Rep. George Santos (R-NY) denied involvement in a credit card scam from 2017, claiming he was “innocent” on Friday after a former roommate alleged he was the mastermind behind the operation.
Santos, who is facing a House Ethics investigation into fabrications and lies he told on the campaign trail during the 2022 midterm elections, told reporters he never committed a crime.
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“Innocent,” Santos told reporters on Capitol Hill. “Never did anything of criminal activity, and I have no mastermind event. I cooperated with Secret Service, FBI, everybody that asked for my help. Got information for them. Got everybody arrested and deported.”
Santos also attempted to distance himself from the accuser, a former roommate named Gustavo Ribeiro Trelha who was verified by Politico. Santos claimed he had only met Trelha “a couple of times in my life,” according to CNN.
Trelha submitted a sworn statement to the FBI on Wednesday alleging the congressman “oversaw” the credit card skimming operation that had occurred in Seattle in 2017. Trelha was convicted of the credit card operation and deported to Brazil, where he is from, in 2018.
“I am coming forward today to declare that the person in charge of the crime of credit card fraud when I was arrested was George Santos,” Trelha wrote in the declaration obtained by Politico.
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Although a court recording from 2017 does not confirm that Trelha was ever Santos’s roommate, Santos can be heard calling Trelha a “family friend.” Santos also lied to the judge in Trelha’s case, claiming he worked for the New York investment giant Goldman Sachs. He has since admitted that he never directly worked for the corporation despite repeating the lie in his House bid last year.
Santos has been under heavy scrutiny since December, and he has faced calls for his resignation from both sides of the political aisle. Santos has rejected the calls, though, maintaining that he never did anything illegal.
Local and federal law enforcement are investigating Santos’s finances.
