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Who Is Rep.-Elect George Santos? His Résumé May Be Largely Fiction

158 points by jonahbenton 4y ago

voakbasda 4y ago
A politician that lies? Say it ain’t so! Seriously though, this is the status quo until someone starts to hold such people accountable for their lies. This does not happen nearly enough. If our leaders cannot be bothered to tell the truth, what effect do you think that has on society? Personally, I have seen a huge rise in dishonest behavior in my lifetime, and I blame the lack of integrity from the leaders in government, business, sports, and pretty much everything everywhere. If the fish rots from the head, then we should be taking a page from the French Revolution: off with their heads!
- brianwawok 4y ago
  Do you have any proof that there is more dishonest vs more global news access to dishonest behavior? I think humans have been pretty crooked forever. Just easier to hear about it now.
  - voakbasda 4y ago
    I have only my own life experiences. It is entirely possible that my eyes have opened wider as I have aged, and I am starting to see things as they have always been. However, we are historically at the highest population in history, which means that - if the number of sociopaths is a relatively fixed percentage of the population - that there are many many more in terms of absolute numbers. There is much more competition for the top slots, which have not grown at a similar rate as our population. In other words, I also think their effect on society has been getting worse over time.
    - brianwawok 4y ago
      The robber barons did a pretty bad job on society. As did the meat packers in the jungle.
- boeingUH60 4y ago
  Not American...but it's the same thing in my country, and most sensible voters seem to have given up. There's something about political power that seems to attract the scummiest of people even if there are enough competent people capable of leading...But then, mine is a third-world country, funny to see this happening in America and European countries increasingly (I thought it was only us :) At this point, I may not mind living under a competent king instead of a democratic clownfest.
  - davidw 4y ago
    The "they're all the same" mentality rewards the worst politicians who lie a lot compared with ones who are mostly trying to do the right thing, and perhaps get a bit over-optimistic or something at times. I lived in Italy for a number of years, and the cynicism there about politicians was something I really disliked. It makes you look like you're wise and "in the know", but it sets the bar really low for a job that's pretty important to get right, and where we ought to expect better.
  - sharikous 4y ago
    > There's something about political power that seems to attract the scummiest of people even if there are enough competent people capable of leading But that is a simple law. If there are not heavy (legal, cultural) constraints and scummy behavior can get more power rewards than honest behavior (which is often the case, especially for quick power grabs), then rather reasonably any honest politician will be displaced by a dishonest one. The only limits are cultural. And even them are based on the fact that in our time a country with a functioning legal system and democratic rulers tends to thrive more than a dark tyrannical regime so the cake itself is bigger.
- Clent 4y ago
  The internet has allowed politics to turn into a team sport. When the concern is only about the team, faults are easily glossed over. Changing it into a game, allows game theory to take over people's minds and suddenly there is no behavior too outrageous because the belief becomes that the other guys would have done it if they had thought of it first. Then very quickly the politicians that hold themselves accountable have been replaced with those who do not and a new norm is formed.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    That shit began way before the Internet. The 2nd Iraq war was just the same in European public discourse, thankfully Schröder chose to rather annoy the US than drag us in this clusterfuck.
    - mindslight 4y ago
      Speaking of the 2nd Iraq War, I've got to wonder how differently current events would be playing out had the US not invaded Iraq in 2003. Doing so burnt so much of the US's credibility, both foreign and domestic. For the last twenty years, my own view has basically been "having a military so large is a liability if it will just be taken advantage of by special interests to do terrible things". The world was basically peaceful, at least on the large scale. Now with Putin's genocidal conquest, I've been forced to resign myself to the idea that the overly hegemonic military is apparently necessary, and having it led by a government that at least acknowledges some productive higher values is not to be taken for granted. But that's a quick pivot, and not how politics works at all.
    - Clent 4y ago
      I didn't say social media. I said internet. The internet predates both Iraq wars.
- djmips 4y ago
  There's lies and then there's having an entirely fictitious life story.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    And we shouldn't normalize either. This is really bad. Whoever voted for him deserves a chance to have an informed vote - because democracy only works with a well informed electorate.
- sanderjd 4y ago
  For about the last 7 years, I have felt like having a single word - "lie" - cover such a wide range of deceptions has been weaponized to push back on peoples' innate (and accurate) sense that some lies are much worse than others. The "politicians lie" truism is meant to apply to campaign promises that candidates make knowing that they can't or won't even try to accomplish them. This manufacture of wholesale fictions by con artists and wanna be dictators is not the same thing, and is not actually at all common among politicians in the US historically or currently. Claims that these people are not so bad because they are just like any other politician are inaccurate and toxic. They are critical to the con succeeding.
