Veteran Says Santos Scammed GoFundMe for His Dying Dog

'NYT' says Santos lied about mother being in New York on 9/11
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 19, 2023 6:51 AM CST
Veteran Says Santos Scammed GoFundMe for His Dying Dog
Rep. George Santos waits for the start of a session in the House chamber, Friday, Jan. 6, 2023.   (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

In one of the more shocking allegations yet against Rep. George Santos, a disabled veteran in New Jersey says Santos set up a GoFundMe fundraiser for his dying service dog—but never turned over the $3,000 it raised. Richard Osthoff tells Patch.com that he was homeless and living in a tent when Sapphire, a pit mix donated by a veterans charity, developed a stomach tumor. Osthoff says a vet tech put him in touch with Santos—who was using the name Anthony Devolder at the time—and said his charity could help. He says that after the campaign raised $3,000 on social media, Santos shut it down and stopped answering his texts and calls. "We were scammed by Anthony Devolder," he said in a Nov. 2016 Facebook post.

Osthoff tells NBC that after Santos got involved, he was told he couldn't schedule surgery with his veterinarian in New Jersey because "everything had to be done through his vets and his technicians and all that stuff at that point." He says that after a Santos vet said the dog couldn't be operated on, Santos started "coming up with all these excuses" and said the money would go to a different dog in need. "It was lie after lie after lie," he says. Another New Jersey veteran, retired police Sgt. Michael Boll, tells Patch.com that he tried to intervene but Santos was "very uncooperative." Osthoff says Sapphire died in January 2017 and he had to panhandle to get money for the dog's euthanasia and cremation.

The charity Santos claimed to be running at the time, Friends of Pets United, was never registered with the IRS. Osthoff, who now lives in a home rented from a military friend, tells NJ.com that he had tried to put the incident behind him until he saw the man he knew as Devolder in news reports from the Capitol. Santos denied the allegations Wednesday, saying, "Fake. No clue who this is," the BBC reports

  • Associates say he competed in Brazil drag shows. Reuters reports that two acquaintance say Santos—who is openly gay but supports Florida's so called "Don't Say Gay" law—competed as a drag queen in Brazilian beauty pageants around 15 years ago and aspired to be Miss Gay Rio de Janeiro. Drag performer Eula Rochard shared a photo on Instagram that she said showed Santos at a Pride event in 2008. Even as a teenager, he "lied about everything," she said, per the New York Post.
  • NYT says his mother wasn't in New York on 9/11. Santos, previously criticized for inconsistent remarks about the link between his mother's 2016 death and the 9/11 attacks, appears to have lied about her even being in the US at the time, the New York Times reports. According to immigration records seen by the Times, she filed for a US visa in 2003, saying she had been in Brazil since 1999. Santos' campaign website claimed his mother "was in her office in the South Tower on Sept. 11, 2001."
(More George Santos stories.)

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