George Santos, the former Republican congressman from New York whose outlandish fabrications and criminal schemes fueled an unforeseen rise and spectacular fall, was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison on Friday.

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

Mr. 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 Federal District Court in Central Islip, N.Y., a teary Mr. 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 Sept. 11, to name a few — turned him into a national punchline and led to mocking impersonations on “Saturday Night Live.”

His voice trembling, Mr. 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.”

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