As Los Angeles wildfires have incinerated homes and displaced families, a campaign across billboards in Times Square and thousands of taxi cabs is soliciting New Yorkers to help. The glowing digital advertisements are not to boost any charity providing fire relief — instead they direct passersby to donate to the private company of a Los Angeles-based tech entrepreneur, DJ and talent manager.
Last week, a six-sided billboard cube under the famous Coca-Cola ad at West 47th Street and Broadway began promoting a donation link to a newly-launched company of Alec Celestin, a 27-year-old self-described “entertainment and tech disruptor.”
On his X account, where his two-word bio is “mini elon,” Celestin posted, “I have found a way to SAVE LOS ANGELES.” His website and recent posts describe sweeping commitments to fire relief, including organizing emergency evacuations, deploying search and rescue teams and rebuilding communities.
As relief efforts have ramped up around the country in response to the overwhelming destruction, law enforcement officials in California and New York have warned consumers to be vigilant about potential scams in the midst of a crisis. Guidance from the Office of the New York State Attorney General advises that people research organizations’ histories and ask about how donations will be used to avoid sending money to grifters.
“In the midst of terrible natural disasters such as the wildfires impacting the greater Los Angeles area, scammers often take advantage of generous acts in exchange for personal gain,” stated Attorney General Letitia James in a press release last Friday.
Celestin has not been accused of any wrongdoing or charged with a crime related to his fundraising efforts.
But James’s office confirmed to THE CITY this week that it is aware of Celestin’s effort, called the Lineo Relief Fund, and is looking into it. His advertising in New York City has likely cost him tens of thousands of dollars, according to media buyers, and while the fund’s site claims $280,781 has been raised, nearly $270,000 of that appears to have come from Celestin himself.
Celestin told his followers, “We are going to GoFundMe and helping them raise more funds” in one post about his relief work. The company told THE CITY, “GoFundMe does not have a partnership with the Lineo Relief Fund, Alec Celestin, or his company Lineo. He is, however, welcome to donate funds directly to GoFundMe’s Wildfire Relief Fund.”
Not Organized as a Charity
In a wide-ranging conversation for more than an hour, Celestin defended his fire relief efforts, explaining that he had funded the advertising campaign himself and was also donating money directly to fire relief efforts. He told THE CITY that he could spend his money how he saw fit and while the advertising campaign had not yielded many donations, he planned to continue the campaign.
As concerns have risen about the credibility of fundraising efforts, THE CITY looked into his effort, which is being advertised to millions of New Yorkers and tourists. The Lineo Relief Fund is not organized as a charity or a nonprofit organization. Either designation allows donors to claim tax exemptions. Instead, Celstin confirmed, the funds are paid directly to his company, as specified in terms outlined on his site. And though it is not unusual for private companies to make charitable donations in the wake of a natural disaster, it is unusual for a firm to use such a crisis as an opportunity to solicit donations to itself with vague promises of assistance.
Potential donors who want to know how their money may assist the fire relief efforts are likely out of luck: “Specific details regarding the allocation of individual donations may not always be available,” his website says, adding, “contributions are made at your own discretion and risk.”
Celestin, however, praised his own efforts to contribute to the relief effort. “I put in so much goddamn money, it’s insane. Those 2,000 taxicabs, as well as the billboards all came from me, from my personal wallet,” Celestin told THE CITY. “The campaign’s working great, it’s awareness.”
When asked why he spent money on advertisements instead of direct aid, Celestin said “Let’s remember whose money it is. I spend how I want.” He added that he’s given to fire relief as well, citing a $1,800 donation to the California Fire Foundation. He acknowledged that Lineo is not a charity and said he plans to later register as one, but did not currently have his laptop with him while staying at a Ritz Carlton in Hawaii. “I’m doing a million things right now,” Celestin said. “I’m working so hard and trying my best.”
His dream, though, is to go into the fires himself. Breaking down into tears at one point, he offered, “what I want to do is save a life. That’s what I wanna do. I want to save a life and an animal, one of each.”
For now though, Celestin remains in Hawaii while he builds out his company which he says will do “everything.” Celestin is often boastful in his postings, as he was in his interview, although he frequently skirts around offering details to support his claims. He described using the funds to hire a team of people that were extracting veterans from the fires. When asked where exactly, Celestin said that his teams were working so seamlessly that he did not know.
Influencers and Canned Cocktails
Celestin started posting under his handle @nofhotos while still a student at the University of Arizona. His content has a type of rowdy frat boy appeal — spraying champagne in his own face or smashing cans of beer on his head often from behind a DJ booth. In some posts he grins next to popular influencers like Logan Paul. He’s also worked with the creator Bryce Hall on the launch of a canned cocktail.
