Nancy Marks, former U.S. Rep. George Santos’ campaign treasurer, was sentenced to three years’ probation on Wednesday, May 28.
She will also have to pay $178,000 in restitution.
Marks, 59, pleaded guilty to conspiring with Santos to commit wire fraud, making materially false statements, obstructing the administration of the Federal Election Commission and aggravated identity theft in October 2023.
Her sentencing came more than a year and a half after she entered her plea due to delays.
Marks was the treasurer for Santos’ principal congressional campaign committee during his 2022 bid for New York’s 3rd Congressional District.
Marks told U.S. District Court Judge Joanna Seybert during her sentencing that she was in the process of changing her life to step away from her past crimes, including enrolling in college courses and taking a warehouse job.
“I thought I had found a friend in George Santos,” Marks said. “But everything about him was a lie. I thought it was a true friend and a true person. He was not.”
Santos, who represented New York’s 3rd Congressional District on the North Shore of Nassau County and northeastern Queens, was sentenced in April to 87 months in prison for aggravated identity theft and wire fraud. He is also required to pay $373,000 in restitution to his victims.
Marks, who has served Long Island Republicans for more than a decade, said she filed fraudulent reports to artificially inflate the amount of funds Santos raised to meet financial benchmarks required to receive financial assistance from the Republican National Committee to meet the committee’s goals.
The campaign needed to raise at least $250,000, according to court records.
Prosecutors said to meet the committee’s benchmarks, Marks and Santos agreed to falsely report to the FEC that “at least 10 family members of Marks and the candidate had made contributions to the campaign, when Marks and the candidate both knew that these individuals had not made the reported contributions.”
Marks and Santos, prosecutors said, also agreed to falsely report to the FEC that the congressional candidate had “loaned the campaign significant sums of money, including in one instance a $500,000 loan when, in fact, the congressional candidate had not made the reported loans and, at the time the loans were reported, did not have the funds necessary to make such loans.”
Marks resigned as Santos’ campaign treasurer in January 2023. The congressman blamed her for mounting questions about his fundraising and spending before his federal indictment in May 2023.
