AFP
Rio de Janeiro (AFP) – Scandal-plagued US congressman George Santos, indicted this week on 13 charges, has agreed to a plea deal to settle a separate case over using a stolen checkbook in Brazil in 2008, officials said Friday.
The first-term Republican from New York, who has admitted to lying about much of his biography, confessed to the crime and agreed to pay around $5,000 in fines and damages to avoid criminal prosecution, said the court hearing his case in Brazil.
Santos, the son of Brazilian parents who immigrated to the United States, was charged with fraud in Brazil for stealing the checkbook of a deceased elderly man his mother had helped care for.
He used it buy some $700 in merchandise as a 19-year-old in the city of Niteroi, near Rio de Janeiro.
Under the plea deal he agreed to pay a fine of 10,000 reais (around $2,030), plus inflation-adjusted damages of 14,121 reais ($2,865) to the shopkeeper he purchased the merchandise from, a spokeswoman for the second-circuit state criminal court for Niteroi told AFP in an e-mail.
Santos, who appeared via WhatsApp video call at the closed-door hearing Thursday, has one month to comply.
It is the latest drama around the first openly gay Republican elected to Congress, whose fabrications have made him fodder for late-night comedy shows and landed him in big legal trouble in the US.
Santos, 34, was arrested and charged Wednesday by US prosecutors with wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making materially false statements to the House of Representatives.
The lawmaker, who pleaded not guilty, was released on bail of $500,000.
Santos is accused of stealing money from donors who contributed to his campaign, lying on financial disclosure forms and collecting unemployment benefits while earning $120,000 a year at a Florida-based investment firm.
The congressman has admitted to lying about much of his life story, including claims he graduated from university, worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, and is Jewish.
The case against him in Brazil had been shelved for years after investigators were unable to locate him.
But prosecutors reinstated the charges after Santos was elected to Congress last year, saying that meant he now had a verified address.
