Former Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., whose outlandish fabrications and criminal schemes fueled an unforeseen rise and spectacular fall, was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison Friday.

His 87-month sentence was a severe corrective to a turbulent period in which Santos was catapulted from anonymity to political and pop cultural infamy, a national spotlight that, even when negative, he often relished more than rejected.

Santos pleaded guilty last year to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He acknowledged his involvement in a variety of other deceptions, including lying to Congress, fraudulently collecting unemployment benefits and bilking campaign donors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Sitting before Judge Joanna Seybert in U.S. District Court in Central Islip, N.Y., a teary Santos, 36, seemed far removed from the swaggering politician whose lies — that he was a college volleyball star and a Wall Street financier with ties to the Holocaust and 9/11, to name a few — turned him into a national punchline and led to mocking impersonations on “Saturday Night Live.”

His voice trembling, Santos told the judge that he had “betrayed the confidence entrusted to me” by the American people. “I cannot rewrite the past,” he said, but “I can control the road ahead.”

He asked for a lenient sentence to have time to “let me prove that I can still contribute positively to the community I wronged.”

But citing Santos’ history of lies and noting that he has not yet paid any court-ordered restitution to his victims, Seybert cast doubt on Santos’ contrition.

“Where is the remorse?” she asked incredulously at one point. “Where do I see it?”

She expressed some sympathy for Santos and hope for his future, even if it was now derailed by a prison sentence. But she ultimately sided with federal prosecutors’ recommendation that he receive an 87-month sentence.

“Mr. Santos, words have consequences,” the judge told him. “You got elected with your words, most of which were lies.”

Santos, who cried into his hands as the sentence was being read, was given until July 25 to surrender and begin serving his term. He was ordered to pay more than $370,000 in restitution to his victims and will have to give up 10% of his income toward payments once he is released.

After his sentencing, Santos straightened, and pulled a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses out of his suit jacket. He strode from the courthouse to an awaiting car without speaking to the press, and he did not respond to a subsequent request for comment.

If his lies accounted for his ignominious rise, Santos’ financial misdeeds are what triggered his downfall. Well before any resolution in his criminal case, his colleagues in the House made the unprecedented decision in December 2023 to expel him from Congress without a conviction.

After an ethics investigation found Santos had spent campaign funds on Botox, designer fashion, cosmetics and OnlyFans, more than 100 Republicans joined Democrats to push him out.

It was a bipartisan break from party orthodoxy that seems unthinkable less than two years later, as President Donald Trump uses the bully pulpit to unite Republicans in Congress behind him and hold their slim majority.

Although Trump has made expansive use of his presidential pardon power, he has shown no indication he might pardon Santos, who has yet to receive the president’s favor despite his strong adherence to Trump’s politics. After losing his first bid for a House seat in 2020, Santos backed Trump’s false claims of a stolen election and wrongly said that he, too, had been the victim of voter fraud.

Two years later, Santos won what had been a Democratic-leaning district on Long Island. The victory by Santos, a young Brazilian American and the first openly gay Republican to be newly elected to Congress, seemed to signal a shift in the party’s politics.

But Santos’ campaign was built on a spectacular array of lies that would be exposed before he even took office. He claimed to be a descendant of Holocaust refugees. His mother, he said, was in the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks. And he boasted of extensive experience at Wall Street firms that allowed him to report loaning his campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars.