A former fundraiser for the New York Republican congressman George Santos pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a federal charge of wire fraud, which could put him behind bars for more than two years.
Sam Miele admitted to a single count of wire fraud relating to impersonating a senior aide to the then House speaker Kevin McCarthy. The ruse was part of a fundraising scheme conducted in 2021 to raise money for Santos’s bid for a seat in the US House of Representatives.
Miele was charged with four counts of wire fraud in August. Prosecutors said he pretended to be a “high-ranking aide to a member of the House with leadership responsibilities”, taking on the persona in order to solicit donations over the phone.
Prosecutors also said Miele set up a fake email address in the guise of the aide and reached out to potential donors.
The identity of the individual whom Miele impersonated has not been officially confirmed. The Washington Times was the first to report that it was Dan Meyer, who at the time of the ploy was working as chief of staff to McCarthy.
Santos has insisted that he had nothing to do with the impersonation effort. In an interview with the Associated Press in August, he said he fired Miele as soon as he learned about the deceit.
Miele is the second aide linked to Santos to plead guilty to federal charges in a plea deal. Last month, Nancy Marks, the former treasurer of the Santos election campaign, pleaded guilty to a fraud conspiracy charge.
Marks told a court that she had worked with Santos to falsely inflate his personal wealth in order to impress Republican party officials in the hope of persuading them to back his run for Congress.
The latest guilty plea from Santos’s inner circle further raises the stakes for the US congressman. Santos, who is free on bail, is facing 23 federal criminal counts of his own.
The charges relate to allegations that he stole other people’s identities, made payments running to thousands of dollars on donors’ credit cards, and lied to federal investigators.
Santos, who represents parts of Queens in New York City and Long Island, has also been charged with making a false report to the Federal Elections Commission. He is alleged to have told the FEC that he loaned his campaign $500,000 when in fact he had barely $8,000 in the bank and made no such loans.
The lawmaker has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. A trial date has been set for September next year.
The deepening legal stew in which Santos finds himself, and the net closing around his inner circle, have caused political ructions inside Congress. On 1 November, the congressman survived an expulsion vote in the House, with most Republicans and 31 Democrats opting to wait for the outcome of his criminal prosecution and a concurrent investigation by the House ethics committee before enforcing such a severe measure.
