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Billionaire Patrick Carroll won’t be donating $1.5 million to Unicef after all

Patrick Carroll
Patrick Carroll made the winning bids on items including a vintage car and a ride in a fighter jet at a Unicef charity auction last summer.Getty Images for CARE For Specia

Oddball billionaire Patrick Carroll won’t be donating $1.5 million to Unicef after all, thank you very much.

Last summer we published a string of stories about the mysterious real estate mogul careening about Europe, getting in fist fights with other One Percenters while splashing cash with gay abandon on art and charity auctions.

So we weren’t entirely surprised to learn that Carroll had thought better of the lavish largesse.

Page Six this week learned that he’s dubbed Unicef, one of the world’s most recognizable aid organizations, “fraudulent” and exercised his right to take-backsies.

Carroll went to the starry LuisaViaRoma x UNICEF gala in July — also attended by Spike Lee, Jared Leto, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ansel Elgort, and Vogue UK boss Edward Enninful — and made the winning bids on a vintage car and a “’Top Gun’ experience” that included a ride in a fighter jet and fancy food, wine and accommodations in Burgundy, France.

Patrick Carroll
The real estate billionaire has decided not to hand over the $1.5 million he said he’d pay for the swanky items, claiming that the event organizers were flagged as fraudulent by his bank. Instagram/mpatrickcarrol

But it appears that the purchase hasn’t gone though.

Carroll told Page Six, “I sent the full amount of the donation through my bank and was quite surprised when it flagged the recipient as a fraudulent organization. That is because, as I later found out, the donation was technically not to Unicef but rather to the [Capri event’s] ‘membership committee’ and to the event promoters, which spent lavishly on the benefit itself. I was also told the donation was tax deductible, and shockingly that wound up not being the case.”

He added, “At that point, I made the decision that my philanthropic dollars would be better spent elsewhere.”

Patrick Carroll
Carroll says he’ll continue to give to other charities. Patrick McMullan via Getty Image

His attorney Duncan Levin told us, “Patrick Carroll is a philanthropist and he will continue to donate to organizations when money actually reaches those who are in need.”

Various Unicef reps didn’t get back to us.

Meanwhile, a rep for Carroll told us, “Patrick heads to Atlanta, Georgia, next month joined by ‘Sneaker Don’ Ben Kickz in his quest to give away $1million-worth of high-end sneakers to Boys & Girls Clubs across the country.”