Tangurena2 4y ago
Archive link: https://archive.ph/1aJ7S https://archive.ph/1aJ7S
jfk13 4y ago
Is this simply our beloved "fake it till you make it" ethos at work again?
- pnut 4y ago
  It strikes me as half "fake it", and half "giving the people what they want". American (and maybe other?) political parties are in the business of creative storytelling as a means to the ends of their special interests. They do sleight of hand with their political platforms, why not also with their disposable hired actors? The part I find amazing about situations like this, is the default starting position of "it's American politics, things you'd normally go to jail for, are structurally unenforceable here".
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    > American (and maybe other?) political parties are in the business of creative storytelling as a means to the ends of their special interests. This should never be allowed.
    - notjulianjaynes 4y ago
      I don't know quite what you mean by "should," but of course it does happen, and I can't imagine a world where it doesn't. Them's the breaks. See:Kenneth Burke's definition of man: "Man is the symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal, inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative), separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order), and rotten with perfection"[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_man
      - rbanffy 4y ago
        > and I can't imagine a world where it doesn't. We have to start somewhere.
- rchaud 4y ago
blinding-streak 4y ago
Small time grifter who is working extremely hard to become a big time grifter.
- magic_man 4y ago
  Surprised his opponent or his party didn't do some vetting. the gop only has a very small majority. If this came out before, it could have cost them. Seems like he lied about everything on his background.
  - eclipticplane 4y ago
    The New York Democrats basically checked out for this election. Had they not, the Democrats may have retained control.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - analog31 4y ago
    They did. It's called opposition research. Every well run campaign or major party does it. They knew.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    The party that opposed him ran a literal dead person for a house seat in another state, and the dead guy won. It wasn't even unusual - several dead people have won elections. I'm pretty sure I saw a poll that showed that most voters didn't know he was dead. I doubt it would have affected him much if his fraud were exposed.
    - timmytokyo 4y ago
      Not sure why this is being downvoted. In 2000 Mel Carnahan won a US Senate seat in Missouri despite having died 3 weeks earlier in a plane crash. His wife Jean was appointed by the governer to serve until the next special election could be held.
Finnucane 4y ago
Maybe they should have looked into it before the election.
- sct202 4y ago
  The NY Dems must be horribly dysfunctional if they could not find even a fraction of this info before the election.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    Institutions only perform as well as they have to. For the NY democratic party (or any other party in a similarly lopsided state) the bar is not exactly high due to the makeup of the state. Parties in states where the elections are routinely more contested tend to spend more effort vetting their candidates and running candidates that aren't trash.
    - triceratops 4y ago
      That makes sense in theory...but the trash candidate here was a Republican, in a Democratic-majority state. It would be logical for Democrats to be complacent about candidate quality in this situtation. Republicans should be trying to run high-quality candidates because they're the underdog and need to work harder to win.
  - aschearer 4y ago
    The NY Repubs must be horribly dysfunctional if they could not find a candidate better than this. This is who they want representing them? You'd think the party machine would follow up on references before letting someone so dishonest represent them.
    - mbg721 4y ago
      Republicans have never been very good at machine-politics; their voters largely believe it shouldn't exist, but it has to exist in order for them to win, so you get sausage-makers like McConnell (who everybody hates) running everything.
Xylakant 4y ago
Fun fact: There’s an entirely fictitious member of the German parliament, since 1979 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Maria_Mierscheid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Maria_Mierscheid The guy even used to be present on the Bundestag website and in public marketing material.
- danielvf 4y ago
  That was a fun read, but I can't find him on the Bundestag's website under the official list of members. https://www.bundestag.de/en/members https://www.bundestag.de/en/members Did I miss it?
  - Xylakant 4y ago
    The English Wikipedia article is outdated - he‘s no longer officially listed. Some spoilsports took the joke for real and were complaining or something like that. I believe he was never listed in the English/French version. I happen to know about this because a company I worked for produced a media DVD for the parliament back in the days and this guy was included.
rchaud 4y ago
So, in summary: - Lied about completing a Bachelor's degree - Lied about working at Goldman Sachs - Has an open check fraud case in Brazil from 2008 - Voted in as Congressman for Long Island And to think of all the times I agonized over making sure every item in my resume/CV was 100% accurate, verifiable and spell-checked.
