Can I share a satisfying moment with you?
Late in the afternoon on Thursday, the news hit that Nancy Marks, the former campaign treasurer for disgraced and indicted Rep. George Santos, had pleaded guilty to a federal count of conspiracy for participating in an illegal scheme in which she reported fake donations and a phony $500,000 loan to Santos’ campaign. Why record on Federal Election Commission filings contributions and a loan that didn’t exist? To make Santos appear to be a credible candidate and to render him eligible for support from a national Republican committee, which only afforded high-level assistance to candidates who raised more than $250,000. And the main document filed by the prosecutors in the case—it’s called a criminal information—stated that Marks ran this scam hand-in-hand with “Co-Conspirator #1,” a.k.a. Santos.
This was just another big lie for Santos, the fabulist. With Marks’ assistance, he was trying to fool the public, the FEC, and his own party to create the impression that his campaign had more money than it did and that he was a stronger contender than he was.
What was personally gratifying about this? Earlier this year, my colleague Noah Lanard and I broke several stories about Santos, including articles that revealed that his two congressional campaigns (he lost in 2020; he won in 2022) appeared to have fake donors and that he had a curious relationship with Marks, which included a joint business venture. It’s not often that a journalist uncovers wrongdoing that ends up being confirmed by a successful criminal prosecution, but in this case, Lanard and I can claim bragging rights. Moreover, as I write this newsletter, it seems that Santos, who was already indicted on a host of charges, could be further indicted for his conniving with Marks.
Let me tell you how we got these scoops.
Last December, Lanard and I began looking at various businesses associated with Santos, focusing on a political consulting firm called Red Strategies USA that he started with former associates who had once worked with him at Harbor City Capital, a Florida firm accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of running a Ponzi scheme. Red Strategies USA ended up mostly doing consulting for Tina Forte, a Trumpy and QAnon-ish Republican running in 2022 for the seat held by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
As we poked into Red Strategies USA, we discovered that one of its owners was Marks, a Long Island–based veteran GOP operative who had been hired by numerous Republican candidates and political action committees and who was serving as Santos’ campaign treasurer. By this point, Santos’ extensive web of lies had started to come undone, and multiple mysteries about his personal finances and campaign finances had arisen. How had he amassed the millions of dollars in wealth he claimed to possess, despite having worked only a few years at mid-level jobs? How had he been able to lend $500,000 to his campaign?
Lanard and I concluded that Marks was a key figure in the overlapping Santos scandals. We noted she was “one person who might be able to provide answers about his puzzling money trail...Not only was she a key part of his political machine—and deeply tied into Republican politics locally and nationally—she was a business partner of Santos. Her story, which has yet to draw much public examination, is an important component of the Santos tale.”
In that article, we reported that numerous Marks relatives, including her 19-year-old and 22-year-old children, had contributed the maximum amount—$5,800—to Santos’ campaign. This was a rather suspicious pattern. We revealed that her business had joined with a sketchy corporation set up by Santos—which he claimed was the source of his mystery millions—to form Red Strategies USA. A New York Republican strategist who knows Marks told us Marks went on multiple business trips to Florida with Santos.
We also came across other eyebrow-raising facts about Marks. At one point, she was listed as the treasurer for the Forte campaign while also serving as treasurer for another Republican in the race. The New York Republican strategist recalled to us that he had told Marks it was a bad idea for her to be the treasurer for two GOP candidates running against each other. “What the fuck are you doing?” he recounted asking her. And she had a curious relationship with the unsuccessful GOP candidate who had opposed Ocasio-Cortez in 2020 and who paid Marks $170,000 of the $193,000 left over from his race against AOC.
Lanard and I concluded that Marks, who had received hardly any notice from reporters on the Santos beat, was “a key source for unraveling and explaining the mystery of Santos’ millions.”
After spotting the suspicious contributions from Marks’ relatives to Santos’ 2022 campaign, we took a deeper look at his major contributors. We found that for at least a dozen of the top donors listed for his 2020 campaign, the name or address of the contributor could not be confirmed. Though we had to be cautious in stating a conclusion, it appeared rather clear that Santos and his campaign had made up donors. One person who had contributed a modest amount to the campaign told us he did not make the $2,800 donation attributed to him in Santos’ FEC filing. After we spoke to this source, he contacted Santos, and Santos warned him about speaking to reporters. Santos told him that the media was pursuing clicks, not the truth.
Marks was the treasurer for Santos’ 2020 campaign, as well as his most recent one.
At a time when Santos’ many lies were making headlines, our story about the donors who did not exist caused quite a splash. It received much pick-up in the media. Stephen Colbert used it as comic fodder. The federal prosecutors investigating Santos must be looking into this, I assumed.
We kept looking and concentrated on another set of suspicious contributions to Santos’ 2022 campaign: more than $45,000 from his relatives who lived in Queens. “This included,” we reported, “a mail handler who gave more than $4,000, a painter who donated the maximum of $5,800, and a student who also contributed $5,800.” Most important, one of Santos’ relatives, who was recorded as giving $5,800, told us that they did not make any donation to Santos. Lanard visited the Queens home of this relative, and they said, “I’m dumbfounded.” The relative had no idea where this money had come from and said, “It’s all news to me.” This person added, “I don’t have that money to throw around!”
“The relative’s account,” we pointed out, “raises the possibility that money was improperly donated to Santos’ most recent campaign.” Neither Santos nor his attorney would comment. We also noted that Santos’ 2022 campaign filings listed his sister Tiffany giving more than $5,000. When Lanard contacted her, she would not confirm whether she or her relatives had made the contributions attributed to them by Santos’ campaign. Once again, I figured the feds had to be on this.
And they were. The criminal information they filed plainly lays out the conspiracy Marks mounted, allegedly in cahoots with Santos. It maintains that Santos, the fabulist, compiled a list of fake donors and contribution amounts for Marks to record in the FEC filings to inflate his total haul so he would qualify for that assistance from the Republican committee. The document cites text messages. At one moment, Santos texted Marks that he was “lost and desperate” regarding the fundraising totals. In the criminal information, the prosecutors don't identify the specific fake contributions, but they state that the phony donors listed on the FEC records were relatives of Marks and Santos—the same contributions that we reported as suspicious. The filing suggests the feds have Santos nailed.
Santos was a sloppy liar. His many dishonest tales about his past, his family, his career, and more have been easily debunked—once subjected to scrutiny. His many campaign finance deceptions were not that tough to sniff out. It just took a bunch of phone calls, computer searches, and some door-knocking. To find them, we only had to look. And that may be the key lesson in the Santos saga. He got away with all his lies because no one was looking. His prevarications were not that cleverly concocted. When reporters began examining his history and business activity, his Potemkin village quickly fell apart. And once Lanard and I began poring over his campaign finance reports, we found a mess of deceit. The tragedy is that there was not much scrutiny before he flimflammed his way into Congress.
The case of the phony donors—and the fake loan—was easy to crack. Santos is a crook who remains in the House of Representatives, with his GOP comrades accepting his presence. He reflects the party of Donald Trump, and like the leader of this political cult, he may still pay a high price for his lies and crimes.
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