The Rembis Report and Other Fascinating Topics - Volume LXXXV

This newsletter is the fifth in a series about George Anthony Devolder-Santos. If you are just tuning in please click these links to read the full series in succession. For those already caught up I hope you enjoy this week’s installment.

• Russian Nesting Dolls, Gremlins, and Tribbles - Part I

• Russian Nesting Dolls, Gremlins, and Tribbles - Part II

• Russian Nesting Dolls, Gremlins, and Tribbles - Part III

• Russian Nesting Dolls, Gremlins, and Tribbles - Part IV

I believe it is Tom Robbin’s novel Even Cowgirls Get The Blues which begins with a drop of water. Not just any ordinary drop of water, but the original first drop of water on Earth and the undeniable fact that it is still here - somewhere. I do not have a copy of the book handy right now, but from what I recall, that drop of water could have been anywhere. It might be trapped in a glacier high in the mountains, at the bottom of a great ocean, vaporized in a cloud or floating down from the sky as a single unique snowflake. Or maybe it found its way into a swimming pool in Hollywood and graced a screen siren who dried herself off and doused it in a towel. Wherever that drop of water truly is, we will never know, because water comes and goes and comes back again, morphing from a vapor to a solid to a liquid, depending on its circumstance.

It is in this way that money, like water, is elusive. I can’t recall the first penny or dollar I ever earned, but I still have it. It stayed with me. I bought something with it, and that thing helped me along my journey until I bought something else, then I used that thing until I found another use for the other money I had and bought something else. I remember buying my first pair of cowboy boots with my paper route money when I was a kid. I outgrew them too soon, and I have other boots now, and between those and these I have had several pairs. Just like t-shirts and underwear, they are items of clothing I have never been without. I could not have these things without money.

I recall people advising me when I was younger, to buy jewelry, so that my money could stay liquid, and I could keep it close. I could sell the jewelry if I needed to and use the equity in the gold. I never got much into jewelry and didn’t take that advice, but I never ran out of money, t-shirts, or underwear (except that one time). I would never consider selling my boots so I consider them to represent one of those first dollars I ever earned. When I look down at my feet, I see an investment to take pride in. I am also pretty sure that nobody wants to steal them from me.

Yet, I can not definitively make a connection between the first dollar I earned and these boots. I can feel that way all I like, but I can’t prove the connection. The lineage is lost. The paychecks and purchases of almost fifty years dissolves that first dollar. I still have it, but I also have a few more now than I did that day, so there is no way to say with certainty, where it is.

Maybe it is in my boots or in the ice from my refrigerator that now sits in my glass beside my tequila. There is no way to narrow it down.

The same principle is true for the money launderer. You need to start somewhere. It is imperative to build a lineage for the money and a narrative to go with it. Think of it as a true story that gets embellished.

You hear about a guy that had a big fish on his hook. Oh, such a big fish it was, but the line snapped, and it got away. That could be the end of the story. You could see the rod and reel and the cut line and accept that story at face value. But, you know about this guy. He is a great fisherman. He doesn’t just lose his best tackle to a fish. There is more to the story.

He was out there, pulling on the line all night, and into the morning. This monster fish was so big it dragged him halfway across the Gulf of Mexico. That’s why it took him so long getting back. He never quit. Only when the fish won that battle did he sail home without a trophy.

“Wow!” you say. “That is amazing!” You never doubt him because you would not think that he would ever admit to failing at what he does best. Why would he make that up?

Because he wasn’t fishing at all. His trip had nothing to do with fishing. But what a great cover. You don’t know where he really was or what he did all night, but that alibi sounds pretty solid, especially coming from him. So you buy it hook, line, and sinker.

When somebody has a good reason for having a lot of money to begin with, they rarely get challenged for having a lot of money. Nobody is going to ask them to explain their first dollar or all the buckets of money they have now, especially when it gets too complex. Unless that person has taken somebody else’s money. But if the person with a lot of money to begin with never has to face that question, their money can come from virtually anywhere, ill-gotten or not, and it can all be mingled together like soup, so nobody can figure out where it ends or how it all started.

