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.

Let me start by saying that I suspect (I think?) this is just a matter of having a sloppy attorney or poor communication within the Santos “camp,” if we can dignify it with that term. But it still jumped out at me after a reader sent in a copy of Santos’s attorney’s defiant statement attacking The New York Times. It’s a very Trumpian statement from lawyer Joseph Murray. You’ve probably read it. “George Santos represents the kind of progress that the Left is so threatened by — a gay, Latino, first generation American and Republican,” it says, among a list of other claims and attacks.

Pretty par for the course. The full statement is on Santos’s Twitter page. Murray or Santos sent it to basically every publication and it’s been reprinted in numerous articles. But if you look closely there are actually two versions of the statement. The one that showed up in most press reports is slightly different (emphasis added): “George Santos represents the kind of progress that the Left is so threatened by — a gay, Latino, immigrant and Republican …”

This isn’t the kind of question I’d normally imagine myself asking. I’m not a “let’s see the birth certificate” kind of guy. But given the mounting evidence that the Rep.-elect George Santos is a perfidious and pathological lying weasel, I think we need to ask.

And I’m not asking just because …. Here’s the specific reason this comes up.

The last several years have offered especially fertile ground for conspiracy theories big and small. Some have become so engrained in our collective consciousness that it’s hard to remember they were once just whispers in the swampiest corners of the internet.

Others are just downright dumb, so memorable in their convoluted chaos that they’re worthy of several celebratory cheers.