George Santos confessed to buying clothes and shoes with stolen checks: Brazilian case documents

Congressman-elect George Santos admitted to stealing a man's checkbook to buy clothing and shoes in 2008, according to Brazilian prosecutors.

CNN obtained 150 pages worth of case documents, including a statement Santos gave to police two years later, that showed he used stolen checks and a fake ID with the checkbook owner's name and his own photo to make purchases at a shop outside Rio de Janeiro, and he was called to speak to investigators several times the next two years.

Santos' mother told police in November 2010 she had a checkbook in her purse belonging to Delio da Camara da Costa Alemao, a man she had worked for as a nurse who had died the previous year, and that her son had used four checks from his account.

The future Republican lawmaker confessed to stealing the checkbook from his mother's purse and forging the man's signatures on two checks for more than $1,300 in clothes and shoes, but he said his mother had not known at the time and asked him to return the checkbook -- which he claimed to have torn up and thrown into a manhole.

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A store clerk became suspicious about a pair of purchases in July and August 2008 and alerted police because the signatures on two checks did not match.

Police were able to locate the owner of the checkbook and spoke to him by phone, but he claimed to have closed the account in 2006 after losing the checkbook.

The clerk had to repay the amount of the fraudulent checks in installments to the store, although his employer ended up waiving some of those payments, and he used social media to track down Santos, who promised to pay him back but never did.

CNN obtained screenshots of conversations between Santos and the clerk.

Investigators had been trying to take judicial measures against Santos since June 2011 and as recently as October 2020 but had been unable to track him down, and Brazilian authorities intend to make a formal request to the U.S. Justice Department to notify Santos of the charges.