The organizer of New York City’s annual SantaCon bar crawl was arrested on wire-fraud charges on Wednesday after federal prosecutors alleged he diverted money that was supposed to go to charity and used it instead for personal expenses, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

Federal prosecutors alleged that Stefan Pildes, who lives in New Jersey and controls the nonprofit used to organize the event, donated only a fraction of the $2.7 million SantaCon raised from 2019 through 2024 and instead funneled the money into what they described as a personal slush fund, the Journal said. The indictment alleges that the diverted funds were used to lease a Manhattan apartment, renovate a lakefront property, and pay for a $3,000 birthday dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, whose office brought the case, accused Pildes of exploiting the event’s charitable branding. “Instead of donating the millions of dollars he raised, he ran his own con game,” Clayton said in a statement cited by the Journal.

Prosecutors also said Pildes used SantaCon’s claimed charitable mission to help market the event to potential venues. One promotional flier cited in the indictment said SantaCon was “a 501c3 Charity organization” that had raised more than $1 million for local New York charities over the previous decade, particularly for arts funding and hunger relief.

Pildes, 50, pleaded not guilty to one count of wire fraud, according to the report. 

Read more at The Wall Street Journal