In 2022, he started working as a brand manager for Fanfix, a platform for creators to post paid content for their subscribers. Celestin left the company a year later and teamed up with a 30-year-old entrepreneur named Lucy Guo who launched a similar company called Passes. The company made headlines when model and influencer Blac Chyna joined the platform after leaving OnlyFans as a top earner on the site.
A few months later, the company announced it had raised $40 million in funding and Guo was included on Forbes’ list of America’s self-made women. Celestin was by Guo’s side last February to celebrate the round of funding. Passes “just got a lot more young hot rich & famous,” he posted. He told THE CITY that he maintains a stake in the company.
But the founders of FanFix charged that while employed, Celestin allegedly stole internal financial metrics and handed them to Guo, according to court records. Fanfix sued Celestin in San Diego County for breach of contract, as well as other claims. The company filed suit against Passes and Celestin’s company No Fhotos, named after his Instagram handle, in Los Angeles Superior Court last year as well. Both lawsuits are pending.
Celestin told THE CITY he never stole confidential information from the company, and only made a list of its creators from publicly available materials.
Over the past year, Celestin began making increasingly menacing posts about his former bosses at Fanfix, according to screenshots included in court records. One post on Dec. 13 included him photoshopping his own face onto the body of Luigi Mangione, who has been charged in the murder earlier that month of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson outside the New York Hilton. The post included a quote in the manifesto police said Mangione wrote: “I do apologize for any strife or trauma but it had to be done.”
“I am genuinely concerned as to what Mr. Celestin may do next as his erratic and unstable behavior has continued to escalate. I am genuinely worried for my safety,” FanFix co-founder Simon Pompan said in a petition filed in Los Angeles County Court. A judge signed off on three temporary restraining orders that require Celestin to stop contacting and posting about his former bosses, records show. The restraining orders remain in place.
When asked about FanFix, Celestin was dismissive of the petition and restraining orders, calling it “bullshit,” alleging he is the victim of “predatorial lawsuit.”
Buying out Musk?
While still sparring with his former employers, Celestin formed Lineo.io as a limited liability company in California last May. An archived version of the site from August advertises the company as a service for content creators that uses AI to crawl the web for any unauthorized use of their content in order to get it taken down. By December, the home page had been removed and replaced with a simple white background and the text “May or may not be coming soon :)”
The day before the fires started, on Jan. 6, Celestin relaunched his site with a donation page for an unspecified charity event to support LA’s underprivileged youth, according to posts on X. By the end of the week, Celestin had reworked the site again — this time to dedicate his efforts to wildfire relief in Los Angeles. Still in Hawaii, he posted a bio of himself alongside his photo, writing, “Alec is not the kind of leader who stays on the sidelines — he’s on the ground, in the fire zones, working alongside teams and volunteers to bring relief to those in need.”
Firefighters battle the Eaton Fire in Los Angeles, Jan. 8, 2025. Credit: Ringo Chiu/Shutterstock
Celestin had a flight back to Los Angeles but said a flight attendant told him he was being removed from the plane for intoxication, according to his videos and social posts on Saturday. For now, he’s still in Hawaii.
In an interview, Celestin found it difficult to describe the broader function of Lineo. “That’s the most confusing thing to everybody. They’re like, ‘Alec, what are you doing?’”
“What I’m doing is helping,” he said. “I’m literally about to be giving away free money.”
Last Thursday, his billboards appeared at the north end of Times Square with six different screens flashing the donate link on his company website. Nathan Nakhmanovich, who rents outdoor advertising space on billboards, confirmed to THE CITY he developed a week-long campaign for Lineo.io on the tops of taxi cabs and Times Square billboards. He declined to share the cost of the campaign citing client privacy. Celestin said he did not recall how much he spent on the campaign but the specific billboard space alone can rent from $6,000 to $13,000 a day, according to quotes from two companies reviewed by THE CITY. Typically, media buyers review the copy of an advertisement but do not necessarily background the companies requesting ad space.
The Taxi and Limousine Commission does not regulate the content of taxi advertisements, only fixtures, said Jason Kersten, a spokesperson for the agency.
According to Celestin’s site, the Lineo Relief Fund has raised $280,781, but that includes a donation of $269,420.69 under his own name. While on the phone with a reporter, Celestin made a $10 donation that appeared immediately, to show that all donations appear on the site.
Many of his posts are wildly erratic, including claims that he is in the Central Intelligence Agency or that he will buy Elon Musk’s companies himself, or boasting about leaving bartenders $1,000 tips. Between those posts, he continues to promise that he is aiding fire relief. In one post, he told his followers that he would spend $112,000 on night vision technology to catch looters. In another he told his followers that he “just put another $25,000 into boots on the ground relief.”
After his work is done in Los Angeles, he said, he plans to go to Afghanistan. “I wanna go do what Bush couldn’t.” When asked what exactly that was, he replied, “I want to stop terrorism.”
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