Federal Authorities Reveal SantaCon Was a Con; New Yorkers File This Under “Things We Suspected”

Charity Fundraiser That Flooded NYC With Inebriated Santas Every December Was Actually a Scam; Shocking to No One in Particular

Reported by Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.

NEW YORK, NY — Federal prosecutors announced this month charges against the organizers of SantaCon, the annual event that floods New York City’s bar districts with thousands of adults in Santa Claus costumes each December under the banner of charity fundraising, confirming what New Yorkers, bartenders, and anyone who has ever been to the Lower East Side in December has long suspected: the charity was not receiving the money in the manner described, the fundraising was not functioning in the manner implied, and the cause to which participants believed they were contributing was, as one prosecutor noted, “difficult to identify.”

The charges allege that the event’s organizers collected charitable donation pledges from participants and sponsors, disbursed a small fraction to any verifiable charitable cause, and retained the remainder through a network of event management fees, vendor commissions, and expenses that included, per the indictment, “a substantial bar tab described in organizational records as ‘community engagement costs.’”

The Event, Described

SantaCon, for those who have managed to avoid it, is a pub crawl held each December in which participants dress as Santa Claus, gather in public spaces, travel between bars in large groups, and drink alcohol at a rate that challenges the human body’s seasonal capacity. The event was marketed as a charity fundraiser, with participants encouraged to donate to causes that organizers described as “local community organizations” and “children’s initiatives” and, in later years, “various charitable purposes,” a phrase that lawyers for the accused describe as “technically broad” and prosecutors describe as “functionally meaningless.”

Attendance at peak years exceeded 30,000 participants across the city. The charitable proceeds, per the indictment, averaged approximately $12 per participant per year, of which approximately $3 reached a verifiable charity. The rest, the federal complaint states, can be traced to organizational infrastructure in a way that rhymes with “paying ourselves” but requires a securities attorney to explain precisely.

New York’s Reaction: A Taxonomy

Reaction among New Yorkers has fallen into predictable categories. The first category is: surprised. These are people who participated sincerely, donated genuinely, and feel cheated, which they are and should feel. The second category is: not surprised in the slightest. This is the majority of New Yorkers, particularly those who live near the traditional SantaCon routes in the East Village, Midtown, and Hell’s Kitchen, who have spent years watching 30,000 festive strangers pour out of subway stations and immediately into bars and who always wondered what exactly the charitable component looked like in practice. The third category is: amused in a dark way. This is the category that encompasses most journalists, former participants, and anyone who has ever had to step over a man in a Santa hat at 11am on a Saturday in December while trying to get to the farmers market.

“I gave $40 to SantaCon in 2019,” said one Manhattan resident, who asked not to be named because it is embarrassing. “I asked the organizer where it was going and they said ‘the kids.’ I said which kids. They said ‘New York kids.’ I said that’s not a charity. They said ‘it’s more of a spirit of giving.’ I gave the $40 anyway. I don’t know what I expected.”

The Bars, for Their Part

New York City bars that participated in SantaCon’s official “route” by accepting the business of thousands of Santa-costumed customers are not defendants in the case, because selling alcohol to consenting adults in costumes is not a crime regardless of what it looks like from outside. Several bar owners said they were “not aware of any charitable irregularities” and noted that SantaCon was “very good for December business” in a way that perhaps should have prompted more questions but didn’t, because December is a busy month and money is money and the Santas tip reasonably.

The NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection advises donors to verify charitable organizations before contributing, a recommendation that would have been useful to 30,000 Santa-costumed participants at various points since 2012 but which is now a bit retrospective.

The Silver Lining

The case has produced at least one genuine benefit: the phrase “community engagement costs” has been added to the list of financial red flags that federal investigators note in charitable fraud cases, joining such classics as “administrative overhead,” “operational reserves,” and the ever-popular “miscellaneous program expenses.” The addition of holiday costumes to fraud methodology is, in its own way, a contribution to the field.

Next December, the SantaCon spots on the event calendar will presumably be empty, which means 30,000 New Yorkers will have to find another way to do whatever it was they were doing. The bars will find other business. The children will receive approximately the same amount either way, which is to say: not from this.

For fraud in a festive format, see The Daily Mash.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

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