SantaCon promoter arrested for charity fraud

The president of SantaCon was arrested on Wednesday on a federal criminal indictment accusing him of using the ticketed Christmas bar-crawl event to divert hundreds of thousands of dollars earmarked for charity to his personal use, New York federal prosecutors said.

The defendant, Stefan Pildes, claimed he did not receive any compensation from SantaCon, according to the indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

But the 50-year-old Pildes allegedly diverted funds from the event to a “slush fund” to pay for extensive renovations to a lakefront property in New Jersey, luxury vacations in Hawaii, Las Vegas, and Vail, Colorado, concert tickets, extravagant meals, and a luxury vehicle, prosecutors said.

About $124,000 of the SantaCon funds were spent toward leasing a luxury apartment in Manhattan, and another $100,000 was invested in a boutique resort in Costa Rica founded by a friend of Pildes, the indictment said.

Pildes “donated only a small fraction” of the approximately $2.7 million raised by SantaCon for his nonprofit group, Participatory Safety, to charity, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors said he “defrauded tens of thousands of individuals and small business owners who participated in” SantaCon, which annually draws about 25,000 people dressed as Santa Claus and other holiday characters to bars and restaurants in New York City. Tickets for the event cost between $10 and $20.

Pildes “promoted SantaCon as an event grounded in charitable giving, but instead of donating the millions of dollars he raised, he ran his own con game,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement.

“He took advantage of New Yorkers’ generous holiday spirit to finance his lifestyle through personal expenses, big and small,” Clayton said.

Pildes, who lives in Hewitt, N.J., is charged with one count of wire fraud. He is expected to appear on Wednesday afternoon in Manhattan federal court.

The indictment comes more than two years after an analysis by the news site Gothamist found that Participatory Safety raised “raised $1.4 million through SantaCon programming from late 2014 through the end of 2022,” but that “less than a fifth of that money has gone to registered nonprofits.”

“More than a third of the organization’s total giving during that period went to groups or individuals who appear connected to Burning Man, the annual weeklong festival in Nevada, including organizations devoted to hula hooping, dance parades, free costumes and more,” Gothamist reported.

The report said that the largest donation by Participatory Safety went to “a for-profit outfit: $66,340 to…