Former Roommate 'Confident' George Santos' Mother Not In WTC On 9/11

LONG ISLAND, NY — As Long Island Rep. George Santos’ background comes under intense scrutiny, a Sept. 11 victims advocate and a former friend of Santos are casting doubts over his story that the 9/11 attacks “claimed” his mother’s life.

Santos, 34, admitted to lying about going to college and fabricating a Wall Street career. A since-deleted version of his official campaign biography, captured in a web archive from Dec. 19, stated: "George’s work ethic comes from his mother, who came from nothing, but worked her way up to be the first female executive at a major financial institution. On September 11, 2001, George’s mother was in her office in the South Tower. She survived the horrific events of that day, but unfortunately passed away a few years later."

Santos also tweeted July 12, 2021: "9/11 claimed my mothers life."

Fatima Devolder died Dec. 23, 2016, from cancer, according to Santos’ campaign website and his former roommate and friend.

The roommate, Gregory Morey-Parker, who rented a room from Santos in Jackson Heights, Queens, and who he knew at the time as Anthony Devolder, told Patch in an interview, "I'm fully confident that I would have known if Fatima was in 9/11."

Morey-Parker grew close to Fatima Devolder during the months he lived with Santos, his mother and sister in Queens, posting social media photos embracing and chatting with the Brazilian-American, whom he described as "a sweet woman" who was very religious, "smoked like a chimney," and worked long hours cleaning apartments.

Morey-Parker, originally from Massachusetts, met Santos on a dating app, and the two became platonic friends, he recounted. Santos told him that his family owned a house in Nantucket, which Morey-Parker also shared with The New York Times last week, but could never give him an address, even though Morey-Parker kept asking, curious because he knew the island well.

When Morey-Parker couldn't find a new Queens rental at the end of 2013, he moved in with Santos, who said he just left a job at Dish Network, and was working at Brazilian company TV Globo.

Fatima Devolder's comments on Morey-Parker's Facebook posts can still be seen, calling him "my son" and sending him playful birthday messages.

"I am sure she would have brought [being in 9/11] up," he recalled, saying that she was very open about her life, sharing struggles and challenges she faced.

Morey-Parker remembered Santos' mother "working ridiculous hours," bringing back half-full bottles of premium liquor left behind from apartment clean-outs she did after tenants moved out.

"And of course Anthony would be like, 'Oh, I bought this for us and I drank half' and I'd be like, 'Buddy, I just talked to your mother, she said she brought that home for everybody."

Morey-Parker said he didn't know whether Fatima Devolder cleaned offices as well as homes. The New York Times found a Brazilian newspaper post from the time of her death calling her a cook, and talked to several people who said she worked in housecleaning and never heard her mention a financial career.

"She used to tell me, 'I work my hands to the bone cleaning for him to live this lavish lifestyle,'" Morey-Parker remembered, adding that "Santos had delusions of grandeur."

"Fatima would just roll her eyes and say, 'Anthony and his stories.' His mother was just very not happy with him and his ridiculous lifestyle that he was portraying."

Devolder was originally from Niterói, Brazil, where she worked as a health care aide to an elderly man that Santos was accused of stealing checks from in 2008. Last week, Brazilian authorities said they planned to reopen the criminal case after the publicity around Santos alerted them to his location.

Morey-Parker decided to move out of Santos' Queens apartment in 2014 after he said it "got to an awkward point."

"A lot of things kept spiraling," Morey-Parker said.

"I was paying rent and still they were getting eviction notices, and I was like what are you doing with this money?"

Even so, Morey-Parker stayed friendly with Santos after he moved out, and visited Devolder and Santos for a weekend after they moved to Florida in 2016. By then, Fatima Devolder was ill with cancer, and Morey-Parker never heard any mention of 9/11 then either.

John Feal, a prominent 9/11 victims advocate from Long Island, told Patch only a few law firms handle the bulk of 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund cases. He reached out to his contacts, who said they found no records of any claim by Fatima Devolder or her children.

Last week, several of those law firms told Rolling Stone they never had Fatima Devolder as a client. Not all 9/11 victims file claims, and not all those who file claims use a law firm, but Feal said he believed there's "no way I wouldn’t know" if the family filed a claim.

"If she did die of a 9/11-related cancer, they would have walked away with half a million dollars," he told Patch.

"Santos would have been the first person to apply for [VCF] funds," Morey-Parker said.

"I'm 100 percent sure, because I know how Anthony operate[d] and it was money."

Morey-Parker remembered Santos telling him around 2014 that he wanted to become a congressman one day, for the lifetime pension.

Santos didn’t respond to repeated requests for comments.

CBS News talked to a priest at a church the Devolder family attended in Long Island City. Father Jose Carlos da Silva at Saint Rita's Catholic Church said that Santos asked him to help raise money for his mother's funeral from the congregation. He told the priest the family couldn't afford it.

On Dec. 24, 2016, Santos created a GoFundMe campaign asking for $9,000 for "the costs of the wake."

He wrote "Fatima left two children who were not working because she needed 24 hours of care and now they need our help in this delicate moment."

In 2021, Santos said in a radio interview on “The Voice of Reason with Andy Hooser” that his mother was “caught up in the ash cloud” on 9/11 but didn't need the financial help from a victim claim.

“She never applied for relief because her motto was, ‘I can afford it. We’re fortunate. We can take care of all our, our medical bills. If I take it, I’m taking it away from these men and women who need it and who put their lives on the line,’" he said in the interview.

If Santos lied about his mother being a 9/11 victim, it would be more than just another lie in a long list of Santos’ fabrications to the Long Island 9/11 community, Feal said.

"People here are disgusted and repulsed [by using] 9/11 like that. 9/11 is still sacred; it causes a lot of angst and a lot of pain."

Santos has also faced swirling questions about whether he lied about his Jewish heritage, his grandparents surviving the Holocaust, having four employees die in the Pulse nightclub shooting, the legitimacy of his pet charity, being a landlord, and the origins of assets he declared in his 2022 congressional FEC filings.

The numbers of 9/11 survivors are dwindling, Feal pointed out, and he said he feels an urgency to continue his advocacy and lobbying work in Washington, D.C. before they are all gone.

"We are sick and dying and want to be left alone. When I see Santos in D.C., I won't work with him or talk to him."