SantaCon President Used Charity to Fund Luxurious Life-style: Prosecutors

The man behind New York City’s SantaCon did not simply throw a rowdy annual charity pub crawl — he was a secret scrooge who “ran his own con game,” federal prosecutors allege, siphoning hundreds of thousands from an occasion marketed as a philanthropic fundraiser.

Stefan Pildes, the 50-year-old president of SantaCon, which frequently drew in over 25,000 festively dressed drinkers throughout New York, was charged with a single rely of wire fraud on Wednesday. The cost carries with it a sentence of as much as 20 years in jail if convicted, in accordance with the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

Prosecutors stated Pildes marketed SantaCon as a charity occasion, encouraging attendees to buy tickets, often between $10 and $20 every, below the premise that proceeds profit nonprofit causes, akin to The Children’s Heart Foundation and Clowns Without Borders. Instead, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York accused him of diverting funds into accounts he managed and utilizing them for private bills, akin to a luxurious automobile and live performance tickets, quite than donating them.

While prosecutors didn’t disclose the precise quantity Pildes is accused of misusing, they stated he used greater than half of the roughly $2.7 million generated by SantaCon between 2019 and 2024 for his personal profit. Only a “small fraction” ever reached charity, in accordance with the US Attorney’s Office.

Prosecutors stated in an indictment that the “slush fund” Pildes created was used to splurge on gadgets together with extravagant holidays in Hawaii, Las Vegas, and Vail, greater than $365,000 in renovations to a lakeside property in New Jersey, a $124,000 lease on a luxurious Manhattan condominium, and almost $3,000 on a birthday dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Manhattan.

An lawyer for Pildes has not but been named in court docket filings, and Pildes didn’t reply to requests for remark from Business Insider.

Eyewitness News ABC7NY reported Pildes pleaded not responsible to the fees on Wednesday afternoon.

“Pildes allegedly stole Christmas from tens of thousands of victims and deprived local charities of more than one million dollars,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle, Jr. stated in a press release concerning the prices. “The FBI continues to root out scrooges that greedily exploit the goodwill of New Yorkers.”

SantaCon has lengthy had a fraught fame in New York City, the place the annual vacation bar crawl attracts tens of hundreds of costumed revelers — and protracted complaints from locals about unruly habits. Critics have questioned its charitable framing, arguing the occasion usually resembles “a drunken free-for-all” regardless of being marketed as a fundraiser.

Business Insider in 2023 reported on an investigation by the New York City weblog Gothamist, operated by New York Public Radio, which discovered that giant sums of SantaCon’s funds had been funneled into crypto and towards teams associated to Burning Man.