George Santos has found a new stage, and it is your cousin's wedding video.
The disgraced former congressman, expelled from the House in December 2023, has resurfaced on Cameo charging north of $200 a pop for personalized videos, and the internet cannot look away.
Within days of his listing going live, clips started leaking onto TikTok and X, racking up millions of views from people who either find him hilarious, infuriating, or some cocktail of both.
The videos themselves are exactly what you would expect.
He wishes people happy birthdays, offers fake political endorsements, and occasionally winks at the camera in a way that suggests he knows precisely what he is doing.
Fans of the gag order them for bachelor parties, office pranks, and one reportedly for a divorce announcement.
Santos, for his part, has leaned into the bit, posting about his "new chapter" with the same unbothered confidence that carried him through two years of scandal.
It is a strange second act for a man whose resume, as we now know, included fabricated degrees, phantom jobs at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, and a volleyball career at Baruch College that never happened.
He was indicted on 23 federal charges, later pleading guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in August 2024.
He is scheduled to be sentenced in early 2025, and faces the very real possibility of prison time.
If anything, the legal peril seems to be part of the appeal.
There is a long American tradition of turning political villains into novelty acts, and Santos has slid into that lane with surprising ease.
He is not apologizing, not disappearing, and not pretending the whole thing was a misunderstanding.
He is just cashing checks and letting the memes do the marketing.
A few startups reportedly reached out about sponsored cameos, though it is unclear whether any deals closed.
Late-night hosts keep him in rotation because the material writes itself.
And on Reddit, threads debating whether buying a Santos Cameo counts as "supporting a criminal" or "just paying for a punchline" regularly spiral into hundreds of comments.
The uncomfortable truth is that Santos understands his audience better than most of his critics do.
He also knows that in 2025, a punchline with a Venmo handle can be a business.
Whether that business survives his sentencing date is the open question, but for now, the man who lied his way into Congress is telling the truth about one thing: people will absolutely pay to hear from him.
Our take: Santos has done what plenty of disgraced public figures do, which is convert notoriety into a paycheck before the legal system gets its say.
It is grifty, it is a little gross, and it is also a very American hustle.
Final Thoughts
The real test comes after sentencing, when the novelty wears off and the only thing left is whether anyone still wants the joke.