George Santos Stole $3K From Vet’s Dying Service Dog Fundraiser: Report

A U.S. Navy veteran in New Jersey seeking to save his beloved service dog from a life-threatening stomach tumor was connected with a man who called himself “Anthony Devolder,” who promised to raise the $3,000 required to pay for the animal’s surgery. In fact, Devolder was future New York Rep. George Santos, and he quickly disappeared from the veteran’s life—with all the money he’d raised for the dog, according to a Tuesday report from Patch. The 47-year-old veteran, Richard Osthoff, told the New York outlet that Santos had closed the GoFundMe in 2016 after they fulfilled their fundraising goal “and then some.” Michael Boll, the president of the New Jersey Veterans Network, confirmed the account, saying he attempted to mediate the situation, but that Santos had been “totally uncooperative on the phone.” Though the GoFundMe page was deleted and The Daily Beast could find no archival record of it, contemporaneous Facebook posts written by Osthoff mention “Anthony Devolder,” a name by which many people, including Santos’ former roommates, knew him before he entered politics. The dog, Sapphire, died in 2017. Osthoff, who had been out of work for over a year, later turned to panhandling to afford the animal’s euthanasia and cremation—“one of the most degrading things I ever had to do,” he said.