{"id":198312,"date":"2026-04-15T17:40:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T17:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/198312\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T17:40:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T17:40:14","slug":"popular-nyc-santacon-charity-fundraiser-was-more-con-than-claus-authorities-say-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/198312\/","title":{"rendered":"Popular NYC SantaCon charity fundraiser was more con than Claus, authorities say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A SantaCon charity fundraiser that floods New York City with inebriated young people in red and white Santa costumes every holiday season was true to its name: a con, federal authorities said as they arrested its organizer.<\/p>\n<p>Stefan Pildes, 50, of Hewitt, New Jersey, was arrested on Wednesday and awaited an appearance in Manhattan federal court, where an indictment charging him with wire fraud was unsealed.<\/p>\n<p>Federal authorities said he donated to charity only a small fraction of the $2.7 million he raised through SantaCon events from 2019 to 2024.<\/p>\n<p>A message seeking comment was sent to an attorney for Pildes. The defendant was to make an initial appearance before a magistrate judge Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Authorities said he siphoned more than half of the proceeds raised each year to an entity he controlled so that he could finance personal needs, including renovations to a lakefront property in New Jersey, concert tickets, luxury vacations, extravagant meals and a luxury vehicle.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"twitter-follow-button\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ktar923\" data-show-count=\"false\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Follow @ktar923<\/a><\/p>\n<p>                        <a href=\"https:\/\/ktar.com\/newsletters\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#13;<br \/>\n\t&#13;<br \/>\n\t\t&#13;<br \/>\n\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/KTAREmail-830x100-1.jpg\" width=\"830\" height=\"100\" alt=\"newsletter sign up\" style=\"display:block;margin:0 auto;max-width:100%;height:auto;\"\/>&#13;<br \/>\n\t&#13;<br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<p>                    <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A SantaCon charity fundraiser that floods New York City with inebriated young people in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":{"0":"post-198312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-ny","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-nyc-headlines","12":"tag-nyc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198312","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=198312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}