- clooneyfan 4y ago
  Sounds like he’s on his way to a successful career in politics
  - rchaud 4y ago
    The old guard takes their legacy admit Ivy League degrees seriously, so I think he'll be quietly pushed out.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - hgsgm 4y ago
      [dead]
    - ryanmcbride 4y ago
      Time has shown that the only thing the old guard takes seriously is their own money. I'm betting the worst he gets is a stern talking to and a few disapproving looks. I'd love to be wrong about that.
- burkaman 4y ago
  - Lied about being either Jewish or Catholic (or both?)
  - WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
    > Lied about being either Jewish or Catholic (or both?) It's plausible his mother was an ethnic Jew. However, given his unverifiable history, an outright fabrication seems more likely.
curiousllama 4y ago
The bigger thing here, I think, is that what NYT could verify was: (1) He was a low-level finance guy, making ~55k/year, with a criminal background in Brazil (2) He got a jr exec job at a company that turned out to be a ponzi scheme (3) When the ponzi went bust, a bunch of the former execs started a new company. That company paid him between $750k-$5 million, depending which (contradictory) disclosure of his you believe. (4) Shortly afterwards, he began running for Congress Raises more Qs than answers, but seems like the type of thing where there'll be a follow-up
- thereddaikon 4y ago
  Sounds par for the course when it comes to new york politicians.
  - mbg721 4y ago
    Sounds par for the course when congressmen are voted in to tip national party balance rather than on personal, local issues. People talk about how our republic is sick because there's somehow too little democracy, but really it's sick because every local school board vote could push 350M people over a razor's edge.
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      This state of affairs is predicated on the power the federal government has to influence people's lives and livelihoods. When the feds can take away your abortion or your guns and create and destroy entire industries with the stroke of a pen it should come as no surprise that people elect based on party platform rather than choosing politicians who they think will actually represent their interests.
      - Retric 4y ago
        Except you better protect both your parties interests and your own when you maintain some minimal standards. The number of Republicans who where willing to vote for Trump in the first election but not the second cost them the second election. That’s a common pattern where electing people you don’t like ends up weakening the party long term. I am not saying you need to love everyone you vote for, but for people who are “holding their nose” you have to consider both short term and long term effects. To use a Democratic example, Biden is likely to be dead weight going in the 2024 election.
ElfinTrousers 4y ago
If my employer found out that I'd claimed a college degree I hadn't earned, and that my work history was largely fiction, they'd fire me immediately, and they'd be right to do so. Then again, I'm not a politician, I work for a living.
- russh 4y ago
  If it’s good enough for office of the President of the United States.
Yoric 4y ago
So, that's undoubtedly bad... but how is this HN material?
- rbanffy 4y ago
  I think governance is a theme we appreciate, and how to weed out people like him from public life is an interesting problem to solve.
drumhead 4y ago
Where's the money coming from? Is he funded by a foreign governent seeking to have an operative inside congress? A criminal organisation? Or a rich patron? I'd like to think the FBI would be checking up on him after the NYT story.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  Looks like the money was paid for his stint at a Ponzi scheme.
rbanffy 4y ago
We really, really need to make it a criminal offense to lie under circumstances like these.
- krapp 4y ago
  That would seem to be a violation of the First Amendment, and a tempting way for a corrupt party who controls the police to criminalize speech that contradicts their platform and narrative. Like it or not, allowing politicians to lie is the least worst option. The solution is for voters and the free press to hold them accountable, rather than in essence expecting government to police itself.
  - elf25 4y ago
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    > contradicts their platform and narrative. There is, however, an objective truth that can be verified independently of whatever "narrative" is being pushed. And don't forget once that "narrative" being pushed is verified false, it also becomes a misrepresentation of facts.
- ViViDboarder 4y ago
  Fraud is already criminal.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    Fraud is limited to lying in specific circumstances. For political figures, the deliberate misrepresentation of truth is currently a tool and that should not be allowed, since democracy relies on a well informed and educated electorate.
- oxfeed65261 4y ago
  Lying on financial disclosures is a criminal offense, but difficult to enforce. FTA: > Material omissions or misrepresentations on personal financial disclosures are considered a federal crime under the False Statements Act, which carries a maximum penalty of $250,000 and five years in prison. But the bar for these cases is high, given that the statute requires violations to be “knowing and willful.” Note that this does not apply to things like lying about college or previous employers, only to financial disclosures. House of Representatives ethics penalties may also apply. FTA: > The House of Representatives has several internal mechanisms for investigating ethics violations, issuing civil or administrative penalties when it does. Those bodies tend to act largely in egregious cases, particularly if the behavior took place before the member was inaugurated.
