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Listen: George Santos eviction tapes show him begging to feed pet fish, mulling public assistance
By
Jake Offenhartz
Published Mar 7, 2023
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Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
By
Jake Offenhartz
Published Mar 7, 2023
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In the summer of 2014, eight years before his election to the U.S. House of Representatives, George Santos was in Queens Housing Court, begging a judge to let him feed his pet fish.
Santos, then 26, had recently been evicted for failing to pay rent on a two-bedroom apartment in Jackson Heights that he shared with his mother, sister and a rotating cast of roommates. He needed to get back inside, he told the judge, “so I can get my belongings and feed my fish.”
“I have a big fish tank,” Santos added, according to audio of the court hearing.
As with so many of his statements, there is cause for doubt. Yasser Rabello, a former friend who lived in the apartment with Santos, said he had no recollection of a fish, let alone a large tank of them.
“That’s a lie, too,” Rabello said. “He’s a pathological liar.”
The previously unreported recordings obtained by Gothamist trace Santos’ repeated appearances in New York City Housing Court as he battled eviction from three separate Queens apartments between 2014 and 2017.
Along with public records and interviews with his former housemates, they provide a fuller picture of Santos as a habitually delinquent tenant, desperately fighting one eviction after another in the years before he became the Republican representative for northern Long Island and northeastern Queens.
Another roommate in the same apartment, Gregory Morey Parker, recalled lending Santos rent money, adding that there were “eviction notices monthly.”
Santos, whose office declined to comment, currently faces a House Ethics Committee investigation into his finances, as well as an allegation of sexual misconduct. But he has rejected calls to resign, insisting that he is “not a fraud” and that many of his fabrications were misunderstandings.
The housing court recordings capture a similar determination in the face of adversity. Santos offers assurances that he will soon make good on an unpaid debt – only to find a way out of the agreed upon deadline at the last minute.
George Santos and Yasser Rabello.
Courtesy of Yasser Rabello
With Santos more than $5,000 behind on rent on his Jackson Heights apartment, an exasperated attorney for the landlord, Peter Wolf, explained to the judge: “Mr. Santos says he mailed a check for $1,500 to my client on the 12th. He didn’t.”
It’s unclear if the debt was ever paid, and inquiries to the landlord, Nermina Lalic, were not returned.
Despite making comments during his candidacy for Congress that equated welfare with laziness, Santos also appeared willing to seek public assistance. When a judge suggested he apply for emergency rental aid to cover $12,000 in unpaid rent, Santos replied softly: “I can do that.”
It isn’t clear if Santos actually applied for the public assistance, which required proof of employment.
His past struggles as a tenant also did not stop him from joining the cause of landlords in their fight against the pandemic-era eviction moratorium – at one point in February 2021, falsely claiming to have a family real estate portfolio of 13 properties, while condemning those who would seek handouts.
“Youth today is more so interested in what they can get for free versus how hard they can work for something and accomplish it,” he said on the lone episode of “Talking GOP," his short-lived public access show. “It feels so much better when you accomplish something and you hold on to your values.”
The apartment building in Whitestone, Queens where Santos lived in 2015.
Reece T. Williams/Gothamist
Rabello said Santos did not “care about politics at all [and] just wants to be famous.”
“He used to lie to everyone that he was working, but actually he was not,” Rabello added. “He was home just browsing the web, just sitting on the computer all day.”
Santos was back in housing court again in 2015, this time for failing to pay $2,250 in rent on an apartment in the leafy Queens neighborhood of Whitestone. During a hearing on Christmas Eve that year, he told a judge that he had to miss work because of his mother’s cervical cancer.
“I exhausted all my sick days, and then it got to the point where I was just not getting paid,” he said. Asked by the judge if he had any savings, Santos replied: “I will have money, due to business loans.”
It’s not clear what business loans he was referencing. But around the same time, Santos began posting on Facebook about his animal rescue charity. Federal authorities are now investigating a claim by a military veteran that Santos stole money meant to pay for his ailing service dog’s surgery. Santos has denied the charges.
During the Christmas Eve hearing, Santos promised to pay back his landlord, Maria Tulumba, the $2,250 he owed. But he later claimed in a sworn affidavit that he was robbed of the money on his way to drop it off. The NYPD has no record of the crime, and it's unclear if the debt was ever repaid.
He soon switched his voter registration to Florida, where records show he cast a ballot in 2016. But it wasn’t long before he was back in New York – and once again facing eviction.
This time, Santos owed more than $12,000 in missed rent for an apartment in Sunnyside. According to his resumé, he was working at Goldman Sachs at the time – a lie he repeated to a Seattle judge while testifying on behalf of a friend a few months later, according to Politico.
The entryway to the apartment complex in Sunnyside, Queens where Santos owed more than $12,000 in missed rent in 2017.
Reece T. Williams/Gothamist
But when he appeared in Queens Housing Court in June 2017, Santos sounded humbled. He told a judge that he had taken time off work after his mother’s death in December, but planned to start his job again in a few weeks.
The judge suggested that he apply for emergency rental assistance, noting it would be based on his ability to show proof of income. Santos agreed to explore the option. “I’ll do my best, sir,” he added.
According to a spokesperson for the Office of Court Administration, there is no indication the payment to his landlord was ever made. Inquiries to the landlord were not returned.
Tagged
queens
George Santos
Politics
Jake Offenhartz
Jake Offenhartz is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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