A blockbuster report from ABC News details shocking revelations from multiple men pursued romantically by disgraced gay Rep. George Santos (R-NY). More than one man said Santos dated them while they were still teens and that he constantly lied and tried to manipulate them.
Leandro Bis said he dated Santos at when he was 19 years old; Santos was 25. Bis was in the United States on a tourist visa from Brazil and said Santos offered to marry him to get a green card.
Bis said Santos was “manipulative” and always tried to stop him from leaving. He described the relationship as “toxic” and said Santos told him many lies, including that he dated supermodels who told him he should also be a model. Bis also said that during their relationship Santos went by Anthony Zabrovski, a name Santos has been accused of using to appear more Jewish so he could raise money from Jews for his allegedly scam charity.
At the time, Bis said he told himself, “If you get a green card from him, you will be in his hands forever.” He added, “It was an illusion…now I realize he just wanted to get people under his hand.”
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Another man, Pedro Vilarva, said he and Santos met on Tinder in 2014. Vilarva was 18 and still in high school; Santos was 26. Vilarva said Santos encouraged him to move into his apartment, where Santos already lived with his then-wife, Uadla Vieira. According to Vilarva, Santos said she was his “friend,” and he didn’t know they were married until he had been dating Santos for several months.
After a year of dating, Vilarva said he began to realize how often Santos had lied to him. In a previous interview with the New York Times, Vilarva said he moved out after finding online proof Santos had faced legal charges in Brazil for forging checks belonging to his mother’s client. Santos has since denied any wrongdoing, though Brazilian records show he admitted to the check forging at the time.
“The way that he is, is that he lies and then he tries to cover up that lie with another lie,” Vilarva told ABC News.
Vilarva has also told the press that while they lived together, he paid many bills for Santos. He suspects that Santos stole and pawned his phone for cash.
Another man, Kevin Guzman, told ABC News that even though he rejected Santos, he told people they were dating anyway.
“He wanted me to be in a relationship with him, which I didn’t want,” Guzman said. “Then he made everybody think that I was with him.”
“He was with me all the time then. I didn’t realize how much he had sold it.”
Guzman also said he was “so scared” of Santos, especially after discovering Santos was masquerading as Guzman, using his photo on dating apps.
“He hurt me a lot mentally,” Guzman said.
After being elected to represent New York’s Third Congressional District and becoming the first out gay Republican elected to Congress, Santos’ life story came crumbling down as several newspapers reported he never went to the colleges he said he attended, never worked for the major banks he said he worked for, and that he had been lying about his family history as well. He has admitted to many of these lies, calling them “a little bit of fluff” on his resume.
Santos admitted that he lied about graduating from Baruch College and New York University, working directly for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, and living at a fake address in his congressional district. He provided no additional proof to back up claims that he founded a charity called Friends of Pets, that his grandparents escaped the Holocaust, and that he lost four employees in the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting.
The embattled Congressman also recently announced he would temporarily step down from his committee assignments amid reports of an active criminal investigation into his campaign finances.
A recent Newsday-Siena College poll found that 78 percent of voters in Santos’s district think he should resign, including 71 percent of Republicans. Six Republican congresspeople from New York and the Nassau County Republican Party have also called on him to resign.
