CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — (04-25-25) — Former U.S. Rep. George Santos, the disgraced openly gay republican who lied about his life story and defrauded donors, was sentenced Friday to over seven years in prison, sobbing as he heard his punishment.
“From his creation of a wholly fictitious biography to his callous theft of money from elderly and impaired donors, Santos’s unrestrained greed and voracious appetite for fame enabled him to exploit the very system by which we select our representatives,” said prosecutors in their sentencing memorandum, in which they asked Seybert to sentence him to 87 months in prison.
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Prosecutors added that despite his pleading guilty to a pair of felony fraud charges in August — and a teary expression of remorse to news cameras after the proceeding — Santos is “a pathological liar” who isn’t actually remorseful about his actions.
“Where is your remorse? Where do I see it?” said U.S. District Court Judge Joanna Seybert when sentencing Santos to 87 months in federal prison. Seybert said the former politician appeared to feel that “it’s always someone else’s fault.“ said Seybert.
Prosecutors also noted that Santos had recently launched a weekly podcast called “Pants on Fire with George Santos,” which they called “a perfect crystallization of his lack of genuine contrition and his tone-deaf efforts to continue turning lies into dollars.”
“It is abundantly clear that, without a substantial deterrent, Santos will continue to deceive and defraud for years to come,” said prosecutors. “That is especially true given Santos’s craven efforts to leverage his lawbreaking as a springboard to celebrity and riches” while failing to pay restitution to the people he swindled, prosecutors said.
The New York Republican who served in Congress for barely a year before his House colleagues ousted him in 2023, pleaded guilty last summer to federal wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Santos admitted to deceiving donors and stealing the identities of nearly a dozen people, including his family members, to fund his congressional campaign. As part of a plea deal, Santos agreed to pay $375,000 in restitution in addition to prison time.
Santos posted a text message on Thursday saying…“I’m doing as well as any human being would be doing given the circumstances, but I’m ready to face the music.”
Article by: Paul Goldberg, Staff Writer
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