mavelikara 4y ago
https://archive.vn/hsXht https://archive.vn/hsXht
jeffbee 4y ago
Independent national political reporter Josh Marshall, editor and publisher of Talking Points Memo, had this guy's number over a year ago, pointing out that many details of his supposed life story are nonsense. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/curious-george/sharetoken/7IBYMJ1lcscp https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/curious-george/sharetok...
no_wizard 4y ago
While I upfront admit that there are fact checks involved, things that need to be checked, evidence to gather, however, where was this reporting during the election season? Wouldn't it have benefited the public to have run this story before election was over? I get you can't time a story always, but I feel like so many stories like this break after the person achieves some sort of position of note. Then again, maybe they only started investigating congress persons because they won elections, and this is the post win rake in action?
- baking 4y ago
  Where was the opposition research? The opponent can feed stuff they find to the friendly press.
  - no_wizard 4y ago
    There's a lot of talk to suggest the opposition didn't have it together in New York, not doing even basic due diligence on opponents. Not sure if this is the actual case or perhaps they felt, as a party, this race wasn't worth putting energy into. Not every race gets the same scrutiny by the opposition due to things like limited funding, probability of losing etc. You're right though, you'd think they'd have enough funding to handle this nation wide in every race, but alas, maybe not.
    - kemayo 4y ago
      There seemed to be a fair amount of surprise at how well Republicans did in NY this year. I'd certainly believe that the Democratic establishment was overconfident and didn't think they needed to dig too hard on people in one of their stronghold areas...
  - rpenm 4y ago
    The opposition pointed out his shady personal finances and ponzi stuff publicly, months before the election. Press apparently weren't interested at the time.
- sbuttgereit 4y ago
pixel_tracing 4y ago
So what are we going to do about this? I mean yes it’s wrong, now what?
- nradov 4y ago
  The House of Representatives can expel a member with a 2/3 vote. Beyond that, not much can be done until the next election.
miguelazo 4y ago
Sad comment on the state of American journalism (especially local) that this wasn't discovered until now...
- michaelgrosner2 4y ago
  You blame journalists of all people? How about him, does he have agency? How about the GOP (I suppose not, putting up con artists seems par for the course)? How about the NY Democratic party for doing zero opposition research? Not to mention there were quite prominent journalists like Josh Marshall raising red flags about this guy all last year. https://twitter.com/joshtpm https://twitter.com/joshtpm
  - danesparza 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers#United_S... It sounds like this is starting to catch up with us ...
  - miguelazo 4y ago
    We should all expect candidates to be dishonest. And that's by far the most appropriate posture for journalists. I agree that the state party is crap, which is precisely how they lost so many House seats. https://www.democracynow.org/2022/11/10/congress_midterm_elections_republicans_flip_seats https://www.democracynow.org/2022/11/10/congress_midterm_ele...
chrisbrandow 4y ago
Really frustrating that this wasn’t discovered prior to the election. But without a better source of revenue for local news, I’m sure lots of things like this go uncovered in a timely fashion.
WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
Some of this is damning in a fairly sickening way. The starting point seems understandable: > In November 2015, a landlord in the Whitestone neighborhood of Queens filed an eviction suit in housing court accusing Mr. Santos of owing $2,250 in unpaid rent. > In May 2017, ... Mr. Santos’s landlord accused him of owing more than $10,000 in rent ... and said ... one of his tenant’s checks had bounced. Okay. Poverty can catch folks out. I can imagine how he got into that situation. But then this: > early 2021, ... Mr. Santos said on Twitter that he was a landlord affected by the freeze. "Will we landlords ever be able to take back possession of our property?" > Mr. Santos said that he and his family had not been paid rent on their 13 properties in nearly a year, adding that he had offered rental assistance to some tenants, but found that some were "flat out taking advantage of the situation." > But Mr. Santos has not listed properties in New York on required financial disclosure forms ... Property records databases ... did not show any documents or deeds associated with him. I can at least understand heartlessness from ignorance but this. He practically narrates his own story but then reboots it so that he's the victimized landlord (over seemingly fictitious tenants). I couldn't generate enough contempt to properly cover the sheer volume of his disingenuousness.
aschearer 4y ago
A bunch of people in this thread are blaming the Democrats. Why aren't we blaming the Republicans? They fielded this candidate. Or the voters? They elected a dishonest candidate. Others have pointed out this information was available for those who had access to Google. What happened to personal responsibility?
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
Voter fraud isn't the voters, it's the candidates.

