Rep. George Santos was paid by a company the SEC called a 'classic Ponzi scheme' but never disclosed the payments as a candidate, report says

• Republican Rep. George Santos has made false statements about his work and education history.
• A Washington Post report indicates he was paid in 2021 by a firm accused of running a Ponzi scheme.

Republican Rep. George Santos of New York was paid by a company that the Securities and Exchange Commission called a "classic Ponzi scheme" but failed to disclose it, a lawyer told The Washington Post in a report published Wednesday.

Santos, who has made false claims about his education and employment history, was paid by the firm, Harbor City Capital, which is based in Florida, as recently as April 2021, according to Katherine C. Donlon, the lawyer appointed by the court to review the firm. She declined to tell the Post how much Santos was paid.

Santos had previously told The Daily Beast he left the company on March 1, 2021.

Within weeks of April 2021, Santos founded the Devolder Organization, the firm through which he was paid a $750,000 salary in 2022, far surpassing his previous reported salary of $55,000 in 2020.

A financial disclosure filed by Santos as a candidate that covered January 2021 to December 2022 didn't list any payments from Harbor City Capital.

"Voters have a right to know this information," Delaney Marsco, the senior legal counsel for ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, told the Post, adding that intentionally not disclosing could result in a fine or up to five years in prison.

An SEC complaint was filed against Harbor City Capital on April 20, 2021. The complaint, which didn't name Santos, said the company's founder spent investors' money on personal expenses and paid them monthly interest payments in "classic Ponzi scheme fashion."

Santos told The Daily Beast last year that he didn't know about what was going on at the company.

"I'm as distraught and disturbed as everyone else is," he told the outlet in April.

A representative for Santos didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.