Santos charity’s history raises new concerns
Claims made about animal rescue don’t stand up to scrutiny
NEW YORK — Money had come in from raffles and sales of gift baskets; a few pets had found new homes. All in all, the adoption charity event at a Pet Oasis store on Staten Island had been a success.
But then the charity’s leader made an odd request: He insisted that the store owner give him the proceeds in a check made out to his name, Anthony Devolder.
The owner refused and wrote the check out to the charity, Friends of Pets United. Days later, when he looked at his bank records, he noticed that the check had been altered: The charity’s name had been blotted out. “When it cashed, it was crossed out, and it had Anthony Devolder written on it,” said the owner, Daniel Avissato.
Anthony Devolder is now better known as Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., whose election to Congress in November was upended by revelations of falsehoods in his background and irregularities in his personal and campaign finances.
Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether Santos’ lies on the campaign trail or his unusual campaign expenses and fundraising practices merit criminal charges. And FBI agents are now apparently looking into some of his work with Friends of Pets United, as first reported by Politico.
Santos has said he “founded and ran” the charity from 2013 to 2018. In that time, Santos’ campaign biography once asserted, the organization rescued more than 2,500 animals. He recently characterized his involvement with the charity as a “labor of love
and hard work.”
Santos has not substantiated his claims. Few public records exist to corroborate them, and Friends of Pets United’s operations appear to have centered on a Facebook group that is now defunct. Only traces of the organization remain on public social media posts and GoFundMe campaigns, and Santos’ campaign biography no longer mentions it.
Santos’ lawyer, Joe Murray, would not answer questions about Friends of Pets United, citing pending investigations into Santos.
Screenshots from the Facebook group and interviews with former volunteers and associates of Santos help construct a fuller picture of the charity’s operations. They recalled scattered efforts: Some pets were rescued; charitable events were held; and money and supplies were donated to animal groups.
But they also suggest that Santos’ penchant for falsehoods and exaggerations extended to Friends of Pets United. Several people said Santos assured them he was operating a registered nonprofit, but no records exist to confirm that.
They said the group rescued far fewer pets than the more than 2,500 that Santos claimed it saved. The group was not registered as a rescue organization in New York state, and there was no record that it was authorized to take dogs from New York City shelters.
And several people took issue with how Santos handled his group’s funds, saying they never received the thousands of dollars he raised on their behalf, often through GoFundMe.
Regina Spadavecchia, who runs the Adore-a-Bullie Paws and Claws rescue in the city’s Bronx borough, said Santos boasted of his fundraising prowess, saying he was a money manager with connections. In reality, he had worked for a Turkey-based hospitality technology company, eventually moving on to work at a small company that organized conferences for investors and fund managers.
Spadavecchia accepted his claims, and with at least a dozen dogs in her care was eager for the help. In March 2017, Santos posted on Facebook that he was raising money for Adore-a-Bullie through a $5 raffle for a dinner cruise and Broadway tickets.
But Santos never fully followed through on his promises, Spadavecchia said, sending her about $400 instead of the thousands of dollars he had suggested. She decided to cut ties with him.
“If you’re doing fundraising in my name, and you’re claiming you can make a couple of thousand, and you’re sending me $400, then something’s off,” Spadavecchia said. “You’re either boasting about stuff you can’t do, or you’re keeping money on the side. I don’t know.”
In October 2015, Santos used one of the charity’s earliest Facebook posts to boast that the group had participated in 20 adoptions in its two months in operation. (His campaign biography indicated the group began work in 2013.)
Screenshots of the Facebook group provided to The New York Times show that Santos often reposted photos from other rescues or other Facebook pages, pleading with the group’s members to help save dogs and cats in need.
Monica Cunha, who first connected to Santos through a Facebook page for Brazilian pet lovers, recalled his taking dogs whose owners could no longer care for them and trying to find them new homes. But she said he rarely posted details of successful adoptions.
Existing posts on Facebook and screenshots also show that Santos was frequently fundraising through GoFundMe pages, direct solicitations to a PayPal account and supposed raffles.
In those solicitations, Santos consistently referred to the charity as a tax-exempt organization. Yet federal and state officials could not find records of a registered charity named Friends of Pets United. New York’s Department of Agriculture and Markets said it had no records that the organization was registered as a rescue, as would have been required starting in September 2017.
Santos also had ties to an animal shelter in South Carolina, the Berkeley Animal Center. Jenna-Ley Jamison, a spokesperson, said the shelter’s records showed it sent just two dogs to Friends of Pets United, on Dec. 8, 2017.
Judi Eskenazi, who once helped run an animal rescue in New Jersey, said Santos asked her in January 2018 to help him with six dogs he took from a South Carolina shelter. A friend of hers at another rescue took the animals.
At the time, Santos told Eskenazi that he was closing his rescue, she said. Months later, he was back with a similar story: He was about to shut down and urgently needed to place his last remaining animals. He would repeat the spiel throughout the year, she said.
By December, Eskenazi was tired of Santos’ entreaties and started swapping stories with a friend who ran an animal rescue and had similar experiences.
That friend decided to learn more about Friends of Pets United and the man behind it, Anthony Devolder. Days later, she sent Eskenazi a Facebook message.
“Wait this is so weird,” she wrote. “I’m pretty sure his name is actually george.”