158 points by jonahbenton 4y ago

A politician that lies? Say it ain’t so! Seriously though, this is the status quo until someone starts to hold such people accountable for their lies. This does not happen nearly enough. If our leaders cannot be bothered to tell the truth, what effect do you think that has on society? Personally, I have seen a huge rise in dishonest behavior in my lifetime, and I blame the lack of integrity from the leaders in government, business, sports, and pretty much everything everywhere. If the fish rots from the head, then we should be taking a page from the French Revolution: off with their heads!

brianwawok 4y ago
Do you have any proof that there is more dishonest vs more global news access to dishonest behavior? I think humans have been pretty crooked forever. Just easier to hear about it now.
- voakbasda 4y ago
  I have only my own life experiences. It is entirely possible that my eyes have opened wider as I have aged, and I am starting to see things as they have always been. However, we are historically at the highest population in history, which means that - if the number of sociopaths is a relatively fixed percentage of the population - that there are many many more in terms of absolute numbers. There is much more competition for the top slots, which have not grown at a similar rate as our population. In other words, I also think their effect on society has been getting worse over time.
  - brianwawok 4y ago
    The robber barons did a pretty bad job on society. As did the meat packers in the jungle.
boeingUH60 4y ago
Not American...but it's the same thing in my country, and most sensible voters seem to have given up. There's something about political power that seems to attract the scummiest of people even if there are enough competent people capable of leading...But then, mine is a third-world country, funny to see this happening in America and European countries increasingly (I thought it was only us :) At this point, I may not mind living under a competent king instead of a democratic clownfest.
- davidw 4y ago
  The "they're all the same" mentality rewards the worst politicians who lie a lot compared with ones who are mostly trying to do the right thing, and perhaps get a bit over-optimistic or something at times. I lived in Italy for a number of years, and the cynicism there about politicians was something I really disliked. It makes you look like you're wise and "in the know", but it sets the bar really low for a job that's pretty important to get right, and where we ought to expect better.
- sharikous 4y ago
  > There's something about political power that seems to attract the scummiest of people even if there are enough competent people capable of leading But that is a simple law. If there are not heavy (legal, cultural) constraints and scummy behavior can get more power rewards than honest behavior (which is often the case, especially for quick power grabs), then rather reasonably any honest politician will be displaced by a dishonest one. The only limits are cultural. And even them are based on the fact that in our time a country with a functioning legal system and democratic rulers tends to thrive more than a dark tyrannical regime so the cake itself is bigger.
Clent 4y ago
The internet has allowed politics to turn into a team sport. When the concern is only about the team, faults are easily glossed over. Changing it into a game, allows game theory to take over people's minds and suddenly there is no behavior too outrageous because the belief becomes that the other guys would have done it if they had thought of it first. Then very quickly the politicians that hold themselves accountable have been replaced with those who do not and a new norm is formed.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  That shit began way before the Internet. The 2nd Iraq war was just the same in European public discourse, thankfully Schröder chose to rather annoy the US than drag us in this clusterfuck.
  - mindslight 4y ago
    Speaking of the 2nd Iraq War, I've got to wonder how differently current events would be playing out had the US not invaded Iraq in 2003. Doing so burnt so much of the US's credibility, both foreign and domestic. For the last twenty years, my own view has basically been "having a military so large is a liability if it will just be taken advantage of by special interests to do terrible things". The world was basically peaceful, at least on the large scale. Now with Putin's genocidal conquest, I've been forced to resign myself to the idea that the overly hegemonic military is apparently necessary, and having it led by a government that at least acknowledges some productive higher values is not to be taken for granted. But that's a quick pivot, and not how politics works at all.
  - Clent 4y ago
    I didn't say social media. I said internet. The internet predates both Iraq wars.
djmips 4y ago
There's lies and then there's having an entirely fictitious life story.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  And we shouldn't normalize either. This is really bad. Whoever voted for him deserves a chance to have an informed vote - because democracy only works with a well informed electorate.
sanderjd 4y ago
For about the last 7 years, I have felt like having a single word - "lie" - cover such a wide range of deceptions has been weaponized to push back on peoples' innate (and accurate) sense that some lies are much worse than others. The "politicians lie" truism is meant to apply to campaign promises that candidates make knowing that they can't or won't even try to accomplish them. This manufacture of wholesale fictions by con artists and wanna be dictators is not the same thing, and is not actually at all common among politicians in the US historically or currently. Claims that these people are not so bad because they are just like any other politician are inaccurate and toxic. They are critical to the con succeeding.

