news site Gothamist r<\/a>eported that an analysis showed that Participatory Safety raised “raised $1.4 million through SantaCon programming from late 2014 through the end of 2022,” but that “less than a fifth of that money has gone to registered nonprofits.”<\/p>\n“More than a third of the organization’s total giving during that period went to groups or individuals who appear connected to Burning Man, the annual weeklong festival in Nevada, including organizations devoted to hula hooping, dance parades, free costumes and more,” Gothamist reported.<\/p>\n
The report said that the largest donation by Participatory Safety went to “a for-profit outfit: $66,340 to Spectaculum Productions, LLC, maker of the documentary film ‘At Your Cervix,’ an expos\u00e9 about pelvic exams performed by medical students on unconscious and non-consenting patients.<\/p>\n
And in 2018, Participatory Safety “lost $17,498 worth of investments it made in cryptocurrencies \u2013 equal to about a third of its charitable giving that year,” Gothamist reported. “More than $832,000 of the money raised from SantaCon programming \u2013 or 59% \u2013 went to the nonprofit’s expenses, not including its charitable grants.”<\/p>\n
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Prosecutors said he “defrauded tens of thousands of individuals and small business owners who participated in” SantaCon, which annually draws about 25,000 people dressed as Santa Claus and other holiday characters to bars and restaurants in New York City. Tickets for the event cost between $10 and $20.<\/p>\n
Pildes served as president of and controlled the nonprofit entity that organizes SantaCon, Participatory Safety, Inc., prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
The indictment against him said that attendees were told that proceeds from SantaCon would go to various charities. In December 2024, the indictment said, Pildes on his website said ticket money went “directly to Santa’s charity drive,” and that “your money will be split between the various charities listed on this page as well as local charities along Santa’s route.”<\/p>\n
FBI Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office James Barnacle, Jr. said Pildes “allegedly stole Christmas from tens of thousands of victims and deprived local charities of more than one million dollars.”<\/p>\n
“The FBI continues to root out scrooges that greedily exploit the goodwill of\u00a0New Yorkers,” Barnacle said in a statement.<\/p>\n
A lawyer for Pildes did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of revelers who dressed as Santa Claus and other famous characters, participate in the annual SantaCon pub…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3351,3352,35204,7022,303,11088,1066,9,24,11,10,87,20606,901],"class_list":["post-198263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-breaking-news-politics","tag-business-news","tag-collusion","tag-corruption","tag-crime","tag-laws","tag-new-jersey","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-politics","tag-securities-fraud","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}