(NEW YORK) — Nancy Marks, the former treasurer for embattled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal conspiracy charge.
Marks allegedly filed the names of false donors to Santos’ congressional campaign. Federal prosecutors said she did so to inflate the amount of campaign donations Santos appeared to have amassed so he could qualify for national party support.
The names of Marks’ and Santos’ family members were among those falsely reported to have lent his campaign $500,000, despite not having the financial means to do so, prosecutors said.
“These reports were created to artificially inflate his funds to meet a threshold,” federal prosecutors said Marks told them.
Her attorney, Raymond Perini, said his client does not have a cooperation agreement with the government in place, but “if they subpoena her, she’ll do the right thing.”
“With today’s guilty plea, Marks has admitted that she conspired with a congressional candidate to lie to the FEC and, by extension, the public about the financial state of the candidate’s campaign for New York’s Third Congressional District, falsely inflating the campaign’s reported receipts with non-existent contributions and loans,” United States Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.
Marks is scheduled to be sentenced next April.
Marks resigned from Santos’ team in January amid reports of multiple controversies revolving around his campaign finances.
Marks has been a fixture of Republican politics on Long Island for decades. She was a treasurer for Lee Zeldin’s unsuccessful campaign for governor and she worked for several political committees, including God, Guns, Life, Veterans for MAGA and Defend the Constitution.
Santos blamed Marks when questions were raised about the sources of his fundraising and his spending. The Republican congressman pleaded not guilty in May to a 13-count indictment accusing him of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.
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