Tangurena2 4y ago

Archive link: https://archive.ph/1aJ7S https://archive.ph/1aJ7S

jfk13 4y ago

Is this simply our beloved "fake it till you make it" ethos at work again?

pnut 4y ago
It strikes me as half "fake it", and half "giving the people what they want". American (and maybe other?) political parties are in the business of creative storytelling as a means to the ends of their special interests. They do sleight of hand with their political platforms, why not also with their disposable hired actors? The part I find amazing about situations like this, is the default starting position of "it's American politics, things you'd normally go to jail for, are structurally unenforceable here".
- rbanffy 4y ago
  > American (and maybe other?) political parties are in the business of creative storytelling as a means to the ends of their special interests. This should never be allowed.
  - notjulianjaynes 4y ago
    I don't know quite what you mean by "should," but of course it does happen, and I can't imagine a world where it doesn't. Them's the breaks. See:Kenneth Burke's definition of man: "Man is the symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal, inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative), separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order), and rotten with perfection"[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_man
    - rbanffy 4y ago
      > and I can't imagine a world where it doesn't. We have to start somewhere.
rchaud 4y ago

blinding-streak 4y ago

Small time grifter who is working extremely hard to become a big time grifter.

magic_man 4y ago
Surprised his opponent or his party didn't do some vetting. the gop only has a very small majority. If this came out before, it could have cost them. Seems like he lied about everything on his background.
- eclipticplane 4y ago
  The New York Democrats basically checked out for this election. Had they not, the Democrats may have retained control.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- analog31 4y ago
  They did. It's called opposition research. Every well run campaign or major party does it. They knew.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  The party that opposed him ran a literal dead person for a house seat in another state, and the dead guy won. It wasn't even unusual - several dead people have won elections. I'm pretty sure I saw a poll that showed that most voters didn't know he was dead. I doubt it would have affected him much if his fraud were exposed.
  - timmytokyo 4y ago
    Not sure why this is being downvoted. In 2000 Mel Carnahan won a US Senate seat in Missouri despite having died 3 weeks earlier in a plane crash. His wife Jean was appointed by the governer to serve until the next special election could be held.

Finnucane 4y ago

Maybe they should have looked into it before the election.

sct202 4y ago
The NY Dems must be horribly dysfunctional if they could not find even a fraction of this info before the election.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Institutions only perform as well as they have to. For the NY democratic party (or any other party in a similarly lopsided state) the bar is not exactly high due to the makeup of the state. Parties in states where the elections are routinely more contested tend to spend more effort vetting their candidates and running candidates that aren't trash.
  - triceratops 4y ago
    That makes sense in theory...but the trash candidate here was a Republican, in a Democratic-majority state. It would be logical for Democrats to be complacent about candidate quality in this situtation. Republicans should be trying to run high-quality candidates because they're the underdog and need to work harder to win.
- aschearer 4y ago
  The NY Repubs must be horribly dysfunctional if they could not find a candidate better than this. This is who they want representing them? You'd think the party machine would follow up on references before letting someone so dishonest represent them.
  - mbg721 4y ago
    Republicans have never been very good at machine-politics; their voters largely believe it shouldn't exist, but it has to exist in order for them to win, so you get sausage-makers like McConnell (who everybody hates) running everything.

Xylakant 4y ago

Fun fact: There’s an entirely fictitious member of the German parliament, since 1979 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Maria_Mierscheid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Maria_Mierscheid The guy even used to be present on the Bundestag website and in public marketing material.

danielvf 4y ago
That was a fun read, but I can't find him on the Bundestag's website under the official list of members. https://www.bundestag.de/en/members https://www.bundestag.de/en/members Did I miss it?
- Xylakant 4y ago
  The English Wikipedia article is outdated - he‘s no longer officially listed. Some spoilsports took the joke for real and were complaining or something like that. I believe he was never listed in the English/French version. I happen to know about this because a company I worked for produced a media DVD for the parliament back in the days and this guy was included.

rchaud 4y ago

So, in summary: - Lied about completing a Bachelor's degree - Lied about working at Goldman Sachs - Has an open check fraud case in Brazil from 2008 - Voted in as Congressman for Long Island And to think of all the times I agonized over making sure every item in my resume/CV was 100% accurate, verifiable and spell-checked.

