BUSINESS SHRINKAGE: George Santos’ company just pulled a disappearing act
George Santos, also known as Anthony Devolder, also known as “the guy being sought in Rio de Janeiro for allegedly stealing a checkbook from a dying man,” also known as one of New York’s newest Congressional Representatives, is under scrutiny at just about every level, including his purported family business.
Now, that business has suddenly closed down its physical location, relocating to a post box at a mail services store.
Devolder Organization, LLC, doesn’t seem to actually do anything — though it still managed to pay Santos millions of dollars in the short time it was operant.
Oddly, although the company was dissolved, a month after Santos won his election, he filed documents reinstating the company — with himself (signed as “George A. Devolder Santos”) as the registered agent.
Now, less than a month after that reinstatement, the company has “moved,” which is to say its address has moved from a penthouse on Florida’s Merritt Island to a mailbox in the city of Melbourne.
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The move may be over a distance of only a few dozen miles, but the real estate seems like a significant downgrade, especially in terms of office space.
Then again, perhaps office space isn’t so necessary if the business isn’t actually interacting with the public and the registered agent is in a Congressional office.
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However, it raises a lot of important questions that Santos doesn’t seem inclined to answer.
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“The source of his wealth, according to the filing, was the ‘Devolder Organization,’ which Santos has described as a firm that managed his family’s assets, which he said totaled $80 million…The Devolder Organization was first incorporated in Florida in May 2021 with the now-empty Melbourne offices of a Ob/Gyn practice listed as its address.” FloridaToday reported.
In fact, Santos’ financial disclosures, the report says, “show a dramatic improvement in his finances at about the same time Santos was working for Harbor City” — a company that was abruptly shut down by the SEC, and from which Santos claimed no income — but both the initial address of the Devolder Organization and the Merritt Island penthouse address have direct ties to Harbor Capitol.
If the purpose of the company was the distribution of the Devolder family estate, it’s curious for it to have been closed down, then reopened.
It’s also strange for the company to exist first in the defunct OB-GYN office where the wife of Harbor City’s chief financial officer worked, then to move to an address belonging to Harbor City’s chief technical officer.
Meanwhile, Tristan Snell, former Assistant Attorney General in the Bureau of Consumer Frauds and Protection in New York, says the company “actually has no discernable operations at all,” but that it paid Santos $750k — before he donated a similar amount to his own campaign, in a particularly odiferous transaction.
“If this was a way for Santos to take in dark money contributions in unlimited numbers and funnel it into his campaign, then he has committed campaign finance violations that will land him in Federal prison,” said Snell.
Steph Bazzle covers politics and theocracy, always aiming for a world free from extremism and authoritarianism. Follow Steph on Twitter @imjustasteph.
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