{"id":198326,"date":"2026-04-15T17:50:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T17:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/198326\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T17:50:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T17:50:07","slug":"nyc-santacon-charity-fundraiser-was-more-con-than-claus-authorities-say-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/198326\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC SantaCon charity fundraiser was more con than Claus, authorities say | New York"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">A SantaCon charity fundraiser that floods <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/new-york\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New York City<\/a> 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 class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Stefan Pildes, 50, of Hewitt, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/new-jersey\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New Jersey<\/a>, 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 class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Federal authorities said he donated to charity only a small fraction of the $2.7m he raised through SantaCon events from 2019 to 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">A message seeking comment was sent to an attorney for Pildes. The defendant was to make an initial appearance before a magistrate judge on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A SantaCon charity fundraiser that floods New York City with inebriated young people in red and white Santa&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":{"0":"post-198326","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\/198326","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=198326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}