clooneyfan 4y ago
Sounds like he’s on his way to a successful career in politics
- rchaud 4y ago
  The old guard takes their legacy admit Ivy League degrees seriously, so I think he'll be quietly pushed out.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    [dead]
  - ryanmcbride 4y ago
    Time has shown that the only thing the old guard takes seriously is their own money. I'm betting the worst he gets is a stern talking to and a few disapproving looks. I'd love to be wrong about that.
burkaman 4y ago
- Lied about being either Jewish or Catholic (or both?)
- WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  > Lied about being either Jewish or Catholic (or both?) It's plausible his mother was an ethnic Jew. However, given his unverifiable history, an outright fabrication seems more likely.

curiousllama 4y ago

The bigger thing here, I think, is that what NYT could verify was: (1) He was a low-level finance guy, making ~55k/year, with a criminal background in Brazil (2) He got a jr exec job at a company that turned out to be a ponzi scheme (3) When the ponzi went bust, a bunch of the former execs started a new company. That company paid him between $750k-$5 million, depending which (contradictory) disclosure of his you believe. (4) Shortly afterwards, he began running for Congress Raises more Qs than answers, but seems like the type of thing where there'll be a follow-up

thereddaikon 4y ago
Sounds par for the course when it comes to new york politicians.
- mbg721 4y ago
  Sounds par for the course when congressmen are voted in to tip national party balance rather than on personal, local issues. People talk about how our republic is sick because there's somehow too little democracy, but really it's sick because every local school board vote could push 350M people over a razor's edge.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    This state of affairs is predicated on the power the federal government has to influence people's lives and livelihoods. When the feds can take away your abortion or your guns and create and destroy entire industries with the stroke of a pen it should come as no surprise that people elect based on party platform rather than choosing politicians who they think will actually represent their interests.
    - Retric 4y ago
      Except you better protect both your parties interests and your own when you maintain some minimal standards. The number of Republicans who where willing to vote for Trump in the first election but not the second cost them the second election. That’s a common pattern where electing people you don’t like ends up weakening the party long term. I am not saying you need to love everyone you vote for, but for people who are “holding their nose” you have to consider both short term and long term effects. To use a Democratic example, Biden is likely to be dead weight going in the 2024 election.

ElfinTrousers 4y ago

If my employer found out that I'd claimed a college degree I hadn't earned, and that my work history was largely fiction, they'd fire me immediately, and they'd be right to do so. Then again, I'm not a politician, I work for a living.

russh 4y ago
If it’s good enough for office of the President of the United States.

Yoric 4y ago

So, that's undoubtedly bad... but how is this HN material?

rbanffy 4y ago
I think governance is a theme we appreciate, and how to weed out people like him from public life is an interesting problem to solve.

drumhead 4y ago

Where's the money coming from? Is he funded by a foreign governent seeking to have an operative inside congress? A criminal organisation? Or a rich patron? I'd like to think the FBI would be checking up on him after the NYT story.

rbanffy 4y ago
Looks like the money was paid for his stint at a Ponzi scheme.

rbanffy 4y ago

We really, really need to make it a criminal offense to lie under circumstances like these.

krapp 4y ago
That would seem to be a violation of the First Amendment, and a tempting way for a corrupt party who controls the police to criminalize speech that contradicts their platform and narrative. Like it or not, allowing politicians to lie is the least worst option. The solution is for voters and the free press to hold them accountable, rather than in essence expecting government to police itself.
- elf25 4y ago
- rbanffy 4y ago
  > contradicts their platform and narrative. There is, however, an objective truth that can be verified independently of whatever "narrative" is being pushed. And don't forget once that "narrative" being pushed is verified false, it also becomes a misrepresentation of facts.
ViViDboarder 4y ago
Fraud is already criminal.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  Fraud is limited to lying in specific circumstances. For political figures, the deliberate misrepresentation of truth is currently a tool and that should not be allowed, since democracy relies on a well informed and educated electorate.
oxfeed65261 4y ago
Lying on financial disclosures is a criminal offense, but difficult to enforce. FTA: > Material omissions or misrepresentations on personal financial disclosures are considered a federal crime under the False Statements Act, which carries a maximum penalty of $250,000 and five years in prison. But the bar for these cases is high, given that the statute requires violations to be “knowing and willful.” Note that this does not apply to things like lying about college or previous employers, only to financial disclosures. House of Representatives ethics penalties may also apply. FTA: > The House of Representatives has several internal mechanisms for investigating ethics violations, issuing civil or administrative penalties when it does. Those bodies tend to act largely in egregious cases, particularly if the behavior took place before the member was inaugurated.

