures in the Republican Party regularly expressed concerns to each other about Santos. Allegedly, even Dan Canston a friend of Kevin McCarthy, told many people he was worried Santos would be exposed as a fraud. 00:05:18:07 - 00:05:28:07 Bennett Tomlin That is to say, if you're pretty sure someone is a fraud, it's hard for me to feel bad for you when it turns out that you personally gave the person you thought was a fraud, a bunch of money.
