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 personal use, New York federal prosecutors said.
The defendant, Stefan Pildes, who claimed he did not receive any compensation from SantaCon allegedly spent the diverted funds on extensive renovations to a lakefront property in New Jersey, luxury vacations in Hawaii, Las Vegas and Vail, Colorado, concert tickets, extrvagant meals and a luxury vehicle, according to the indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
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 from SantaCon went to charity, according to the indictment against him.
Pildes, 50, “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.
