By LARRY NEUMEISTER
NEW YORK (AP) — 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.
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.
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.
A message seeking comment was sent to an attorney for Pildes. The defendant was to make an initial appearance before a magistrate judge Wednesday.
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.
According to an indictment, Pildes spent much of the money on himself even though he claimed he received no compensation from the event.
“No producer received income from this event, this is a charity event,” the indictment alleges he wrote in a March 2023 email to a potential venue.
“Instead of donating the millions of dollars he raised, he ran his own con game,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a news release.
Pildes was president and controlled Participatory Safety Inc., the nonprofit entity that organized SantaCon, authorities said.
The SantaCon Website described the event as a “charitable, non-political, nonsensical Santa Claus convention,” 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.