NYC vetting firm eyes silver lining to George Santos lying scandal

A vetting firm is banking on the scandal over serial-lying Rep. George Santos to drum up business, warning potential clients they don’t want to get “Santos’d.”

SRA Screening — a Manhattan-based background-check firm that performs criminal, court, motor vehicles and credit investigations, mostly for private firms — is launching a new social-media ad campaign saying, “Don’t Get SANTOS’D. Call SRA Screening Before You Hire.”

“Santos is the gift that keeps on giving,” said John Sherman of SRA. “It’s been a remarkable story.

“I know how easily something like the Santos scandal can be avoided,” he said. “We would have known in minutes that Santos was a fraud.”

Sherman said it is difficult for screening firms to vet the background of a candidate without the person’s consent, a situation that should be changed.

“The constituent is the employer. That’s who the politicians work for. If people want to run a background check, they should be able to run a background check,” he said.

He said he is willing to run some free background checks on members of Congress or candidates running for Congress to prevent another Santos situations.

Santos admitted during a Post interview in December that he fabricated his resume — including when he said he earned a degree from Baruch College, worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, owned 13 properties and had strong ties to Jewish culture.

“I said I was ‘Jew-ish,’ ” Santos famously responded The Post.

Nassau County Republican Party Chairman Joseph Cairo has acknowledged that the GOP did not adequately vet Santos’ background, while also calling for his resignation.

Santos is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over his fabrications.

Federal, state and county probes are also evaluating whether he violated campaign finance law — with investigators particularly looking at more than $700,000 initially listed in documents as personal loans to his campaign.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, while in DC last week, joined the bipartisan chorus of elected officials urging Santos to resign. She did not invite Santos to a meeting she held with the NY congressional delegation.

Meanwhile Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential candidate, told Santos he “doesn’t belong here” during an exchange in the House chamber before President Biden delivered his State of the Union address last week.