- Brazil is reviving a long-dormant fraud case against George Santos, The New York Times reported.
- The New York Republican enters Congress under a cloud of suspicion.
- He has been found to have invented vast swaths of his personal history.
Rep.-elect George Santos will take his seat in Congress on Tuesday facing a renewed fraud investigation by Brazilian authorities.
A spokesperson for the Rio de Janeiro prosecutors office told The New York Times that authorities will be reviving a 2008 fraud case, which they dropped more than a decade ago after failing to locate him.
Now that Santos’ whereabouts are known, they are set to contact the US Justice Department and seek his formal response to allegations, the outlet reported.
The Times, citing court records, said that the fraud case stems from a visit Santos made to a clothing store in Niterói, a city outside of Rio de Janeiro, where he allegedly paid for $700 of goods using a stolen checkbook, using a fake name.
Prosecutors in Brazil charged Santos with embezzlement over a decade ago, but the case was archived in 2013 because Santos could not be found to answer a court summons.
The investigation comes as Santos is set to enter Congress under suspicion that he fabricated vast swaths of his resumé and personal history, including about his education and employment history.
Santos flipped a Democratic seat in New York to help Republicans clinch a narrow House majority in the November midterms.
Santos is also under suspicion over claims he made about his family history, including that his family fled the Holocaust as Jewish refugees, and over claims he lost employees in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida. Neither appears to be true.
Santos has admitted to making false claims about his education and career.
“My sins here are embellishing my resume. I’m sorry,” Santos told the New York Post.
Santos added that he has never been charged with a crime in Brazil, or anywhere else.
“I am not a criminal here – not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world. Absolutely not. That didn’t happen.”
Insider has contacted an attorney for Santos for comment.
The US attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York is also investigating Santos over his financial affairs, with the Nassau County district attorney investigating him over unspecified alleged fabrications.
