Murky ‘straw donor scheme’ set up by billionaire kept George Santos afloat: report

New details about Rep. George Santos’ (R-NY) allegedly criminal campaign finance operations are emerging. The Daily Beast is reporting that obscure footnotes in the House Committee on Ethics’ recent report on Santos show a complex rabbit hole that eventually leads to a billionaire Florida lawyer.
Key among the committee’s findings is an alleged pass-through scheme involving Santos’ company, the Devolder Organization. When examining one of the footnotes and two appendix items in the fine print of the report, the Beast discovered that the Devolder Organization’s large donations to Santos’ Congressional campaign account ultimately came from Miami, Florida-based attorney John Ruiz, the founder of a Medicare litigation firm. With a net worth of $1.5 billion, Ruiz is ranked number 1,905 on Forbes’ 2023 billionaires’ list. Ruiz used a shell company, A-RU Holdings, to make a $250,000 payment to Devolder.
The Beast alleges that Ruiz funneled donations through his wife, Mayra, and his son, Alex, by first using the Devolder Organization’s bank account as a backchannel. The Beast examined campaign finance documents and Devolder Organization banking information and found that for the bulk of last year, Santos’ company had essentially no money up until his Congressional campaign kicked into high gear. In fact, the company had less than $50 on hand between June and October.