NEW YORK — The lead organizer of SantaCon NYC, an annual Christmas-themed bar crawl that is both beloved and reviled, took more than half of the nearly $3 million the event raised for charity over five years, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
The organizer, Stefan Pildes, used his position as the president of the nonprofit that runs SantaCon to illegally divert the money into a separate company to finance “personal ventures,” and spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on “extensive renovations to a lakefront property in New Jersey, luxury vacations in Hawaii, Las Vegas, and Vail, extravagant meals and a luxury vehicle,” according to an indictment.
“Stefan 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,” Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement.
Pildes, 50, of Hewitt, New Jersey, was charged with one count of wire fraud. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.
On Wednesday, Pildes pleaded not guilty during an appearance in federal court in Manhattan. Magistrate Judge Katharine H. Parker set bail at a $300,000 bond secured by his New Jersey home and two co-signers.
Pildes did not respond to a phone message seeking comment. A lawyer representing him also did not respond to a request for comment.
SantaCon NYC describes itself on its website as “a charitable, nonpolitical, nonsensical Santa Claus convention that happens once a year to fund art &spread absurdist joy.”
SantaCon began in San Francisco in 1994 as a playful, alcohol-fueled, somewhat misanthropic commentary on Christmas consumerism. It made its New York debut in 1998, and has returned every December since.
Anyone wearing red, or perhaps a pair of antlers, can join the festivities, but the bar crawl typically has an official starting point and route. Those details and “secret info” are available to participants who buy a “Santa Badge,” the event’s website says.
Badges cost $17 each last year, with the proceeds going “directly to Santa’s charity drive” and from there to groups such as City Harvest, the City Parks Foundation and the Flatbush Development Corp., the website says.
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