"How an Investor Lost $625,000 and His Faith in George Santos

Andrew Intrater, a wealthy businessman, has been in touch with the
S.E.C. about Mr. Santos’s dealings on behalf of a company accused in a
Ponzi scheme."

"A month after the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit in
2021 accusing a Florida-based company of operating a Ponzi scheme, one
of the firm’s account managers assured an anxious client that his money
was safe.

The client, a wealthy investor named Andrew Intrater, had been lured by
annual returns of 16 percent and had invested $625,000 in a fund offered
by the company, Harbor City Capital — in part because he trusted and
admired the account manager, an aspiring politician named George Santos.

Admiration aside, Mr. Intrater wanted to know about his investment and a promised letter of credit that secured it. Mr. Santos said that it was
already on the way.

“All issued and sent over,” Mr. Santos assured him in a text message
sent in May 2021.

The letter of credit did not exist, the S.E.C. would later tell a court.
The $100 million that Mr. Santos told Mr. Intrater that he had
personally raised for Harbor City did not exist either, the commission
said. Nor, seemingly, did the close to $4 million that Mr. Santos
claimed he and his family had invested in Harbor City.

Mr. Santos’s representations form the basis of a sworn declaration that
Mr. Intrater gave the S.E.C. in May 2022, as part of its Harbor City investigation. Mr. Intrater’s interactions with the S.E.C. are the first indication the commission might be interested in Mr. Santos.

Mr. Intrater told the S.E.C. that the representations influenced his
decision to invest in Mr. Santos’s business and political endeavors — an allegation that could leave Mr. Santos vulnerable to criminal charges.

“I admired him and fundamentally I thought he’s a hard-working guy — he’s young and he has the ability to win,” Mr. Intrater said in a recent interview."

"Mr. Intrater is a private equity investor perhaps best known for his
financial ties to Viktor Vekselberg, his cousin. Mr. Vekselberg is a
Russian oligarch whose U.S. assets were frozen in 2018 by the Treasury Department because of his ties to the Kremlin.

Under a license from the Treasury Department, Mr. Intrater says, he has continued to manage Vekselberg-connected assets but is in the process of winding them down. He says that he has not distributed or received funds
or had business dealings with Mr. Vekselberg or related companies since
the sanctions.

Mr. Intrater is also known for his relationship with Michael D. Cohen,
Donald J. Trump’s onetime personal lawyer; Mr. Intrater’s firm, Columbus Nova, signed Mr. Cohen to a $1 million consulting contract when the
businessman was looking for new investment opportunities in 2018.

Mr. Santos met Mr. Intrater a few years later; Mr. Intrater recalled
that Mr. Santos called him seeking his financial support in the 2020 congressional race. After Mr. Santos lost, the two remained friendly,
building a relationship over text messages and lunches at Osteria
Delbianco, an Italian restaurant in Midtown. They bonded over a shared
“old school” worldview and having families that fled the Holocaust, Mr. Intrater said. (Mr. Santos’s family did not actually flee the Holocaust, records show.)"
[snip]

An annual return of 16% on a sure thing investment should be a big
red flag for any idiot.

TB

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