In an audio clip from a 2017 court appearance at a bail hearing for a “family friend,” George Santos He can be heard telling a Seattle judge, “I’m an aspiring politician and I work for Goldman Sachs.”
The first part was correct – after five years, Santos will already be employed as a salaried politician, representing New York’s 3rd congressional district. And but she Now widely known That the second part was not. He has never worked for the famous investment firm.
“Do you work for Goldman Sachs in New York?” the judge asked.
Santos said, “Yes.” in the sound that was First obtained by PoliticoSantos appears to address the court without being sworn in.
The false claim during a mysterious hearing in Seattle, Washington was an early glimpse of this The lie Santos will continue to spread while campaigning for Congress in 2020 and 2022. He claimed to be a banker at Goldman Sachs on the trunk in New York and on an appeal issued in January by the local GOP, along with other bogus claims about graduating from college and working elsewhere on Wall. street. Santos admitted in an interview with the New York Post in December that he “It didn’t work directlyfor the company.
The recently revealed recording of his court appearance was a reminder of how little information was available about his relationship with a man at the center of a massive credit card fraud case that involved the theft of people’s ATM card information and handing it over to Brazilian partners. Santos declined to answer questions about the case. Santos’ representatives did not respond to a request for comment on the audio recording.
Santos was appearing at a May 15, 2017 bail hearing for Gustavo Ribeiro Trila, a Brazilian national who had been arrested the previous month for installing a scraping device on an ATM.
Furthermore, only a jumble of details has emerged linking Santos, tangentially, to the Trela case.
Santos was interviewed as part of the investigation, a law enforcement source confirmed to CBS News. Santos was contacted because Trelha rental auto investigators found an empty FedEx package with a return address matching a Florida apartment where Santos had recently lived, according to police records, including photo evidence of the package obtained by CBS News, the source said.
“There is clearly not enough evidence to link Santos as an accomplice in the skimming case,” the source said. Santos was not charged in the case, nor was he a suspect.
At his bail hearing, Santos identified himself as a “family friend” who was helping him arrange an “extended-stay apartment through Airbnb, or some other website.”
“We’re friends of the family,” Santos said. “Our parents know each other from Brazil.”
King County Superior Court Judge Sean O’Donnell lowered Trella’s bail from $250,000 to $75,000, an amount Trella was unable to post. His case was later transferred to federal court, where he entered a guilty plea to one count of access device fraud.
Trela told investigators he was working for a credit card fraud group based in Brazil and Florida. Prosecutors said they had evidence that Trelleha hacked nearly 300 accounts using a card skimmer in just three days in Seattle.
Describing the process as “complex,” the prosecutor said investigators believed it was just “the tip of the iceberg,” according to court transcripts. Trailha was sentenced to time served, having already spent more than seven months in prison and was then turned over to immigration authorities.
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