A battalion of Santas successfully cheated BART’s new evasion-proof fare gates during this weekend’s SantaCon festivities, and a TikTok video capturing their gate-hopping exploits is going viral.

When BART’s new evasion-proof fare gates went up at the West Oakland station in late 2023, SFGate sent a correspondent to see if you could actually get through them without paying. They proved quite a challenge for a fare evader to penetrate, though over the months since, some have discovered a “piggybacking” method by which one can sneak through briskly after someone else tapped their Clipper Card.

But at this past weekend’s SantaCon revelry, a flock of ne’er-do-well Santas discovered that more than “one” can sneak through the gates using this method.

@mario0o0o0o0o0o New BART hack 😂 This has to be a world record 😭🎅🏿 #bart #sanfrancisco #santa #grinch ♬ It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas - Michael Bublé

This TikTok post has gained more than 250,000 views in the three days since it was posted. “New BART hack 😂 This has to be a world record 😭,” the original poster mario0o0o0o0o0o said. Indeed, more than a dozen Santas are able to illegally piggyback through the Civic Center BART station gates after one individual in a Grinch outfit taps their Clipper Card, all of the Santas hooting, hollering, and barking like dogs.

And as many have noted, it’s ironic that the Grinch is the one who actually paid, and all of the Santa Clauses skipped on paying fare.

Yet the Santas may have left some digital trail here. We notice that the Grinch is wearing a black hoodie over his green Grinch suit. That same Grinch in a black hoodie appears in other videos shot that day by the same videographer, including this one of a big Santas vs. the Grinch fake brawl staged on a BART train. Several of the Santas in those videos also appear to be the same Santas who sneaked in through the BART gates, and it seems this crew used SantaCon as an opportunity to shoot engagement-bait TikTok videos.

It remains to be seen whether BART police will follow up on this with much seriousness. But in terms of SantaCon crime, this is nowhere near as bad as the time that two Santas violently trashed the Pakistani restaurant Shalimar in 2018, or when a guy in a Santa suit robbed a bank during SantaCon in 2014.

Related: Madrone Art Bar Apologizes After Crazed 'Critic Santa' Bounced From Bar [SFist]

Image: mario0o0o0o0o0o via TikTok