The first Devolder-Santos For Congress campaign that began in 2019 ended up taking in $393,000. Since Georgey Boy had made some friends, proved that he could be useful to them, and had no intention of getting out of the game, those with laundry baskets filled with cash stepped up and flooded his accounts. But not because of Santos. The candidate did not matter. They knew his treasurer, Nancy Marks.

Nancy Marks joined the Devolder-Santos team in early 2020. By the end of that first campaign she had been paid $6,250 by Devolder-Santos for fundraising services, expenses, gasoline, and reimbursements.

Cheng Gao was just one of the first donors to throw money to Santos for his second campaign. WinRed came on board about the same time. Their wide-ranging Republican-focused fundraising efforts were the perfect cover to bolster his coffers. By the end of March 2021 Santos had raised nearly $40,000 through WinRed. But Nancy Marks knew they could do better. It was time to go big.

Nancy Marks has served as treasurer for multiple political campaign committees since 2008 and began working for Lee Zeldin For Congress in 2014. She is the current treasurer for over 30 other PACs and committees. Zeldin has paid her company, GMG Printing and Marketing, over $85,000 for advertising services since 2014.

One of the many PACs that Marks manages the treasury for is one that she initiated. The 1776 Project PAC, which raked in $3,465,934.15 since its inception, is generic enough to be confused with any other group calling themselves the 1776 Project. It is defined as a Hybrid PAC (with Non-Contribution Account) - Nonqualified, which means that it is not supporting any specific candidate and that it can do whatever it wants with the money it raises.

The various 1776 Projects are similar enough that at first glance you would think they are all the same organization. But they are not. There are at least three and there may be more. Of these showcased below, only one is that which Marks raises funds for.

So guess which one belongs to Nancy. Oh, sorry, none of the above. It is this one, which does not even harbor enough metadata to generate a compelling link.

The name is too deliciously generic not to take advantage of. Even the news articles offering analysis and criticism of 1776 Projects do not point out which one they are talking about, probably because the reporters have not noticed that the others exist.

Nancy spotted the flaw with that name right away and swooped in to take full advantage of it. With her 1776 Project PAC you can report a school supporting Critical Race Theory or donate to them through WinRed. Fundraising efforts paid Marks $71,500 over the last two years for her accounting expertise. All this committee really does is take money and process advertising that the supporters like to see. It just creates rhetoric. Does it have any true impact? There is no way to know. Each of the 1776 Projects have different founders with various ideals, with only a thin margin of difference between what each is saying to delineate them. Any supporter who likes what one 1776 Project is saying may step up and support another 1776 Project, thinking that they have just pledged their funds to the one they thought they did, when they did not.

Nancy Marks’ 1776 Project is just another great machine for the laundry that people love tossing their quarters into. The only thing they will get out of it is some sense of pride that they are helping to forge some new dynamic and feel like they are part of the club. Maybe they’ll get a sticker, too.

The stickers ain’t free!

Oh, that’s right. There is a whole page dedicated to stickers, coffee mugs, hats, and t-shirts in exchange for your financial support. But guess what? Remember how you buy things online? Credit card. And if you use one of your own prepaid credit cards, tack on a generic name and address, take the money, and ship out nothing, that is a great way to launder money. Clean, tidy, fluffed, and folded.

Plus, you could use your bill-splitting app to pay out somebody else while you are at it.

This is just one PAC that Nancy Marks handles. She has been involved in over 200 other Republican organizations since 2009. Stack up all the stickers and t-shirts from the other ones and the revenue she handles climbs well over into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Just like anyone else utilizing generic names to open corporations and LLCs through remote Registered Agents, her PACs might have a nice ring to them, enough to persuade a supporter who likes what they hear to contribute, but whether or not they are doing anything worthwhile is impossible to measure. That is why they are perfect havens for hiding and moving money.

Employing tactics like she used in the Devolder-Santos campaign, on November 3rd of 2020, Lee Zeldin’s campaign paid out $199.99 to 21 separate anonymous accounts. A total of $4,199.79. Santos $199.99 payouts started in April of 2021. How there could be so many payouts for the exact same amount below the $200 limit for reportable spending is bluntly suspicious, especially when the payees are listed as anonymous, all on the same day.

