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George Santos’s criminal history in Brazil turns out to have several comedic elements to it and provides some additional color about the man who would win election to Congress 14 years later. Truthfully, it has some of the madcap qualities of an old Three’s Company episode.
In 2008, when Santos was 19, he was living in Rio de Janeiro with mother, Fatima, who was working as a home health aide. In his mother’s purse, George found two checks belonging to Délio da Câmara da Costa Alemão, an 82-year-old man then in his mother’s care. (Fatima Devolder, Santos’s mom, later told police the man had asked her to return the checks to his bank.) George took the checks to a local clothing store where he bought shoes and clothes, identifying himself as “Delio.” The store clerk, Carlos Bruno Simoes, became suspicious after Santos left the store and tried calling the numbers on the checks but got nowhere. It was a big deal for Simoes since, as the guy who accepted the embezzled checks, he had to reimburse his employer for Santos’s fraudulent purchases.
But then Simoes caught a break.
According to Simoes’s account in an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, Santos had apparently given the shoes he purchased with the stolen checks to his boyfriend as a gift. A few days later, the boyfriend, identifying himself as “Thiago,” returned to the store to exchange the shoes, apparently unaware that Santos had purchased them with stolen checks. Simoes recognized the sneakers as the ones he’d sold to “Delio” days earlier and decided to follow Thiago. He tracked Thiago to a nearby store where it turned out Thiago worked. From there he was able to find Thiago’s account on the social network Orkut. On Thiago’s friends’ list he came across “Delio,” the man who’d passed him the bad checks days earlier. Only on Orkut he was “Anthony Santos.”
This is how Santos got caught. Simoes printed out the photos of Santos from Orkut and filed a police report. Santos was charged with embezzlement and eventually admitted to the crime. (By this time Delio had already died.) But Santos seems to have disappeared before he could go on trial. According to Brazilian press reports, the case is still open and could be recommenced if and when Santos is found. So it seems possible Santos could now face a recommenced legal action.
Simoes told Folha that Santos had contacted him through Orkut after he filed his police report and offered to pay back the money. But Santos never followed through. According to Simoes he never got reimbursed for the money he had to pay his then-boss.
