NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A popular SantaCon charity fundraiser that floods New York City with thousands of 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
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
Federal authorities said he donated only a small fraction of the $2.7 million he raised through SantaCon charity events from 2019 to 2024. The tradition featured a ticketed bar crawl through city streets each December that has attracted over 25,000 people dressed as holiday-themed characters.<\/p>\n
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
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 in Hawaii and Las Vegas, extravagant meals and a luxury vehicle.<\/p>\n
According to an indictment, Pildes spent much of the money on himself even though he claimed he received no compensation from the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo producer received income from this event, this is a charity event,\u201d the indictment alleges he wrote in a March 2023 email to a potential venue.<\/p>\n
“Instead of donating the millions of dollars he raised, he ran his own con game,\u201d U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a news release.<\/p>\n
Pildes was president and controlled Participatory Safety Inc., the nonprofit entity that organized SantaCon, authorities said.<\/p>\n
The SantaCon Website described the event as a \u201ccharitable, non-political, nonsensical Santa Claus convention,\u201d according to the indictment, which said Pildes solicited bars and restaurants to participate and donate 10% to 25% of their food and beverage sales to his charity organization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A popular SantaCon charity fundraiser that floods New York City with thousands of inebriated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[28920,75,9,24,55,54,56,833,834,3065,2336,829,831,79004,79005],"class_list":{"0":"post-198328","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-jay-clayton","9":"tag-manhattan","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-city-news","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-package-100024-ap-online","16":"tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","17":"tag-product-30083-ap-new-york-city-news-no-weather","18":"tag-product-30085-ap-new-york-state-news-no-weather","19":"tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","20":"tag-product-31998-ap-online-national-news","21":"tag-santacon-fraud-charge-pildes","22":"tag-stefan-pildes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198328","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=198328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}