NEW YORK – A Texas man was sentenced to a year and a half in prison Wednesday over his effort to dupe George Santos out of nearly $1 million by offering to destroy evidence in the disgraced congressman’s corruption case.
Hector Medina, 40, admitted to fabricating an identity as a politically connected fixer, then trying to extract money from Santos by claiming that he could have “evidence that is on you removed, disappeared.”
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Federal prosecutors said Medina — using the alias Michael Soto — tried the scam on other high-profile criminal defendants, including the actor Danny Masterson, but convinced no one.
Medina's attorney, Joseph Veith, said he was seeking to pay off gambling debts through a scheme that “lacked the sophistication and credibility necessary to pose any real threat of success.”
Medina pleaded guilty to identity theft and wire fraud in September. That came just weeks after Santos admitted to duping voters, deceiving donors and stealing the identities of nearly a dozen people, including his own family members, to make donations to his campaign.
“It’s fairly unusual where you’d have the defendant and the victim both charged in separate instances with the same crime,” Veith said by phone Wednesday. “My client is just happy his case is over, irrespective of what Mr. Santos is going to have to deal with.”
Santos declined to comment on Medina's case but said he had submitted a statement to the judge.
Earlier this month, Santos asked the New York judge overseeing his case to delay sentencing until the summer so he could pay off more than half a million dollars in fines by making more episodes of his recently launched podcast “Pants on Fire.”
Santos faces a mandatory minimum two-year sentence for the identity theft charge and a maximum of 22 years in prison. The sentencing is currently scheduled for April 25.