Things just keep looking ruff for George Santos. In 2017 Santos was reportedly charged with theft, relating to a series of bad checks totaling more than $15,000 that were issued under his name to Amish dog breeders in Pennsylvania. Santos got the charge dismissed and expunged from his record with the help of a lawyer friend who said Santos had his checkbook stolen, according to Politico, which first reported the charge Thursday. But the lawyer told Politico she now doesn’t believe that Santos’s checks were stolen. And just three days after one of the bad checks was issued under Santos’s name, with “puppy” in the memo line, Santos’s pet charity held an adoption event at a store on Staten Island, according to the pet store’s Instagram account. The incident raises even more questions about Santos’s not-IRS-certified animal charity, Friends of Pets United, which is involved in an apparently active FBI investigation into allegations that he raised money for a sick dog and then refused to hand the funds over to the dog’s owner. Neither Santos’s lawyer nor his congressional office immediately responded Friday to a request for comment about the new allegations. Santos was charged with theft by deception in York County, Pennsylvania in 2017, but the charge was dismissed and expunged after he claimed someone had stolen his checkbook, according to Politico. A middle school friend, lawyer Tiffany Bogosian, emailed a Pennsylvania state trooper in 2020 on Santos’s behalf explaining the situation. “In 2017 he received four check books for the account at his request from the TD BANK branch he banked with in Queens, NY, and of the four one went missing,” Bogosian said in the email, according to Politico. “He immediately called his bank upon learning 1/4 check books was missing and all checks were canceled at that time, with a stop pay on all checks.”One of the checks, a $775 one issued for “puppy,” was written out to a man in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, on Nov. 22, 2017. Two days later, Pet Oasis, a pet store on Staten Island, announced on its Instagram that it would be holding an adoption event with Friends of Pets United.“[The charity] has a PUPPY OVER LOAD,” the store announced.The store did several events with Friends of Pets United. But the owner of the store told the New York Times this week that after Santos asked him to make out a check from proceeds from one such event to “Anthony Devolder (one of Santos’s aliases)” and not the charity, the owner refused — then found out the name of the charity had been crossed out and replaced with “Anthony Devolder.” Michelle Vazzo, who adopted a dog from Santos’s charity in 2017, told Politico that Santos told her the dogs were from an Amish puppy mill. “The fees were always different and he always had a ton of puppies and a ton of people helping him,” Vazzo told Politico. Friends of Pets United was not a registered charity, the New York Times reported in December. Bogosian told Politico she no longer believes Santos’ story that the checks were stolen. In January, Brazilian authorities said that they had reopened an investigation from 2008 into Santos, for stealing a checkbook. In addition to all of the fabrications and reported investigations into Santos over his dog charity, his campaign finance, and his work for Harbor City Capital, a person who very briefly worked in Santos’ congressional office in January said last week that Santos had sexually harassed him and reported the matter to the House Ethics Committee and Capitol Police. House Democrats introduced a resolution to expel Santos from Congress Thursday; House Republican leaders have said that Santos will be expelled if he’s found guilty of wrongdoing by the House Ethics Committee. Santos also claimed Thursday that during the State of the Union—where he had a heated exchange with Sen. Mitt Romney—independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema told him to “hang in there, buddy.”
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“That is a lie,” Sinema’s office told CNN. Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.