In July 2020, Santos worked with DeVaughn Dames at a Florida-based investment firm called Harbor City, where Dames was the CFO. According to a complaint filed by the SEC, Harbor City was run in a “classic Ponzi scheme fashion.” The company’s CEO was accused of misappropriating $6 million in investor funds. According to reporting by The Daily Beast, which raised this red flag way back in April of this year, Santos left Harbor City in 2021 one month before the charges were filed, and he claims he was unaware of any misconduct there.
Despite apparently earning millions of dollars, the Devolder Organization let its corporate status lapse and had to file reinstatement papers just a few days ago, which have scrubbed Dames’s name as registered agent and now list only Santos. The company lists a condo in Merritt Island, Florida, as its principal place of business. But the condo is also listed as the place of business of other companies, including Redstone Strategies and Jayson Benoit & Associates, Inc., both of which have ties to the troubled Harbor City investment firm. Benoit was the CTO at Harbor City and is the registered agent for Redstone.
And here’s where it keeps getting weirder: Two other firms associated with Benoit— Red Strategies and Paul Nicolini and Associates, which were formed in 2021—were paid by Republican congressional campaigns in New York. Red Strategies received $110,000 from a far-right extremist candidate, Tina Forte, who ran a troll-like campaign against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and lost badly. By no small coincidence, Dames pops up here again as the treasurer of Forte’s campaign. Paul Nicolini, another regional director of Harbor City, was authorized to manage and control Red Strategies.