George Santos Seems to Have Concocted a Scheme to Scam Amish Dog Breeders and Was Charged for It

Embattled congressman George Santos of New York is caught up in another scandal, and this time, it involved a 2017 bounced check case and some Amish dog breeders, which the Republican lawmaker may have scammed.

According to Politico, Santos wrote a series of bad checks in 2017. These were made as a payment to some dog breeders in Pennsylvania's Amish Country as Santos wanted to get some puppies from them for an "adoption event" at a Staten Island pet store with his animal rescue charity Friends of Pets United, which is also involved in another Santos' fraud case, which concerned a veteran's dying dog.

The report noted that a total of $15,125 in checks were made out for "puppies." Santos was then charged with theft. However, the case was eventually dismissed, and his record was expunged after the lawmaker claimed that someone had stolen his checkbook.

Lawyer Tiffany Bogosian, who attended middle school with Santos, has spoken to Politico about the incident. Bogosian said the lawmaker asked for her help after being served with an extradition warrant related to the bounced checks he allegedly gave to the Amish dog breeders.

Santos noted that his checkbook had been missing since 2017 and blamed somebody he knew for taking it. He told the lawyer that he "canceled the checkbook" with TD Bank as soon as he knew it was gone. Bogosian then helped Santos to get the NYPD to refer questions about the warrant to Pennsylvania State Police.

Bogosian reportedly sent an email to Pennsylvania's "Trooper Adams" in 2020 on Santos' behalf and said the lawmaker received four checkbooks for the account at his request from the TD Bank, but one went missing. When the bank learned about the missing checkbook, she noted that "all checks were canceled at that time, with a stop pay on all checks."

At the time, Bogosian told the trooper that Santos was a victim of fraud since the signatures were different on each check. She also attached the lawmaker's NY State driver's license to show his signature on that ID did not match any of the checks' signatures.

However, she said she does not believe Santos' story now, after what happened to her client a few months later. Her client reportedly won a big settlement with Santos in late 2020 after the lawmaker promised a lucrative return from investing with Harbor City Capital.

The Florida firm was where Santos previously worked that the Securities and Exchange Commission later said was a Ponzi scheme.

George Santos Had His Theft Case Expunged in Pennsylvania

The theft case against George Santos in Pennsylvania was reportedly dismissed after he said the nine checks, totaling over $15,000, were from the checkbook that had been stolen from him.

A York County District Court representative in Pennsylvania told Politico that the record was expunged on November 24, 2021. When the Associated Press asked about the case, a spokesperson for the York County district attorney's office, where the charges were filed, said they could not comment on expunged cases.

Thus, it is unclear why the case was expunged, but reports indicated that Santos made a lot of money from the puppy adoption event involving the puppies he got from the breeders.

George Santos Tried to Get Pet Shop Owner to Write Check for Him Instead of His 'Charity'

The 2017 Friends of Pets United puppy adoption event reportedly netted a lot of money, as people paid hundreds of dollars to adopt the animals. However, the New York Times reported that the money might not have been intended to go to animals in need.

After the adoption event, George Santos reportedly asked the owner of the pet store, Daniel Avissato, to write a check to Anthony Devolder, his most well-known alias. However, Avissato told the New York Times that he refused and wrote the check in the name of the charity.

However, the pet shop owner soon discovered his check did not go to the charity by looking at his bank records. He said the recipient line was blotted out and did not say Friends of Pets United but Anthony Devolder instead.

It was not the first time Santos had been linked to a criminal probe involving checks. The lawmaker is also in trouble in Brazil because of a 2008 incident involving using two stolen checks and a false name.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Rick Martin

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