THIS is the shocking moment police nicked a shopping centre Santa Claus after he was accused of sexually abusing a child.
Dramatic footage shows cops parading the 67-year-old creep through the Brazilian mall in cuffs.
The sicko Santa was indicted for the rape of a minor after a probe launched earlier this year.
The unidentified man is not under investigation for a crime at the shopping centre and was detained under a preventive arrest warrant.
He has since been transferred to prison.
Shopping mall chiefs were quick to distance themselves from the alleged perv and expressed their “absolute repudiation of any conduct that compromises the safety of its customers.”
They reaffirmed that the alleged incident did not take place on their premises and that they were unaware of the investigation into their deviant St. Nick.
The venue added that its Christmas programme, which began on November 23, would press on with a new set of staff.
The suspect is not the only Santa to have found his way onto the indictment sheet.
In 2020, a US mall Santa Claus was arrested after he allegedly grabbed his underage coworker and exposed himself to her in a breakroom.
Carter was accused of hugging the underage colleague, grabbing her, and exposing his privates to her in the employees’ breakroom, according to the Milford Police Department.
The 45-year-old was arrested in Bridgeport later that day and charged with third-degree sexual assault and breach of peace, the department confirmed.
Another sicko Santa spent Christmas behind bars after dressing up to pose for pictures with kids on a busy high street in 2019.
Two youngsters were tricked into paying for snaps with Stephen Brown, 40, outside a department store.
Staff grew suspicious when they spotted him with a sign saying: “Get ya picture taken and leave Santa Claus a donation. (Merry Christmas)” and another that said: “Santa Stop Here.”
They alerted police who found he was in breach of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) imposed after he was jailed in 2012.
He was locked up for encouraging a teenage girl to perform sex acts via an anonymous social media account and threatened her when she refused to carry out his demands.
She contacted police who identified Brown as the user and arrested him at his home, where officers discovered a number of indecent images of children on his devices.
The perv was convicted of 14 offences including possession of indecent images, making an indecent image and inciting a child to perform a sex act.
He was spotted dressed in a full Santa costume outside Fenwick’s in Newcastle where kids queue to look at the department store’s famous Christmas window.
Shopper Grant Walker, of Stockton-on-Tees, said: “No one looked twice at him, he looked as though he had every right to be there.
“It’s a really busy street and there were lots of buskers and charity collectors, other people dressed as Santa as well so he just blended in.
He was charged with breaching the SOPO imposed and jailed him for six weeks after hearing it was the second time he had breached the order in the two years since his release.