George Santos worked odd jobs, accumulated debts and was the target of lawsuits before being elected

Dish Network’s young, well-mannered customer service representative in Queens spoke both English and Portuguese, so when Brazilian immigrants had problems with their bills or satellite dishes, their calls were forwarded to him.

The year was 2012, and the man in question was George Santos, a son of Brazilian immigrants who, just over a decade later, would win a crucial election for the US House of Representatives.

But during the election campaign, Santos told a different story about his past: he said that, at the time when Dish Network records show that he worked for the company, he was instead rising through the ranks of Citigroup, as the first step of a long and lucrative Wall Street career that also included a stint at Goldman Sachs.

Neither Citigroup nor Goldman Sachs were able to identify any record of Santos as an employee, reported The New York Times on Monday (19). The newspaper’s findings — including a criminal charge against Santos in Brazil and potential omissions or distortions in his financial statements — have called into question what is known about the life and business of the new Republican congressman.

Santos declined to directly address the New York Times report or provide a detailed resume that could help verify his past employments, calling the request for this information an effort to “smear his good name.”

On Thursday (24), after many members of the Democratic Party and even some Republicans began to ask for answers, Santos declared via Twitter that “I have my story to tell and it will be told next week”. He promised his constituents that he would “answer their questions”. (Santos’ attorney subsequently declined to answer a list of questions from The New York Times.)

But interviews with former friends and co-workers, and additional records obtained by the newspaper, offer a more complete picture of Santos’ life, with new details not revealed in his election campaign biography.

Old friends recall an ambitious young man with refined taste, whose lavish descriptions of the properties he claims to own in Brazil, New York and Nantucket, Massachusetts seem a far cry from the rented apartments he lived in in Queens, including one he shared with her sister and her mother, who worked as a maid.

John Rijo, who said he worked at Dish Network’s College Point call center for nearly a decade, said Santos answered phone calls in both English and Portuguese. Santos worked there from October 2011 to July 2012, in the “customer service” area, according to the company.

Agents were paid a maximum of US$ 15 per hour, Rijo believes, and knowledge of a foreign language could increase that amount by US$ 1 to US$ 2 per hour. Local news site Patch also reported that Santos worked at Dish.

At that time, some of his friends recall, Santos lived modestly in Queens, and occasionally had to take on additional roommates to make ends meet.

Peter Hamilton met Santos around early 2014, he said. Hamilton recalls that Santos didn’t recognize the name of the business school he said he graduated from at New York University. Even so, Hamilton found him charismatic and intelligent. “He seems to know what to say to people, and how to say it,” Hamilton recalled in an interview.

He didn’t hesitate when Santos borrowed a few thousand dollars to rent an apartment with his boyfriend, and transferred the money to him in September 2014, according to court documents. Shortly thereafter, Hamilton said, Santos stopped responding to his text messages and phone calls.

In the months prior to the loan, Santos and his family were involved in an eviction proceeding in Jackson Heights, Queens, according to court records. In June 2014, the family’s landlord accused Santos, his mother and sister of being three months behind in rent. The parties reached an agreement, but the family was evicted in August after the landlord declared they had not paid the money owed on time, court records show.

Hamilton sued in Queens small claims court to get his money back in 2015. In October of that year, Santos responded by saying that the money had been paid and that it was not a loan, but a favor. The judge granted Hamilton’s request, however, and ordered Santos to pay $5,000 plus interest.

In an interview, Hamilton said that while the idea of ​​getting the money back still interested him, he didn’t worry that much about past debts. “I’m sorry I didn’t speak up before the election took place,” he said, adding later that “at this point, it’s like he’s cheating the public.”

Court records show that Santos’ financial difficulties extended beyond debts owed to friends. The same year he was involved in the dispute with Hamilton, a Queens landlord filed an eviction suit against him, claiming that Santos owed him $2,250 in rent.

Less than two years later, he was the subject of yet another eviction from another apartment, when a landlord in Sunnyside, Queens, claimed Santos owed him months’ rent and a refund fee for a bounced check. Santos was sentenced to pay more than US$ 12,000.

The following year, in December 2018, Discover Bank obtained a default verdict against Santos in the amount of US$1,927.45, for unpaid credit card bills, according to court records. His last payment, for just $34, had been made in February of that year.

In 2019, when Santos was preparing to start his first campaign for a seat in the House of Representatives, court records show that he was involved in a new lawsuit in a Queens court, this time for divorce.

City records obtained by the nonprofit organization Reclaim the Records show that Santos was married in Manhattan in 2012. His ex-wife filed for divorce in June 2019, and Santos has not contested the request.

The circumstances of their marriage are unclear: divorce cases are confidential and attempts to contact Santos’ ex-wife in New Jersey have been unsuccessful. But the divorce was finalized in the fourth quarter, court records show. In November, Santos declared his candidacy for the New York 3rd District seat in Congress; the area covers northeast Queens and northern Long Island.

At the beginning of this first campaign, Santos registered an apartment in the neighborhood of Elmhurst, in Queens, as an address. That residence, which is not in the district he was battling to represent, appeared on an official list of candidates compiled by the 2020 New York Board of Elections and in federal financial documents about the campaign.

Later, Santos moved into a house in the Whitestone neighborhood, the district where he is currently registered as a voter but where he no longer lives.

The home’s owner, Nancy Pothos, said Santos and her husband had moved there in July 2020. The couple rented the two-bedroom duplex apartment for $2,600 a month, she said. Pothos occupied the bottom floor of the building.

The apartment attracted attention when Santos claimed the property had been vandalized in January 2021 after he and his husband returned from a New Year’s Eve gala at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, the private club of former President Donald Trump. Trump. A New York Times article linked to photos Santos posted on Instagram recording his presence at the event, showing guests not wearing masks despite coronavirus-related restrictions.

Santos also told the Newsday newspaper that he planned to move to Oyster Bay, New York. Instead, he seems to have taken up residence in Huntington, a town outside his constituency. (Congressmen are required to live in the state they represent, but do not have to live in their constituency.)

On Wednesday, three neighbors said they had seen Santos or her husband at the Huntington home, in a hilly neighborhood filled with attractive, middle-class homes, some of which have been turned into rental properties. A man who lives across the street said Santos had moved into the house sometime in August.

Neither Santos nor her husband are named in the home’s ownership records, and the homeowner did not respond to a phone call and messages on social media seeking further information.