Along with lying about being Jewish, using stolen checks in Brazil, and essentially inventing out of thin air much of his resumé before he was elected to Congress, you can now add one more allegation against George Santos: stealing money from a GoFundMe for a veteran’s dying service dog.
The veteran, 47-year-old Richard Osthoff, accused the freshman New York congressman Tuesday of setting up a GoFundMe to pay for medical treatment for his service dog, raising $3,000 through it, and then disappearing with the money without handing over a cent. The dog then died months later without receiving treatment.
Osthoff told Patch.com that after his dog Sapphire developed a stomach tumor in 2016, a veterinarian referred him to “a guy who runs a pet charity.” That man was Santos, who was then going by the name Anthony Devolder, and the charity was Friends of Pets United, according to Patch.com. Santos has claimed that the charity was a registered nonprofit, but the Internal Revenue Service has no record of the organization’s existence, the New York Times reported in December.