Nancy Marks’ long-term business relationship with Congressman Lee Zeldin came to an end this week, apparently due to her affiliation with Santos, when Lee Zeldin fired her. He probably learned of those weird $199.99 payments he could not explain.

Over the last two election cycles, Zeldin’s campaigns paid WinRed $110,000 for credit cards processing fees. But that’s nothing. The Devolder-Santos campaign paid nearly twice that much, $206,000 to WinRed, for the same thing during the same time frame. Since WinRed is a donation clearing house, they can charge whatever they want for processing fees. They handle over a billion dollars for multiple clients. They are making millions on this line item.

WinRed does not even need to be an active participant in money laundering to take advantage of it. They just have to stay where they are and keep doing what they do. Collect and distribute money and charge fees to do so.

The Devolder-Santos campaign paid $29,100 to Nancy Marks businesses GMG Print And Marketing Resources LLC (est. 2012) and R.I.A. Concepts Holding Ltd. (est. 2006) for printing expenses and fundraising commissions. Devolder-Santos even donated $500 to Lee Zeldin’s re-election campaign in 2021. If you think that is weird, stranger still is Nancy Marks personal contributions to the Devolder-Santos campaign. In 2021 she contributed $2,900, while her kids, Giovanni and Maria, both donated $5,800 each. That is a $14,500 donation that just doesn’t add up. Why give anything to somebody she is working for and encourage her kids to do the same, especially when political donations are not tax deductible? What is the incentive to hand over money to somebody you are working for?

Just to move money. A lateral move to send it on its way from A to B to C. Just like other campaigns, Devolder-Santos served as a funnel. Georgey Boy was not Nancy’s top priority. He was just another customer with dirty cash to run through the wash. She handles collection and distribution all from the safety of her humble abode in Shirley, New York.

She has two businesses, GMG Print And Marketing Resources LLC and R.I.A. Concepts Holding Ltd., but routinely does business as Campaigns Unlimited with the email address [email protected].

While it is her email address found on multiple websites, including at her local chamber of commerce, Campaigns Unlimited New York is not a registered business at all. The company is included on Federal Election Commission documentation, but there is no corporation, LLC, or fictitious name registered anywhere. She maintains no website but she does own the domain name, so she is able to maintain a legitimate email address which probably forwards to Yahoo, Google, Outlook, or another basic email program she can send and receive from. When you go to CampaignsUnlimitedNY.com it pops up as not found with a DNS Error 404. No matter where you click on the Wayback Machine internet archive, every time the page was saved it was done so to show the DNS Error 404. No such website has ever existed, but the email address was always legit. She locked up the web address just for that email address to hide in plain sight.

Even with that vague web address that goes nowhere, which should have been a huge red flag flapping away for somebody, she maintained involvement with PACs and politicians, handling their finances, and using big tubs to wash the money. Just like those generic names of LLCs and corporations, PACs were no different. Nobody can tell them apart. People who want to give money to a cause just do it, because it sounds good for them. Supporters who liked the 1776 in Missouri may have donated to her, or Trump, or all three, or four. And all that money just went to buy advertising. It helped sell some paper and ink and air time. It got some folks riled up. It created no substantial long term jobs. It did nothing to help the environment and care for the planet. It did nothing to feed starving people. It did nothing to house the homeless, or stop war, or assist any victims in need of disaster relief. Millions of dollars are wasted like this every day only to convey concepts and ideas that again, do nothing of true sustainable value.

So, what now for Nancy Marks, Georgey Boy, and the Melbourne gremlins?

Please tune in again next week for part six and the possible conclusion of this series.

You said that last week.

I know. I told you this would take until President’s Day, and here we are. Now that you know all the dirt I am sure you will like the rinse cycle. It is going to be quite a spin.

Enjoy this weeks holidays and do something fun with your favorite valentine.

Thanks for reading.

Continue reading Russian Nesting Dolls, Gremlins, and Tribbles - Part VI

If you are new to the Rembis Report and would like to read any of the previous issues, PLEASE CLICK HERE to access the archives. To read it from the beginning, PLEASE GET A COPY of The Rembis Report: An Observation.