mavelikara 4y ago

https://archive.vn/hsXht https://archive.vn/hsXht

jeffbee 4y ago

Independent national political reporter Josh Marshall, editor and publisher of Talking Points Memo, had this guy's number over a year ago, pointing out that many details of his supposed life story are nonsense. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/curious-george/sharetoken/7IBYMJ1lcscp https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/curious-george/sharetok...

no_wizard 4y ago

While I upfront admit that there are fact checks involved, things that need to be checked, evidence to gather, however, where was this reporting during the election season? Wouldn't it have benefited the public to have run this story before election was over? I get you can't time a story always, but I feel like so many stories like this break after the person achieves some sort of position of note. Then again, maybe they only started investigating congress persons because they won elections, and this is the post win rake in action?

baking 4y ago
Where was the opposition research? The opponent can feed stuff they find to the friendly press.
- no_wizard 4y ago
  There's a lot of talk to suggest the opposition didn't have it together in New York, not doing even basic due diligence on opponents. Not sure if this is the actual case or perhaps they felt, as a party, this race wasn't worth putting energy into. Not every race gets the same scrutiny by the opposition due to things like limited funding, probability of losing etc. You're right though, you'd think they'd have enough funding to handle this nation wide in every race, but alas, maybe not.
  - kemayo 4y ago
    There seemed to be a fair amount of surprise at how well Republicans did in NY this year. I'd certainly believe that the Democratic establishment was overconfident and didn't think they needed to dig too hard on people in one of their stronghold areas...
- rpenm 4y ago
  The opposition pointed out his shady personal finances and ponzi stuff publicly, months before the election. Press apparently weren't interested at the time.
sbuttgereit 4y ago

pixel_tracing 4y ago

So what are we going to do about this? I mean yes it’s wrong, now what?

nradov 4y ago
The House of Representatives can expel a member with a 2/3 vote. Beyond that, not much can be done until the next election.

miguelazo 4y ago

Sad comment on the state of American journalism (especially local) that this wasn't discovered until now...

michaelgrosner2 4y ago
You blame journalists of all people? How about him, does he have agency? How about the GOP (I suppose not, putting up con artists seems par for the course)? How about the NY Democratic party for doing zero opposition research? Not to mention there were quite prominent journalists like Josh Marshall raising red flags about this guy all last year. https://twitter.com/joshtpm https://twitter.com/joshtpm
- danesparza 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers#United_S... It sounds like this is starting to catch up with us ...
- miguelazo 4y ago
  We should all expect candidates to be dishonest. And that's by far the most appropriate posture for journalists. I agree that the state party is crap, which is precisely how they lost so many House seats. https://www.democracynow.org/2022/11/10/congress_midterm_elections_republicans_flip_seats https://www.democracynow.org/2022/11/10/congress_midterm_ele...

chrisbrandow 4y ago

Really frustrating that this wasn’t discovered prior to the election. But without a better source of revenue for local news, I’m sure lots of things like this go uncovered in a timely fashion.

WarOnPrivacy 4y ago

Some of this is damning in a fairly sickening way. The starting point seems understandable: > In November 2015, a landlord in the Whitestone neighborhood of Queens filed an eviction suit in housing court accusing Mr. Santos of owing $2,250 in unpaid rent. > In May 2017, ... Mr. Santos’s landlord accused him of owing more than $10,000 in rent ... and said ... one of his tenant’s checks had bounced. Okay. Poverty can catch folks out. I can imagine how he got into that situation. But then this: > early 2021, ... Mr. Santos said on Twitter that he was a landlord affected by the freeze. "Will we landlords ever be able to take back possession of our property?" > Mr. Santos said that he and his family had not been paid rent on their 13 properties in nearly a year, adding that he had offered rental assistance to some tenants, but found that some were "flat out taking advantage of the situation." > But Mr. Santos has not listed properties in New York on required financial disclosure forms ... Property records databases ... did not show any documents or deeds associated with him. I can at least understand heartlessness from ignorance but this. He practically narrates his own story but then reboots it so that he's the victimized landlord (over seemingly fictitious tenants). I couldn't generate enough contempt to properly cover the sheer volume of his disingenuousness.

aschearer 4y ago

A bunch of people in this thread are blaming the Democrats. Why aren't we blaming the Republicans? They fielded this candidate. Or the voters? They elected a dishonest candidate. Others have pointed out this information was available for those who had access to Google. What happened to personal responsibility?

JustSomeNobody 4y ago

Voter fraud isn't the voters, it's the candidates.