Scandal-Struck George Santos Just Revived the Firm That Netted Him Mystery Millions – By Noah Lanard and David Corn (Mother Jones) / Dec 21, 2022
After the New York Times exposé, the incoming Republican congressman made a curious move.
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On Monday, the New York Times published an explosive story revealing that George Santos, a New York Republican elected last month to the House of Representatives, had made what appeared to be brazenly false statements about his background, including assorted claims about his business career. He had boasted of being an accomplished investor and financier who had worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Yet each firm noted it had no record of his employment there. He had said he graduated from Baruch College. The school said he had not. His personal finances seemed odd as well, and he had worked at a Florida company called Harbor City Capital that was accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2021 of running a $17 million Ponzi scheme. Subsequently, he supposedly made at least $3.5 million from a mysterious company, called Devolder Organization LLC, that he started, that had no public profile, and that was dissolved soon after it was created. This marked a dramatic shift from his first run for Congress in 2020, when he reported earning $55,000 per year.
The day after the Times story appeared, Santos took a curious step: He revived that mystery firm that he had claimed as the source of millions of dollars of income, and he listed as its address a Florida property associated with a former top official of the company that allegedly mounted that Ponzi scheme. Devolder’s resurrection was first reported by Talking Points Memo. The story of this firm is a key component of the Santos scandal.
The Times article cast Santos as a modern-day Mr. Ripley who seemingly had manufactured a rags-to-riches public persona based on audacious lies. He was once arrested in Brazil for forging checks. He boasted he founded an animal rescue charity, but the outfit barely existed and was not registered with the IRS as a nonprofit. (The intended beneficiary of one of its events reported never receiving the funds from a fundraiser Santos’ group helped to organize.) Before the election, Santos said he owned a “Hamptons mansion” worth $10 million, but according to his financial disclosure filings he owned no real estate at the time. (He was then renting an apartment in Queens.) All the unsubstantiated claims have prompted questions about his financial and business dealings, including Devolder and his interactions with Harbor City and its principals.
