The new king of Fundraising, SeanPaul “Long Island Audits” Reyes, started the new year with a new livestream Thursday afternoon as he recorded himself paying his fine in quarters for his conviction of trespassing at the Schenectady, New York, city hall last year.
Reyes was ordered to pay $370.00 in fines on October 15, 2024, when he was found guilty of the trespassing charges. As we’ve previously covered, Reyes went to the Schenectady city hall on April Fool’s day of last year with the intention of getting arrested in order to show off the Attorney Shield product he endorses.
We can say he intended on getting arrested as he already had a GoFundMe set up to handle costs from the arrest and had named the livestream after the fact that he was arrested before he even entered the building.
Reyes wandered through the building and filmed what he needed to film before apparently deliberately running into a security guard and causing an altercation. He was arrested and briefly held, demonstrating how his Attorney Shield product prevented police from turning his phone off.
Once released, he did another livestream/advertisement for the product from the parking lot, pledging that he’d fight the charges and file a lawsuit against the city to challenge the constitutionality of Mayor Gary McCarthy’s executive order banning recording in the City Hall.
In the lead up to the trial, Reyes demanded that City Court judge Teneka Frost recuse herself from handling the case because she was appointed to her post by McCarthy. Frost refused to do so and despite Reyes declaring to his 864,000 subscribers that she was horribly biased against him, he decided to pay the fine pending appeal.
On Thursday, he was paying the $370.00 fine in a mix of quarters and dimes. It’s a stunt he’s pulled before with fines, and his 4,000+ live viewers marveled in how he “stuck it to the man” by using an old tactic to get views.
There was some dispute as to where he could record within the Schenectady police department as it connects to the courthouse, and if the person at the customer service window could accept coins.
Reyes would eventually have a stand-off as to who would count the money, before the clerk gave in and began a manual count of the coins. He then told his viewers that they use their constitutional protected rights to call and complain about how he was treated.
After nearly three hours, he received a receipt for his payment, ending the threat that he would be thrown in jail for 15 days if he hadn’t paid the fine by January 6, 2025.
In my jurisdiction, the rule is they have to accept change if the charge is under 5$ anything over and they do not. I take it New York does not have such a rule/law in place. Otherwise, he should be refused and sent packing to service his 15 days.