Back in April, 25-year old Fyre Media head honcho, Billy McFarland, along with rapper Ja Rule hosted the Fyre Festival which was supposed to be the most luxe music festival ever organized. The Fyre Festival turned out to be a ridiculous mess that scammed attendees out of anywhere from $5,000 to $250,000 per package. When the festival was promoted, they touted luxurious accommodations and top-quality gourmet food. Instamodels and beautiful celebs were hired to promote the festival in all their wind-blown, bikini-wearing glory.
This is what was promised:
This is what people found upon arrival:
. @g_bluestone talked to #fryefestival 's 25-year-old organizer: "this worst day of my life" https://t.co/ts6KVez6Ur
— Ryan McCarthy (@mccarthyryanj) April 29, 2017
#apple All the valuable life lessons learned from the Frye Festival disaster, via TheCut https://t.co/scVETKu6DZ pic.twitter.com/H1KtKwRILx
— Apple Products Fan (@ApplePr0ductFan) April 30, 2017
It wasn’t just terrible, it was dangerous. The people who actually made it to the island found out that in addition to their meager accommodations – some being simply a bare mattress – there was no water or sewage and barely enough food. (The musical acts and celebrities scheduled to attend were given a heads up not to come.) Almost immediately, people sued the organizers. Ja Rule tweeted that he was heartbroken and would get to the bottom of what had happened. Little was heard from the main organizer, Billy, though. He talked to Rolling Stone at the time and blamed the Bahamas, saying the island, “didn’t have a really great infrastructure — there wasn’t a great way to get guests in here — we were a little bit ambitious.” Well, ol’ Billy boy is going to need to expand on those thoughts because he was arrested on Friday and charged with one count of wire fraud.
Billy McFarland, the organizer of the disastrous Fyre Festival, was arrested and charged with one count of wire fraud in Manhattan on Friday.
McFarland, 25, was charged in connection with a scheme to defraud investors, which included misrepresenting financial information about his company, Fyre Media.
Joon H. Kim, the Acting U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, said in a statement, “McFarland promised a ‘life changing’ music festival but in actuality delivered a disaster. McFarland allegedly presented fake documents to induce investors to put over a million dollars into his company and the fiasco called the Fyre Festival. Thanks to the investigative efforts of the FBI, McFarland will now have to answer for his crimes.”
While festival-goers were expecting luxurious villas and spectacular musical performances, the reality was much different. Those who arrived on the island were met with complete disorganization and sub-standard living conditions that were far from ready.
Luggage was handed to passengers from the back of storage trucks in the dark. Tents — which included bare mattresses — were not set up, many blowing over in the wind. Latrines were unavailable. Reports of theft ran rampant.
Billy was released on $300,000 bail, which isn’t an issue as he was carrying $5,000 in cash when they arrested him. The investigation showed just how devious this guy was. Apparently Billy has been screwing investors in several ways like overstating his revenue of Fyre Media, including inflating his stock ownership in the company. The charge states Billy “allegedly presented fake documents to induce investors to put over a million dollars into his company and the fiasco called the Fyre Festival.” Dude, I hope you look good in Correctional Orange. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison but we all know he’ll either get off with probation and some monetary damages or will get a lesser sentence in some country club prison facility.
Ja Rule is not being charged with any crimes but he’ll feel the pinch financially – everyone involved in this thing is suing the two of them and rightly so. As I’ve mentioned, one of my former lives was as a meeting and convention planner. I’ve worked in the Bahamas numerous times, there are many companies who do amazing work and the location itself is incredible. This is totally on the organizers and not the destination as they cowardly tried to assert.
Arrested #FryeFestival founder #billymcfarland 's Q&A in the @guestofaguest shoot I produced. pic.twitter.com/2543NB75Tk
— Peter Davis (@PeterDavisNYC) July 1, 2017
" #FryeFestival now under FBI Investigation…." Honestly, it's not the first time rich retreat goers were duped by deceitful organizers. 😂 pic.twitter.com/P32KYPGCPi
— hello (@lmerh) May 23, 2017
The world needs laughter right now so here's another Frye Festival class action lawsuit. https://t.co/M9KRauKCFp
— Karon Liu (@karonliu) May 10, 2017
Photo credit: Twitter and Getty Images
I’m surprised he was charged. That almost never happens, usually just civil suits. I don’t know what the organizers were thinking.
It ‘s always dangerous to try to steal money or valuable from people with means to sue.
I remember some posts on the web about the madoff scandal which said his biggest problems come from scamming extremely wealthy and powerful people.
Maybe it s not true for this story but everybody knows a case with poor or middle class people ruined without a patty hewes (the absolute bad ass attorney from the damages tv series) to help them.
Like this awful Trump University disaster …
What’a getting him into legal trouble is the way he defrauded his investors – he forged documents about his own financial standing in order to get investments. That’s a pretty big no no.
Just an FYI that it says Frye instead of Fyre almost everywhere in this article and the last sentence of the first paragraph seems to be cut off halfway through.
Man I still shake my head in disbelief over this. Craziness!
Must be a common error; several of the embedded tweets have the same typo.
There’s also a sentence that randomly ends in the word “over” and has no end-sentence punctuation. It messes with my head when I look at it.
Hecate seems to be a bit dyslexic (or bad at proofreading?); I see these mistakes all over the place in Hecate’s articles.
That typo makes me giggle though 🙂
That’s the best part… they can’t even get the name right! Lmao!
Did people get refunds for their tickets? What about the money they put on their bracelets for a “cardless” experience at the festival?
This shook out just about the way I expected it to-he bilked a bunch of people out of a bunch money knowing he had nothing to back it up with, and someone let him walk about with a $300K bail. I imagine a slap on the wrist sentence next and on his way out of court there will probably be a tweet from 45 offering him a job on some Wall Street panel or something.
The nerve of trying to blame the Bahamas for “not having great infrastructure”. Why do people always try to blame “the other country” (by appealing to people’s misconceptions about countries that are not the US maybe?) when they’re the ones who fucked up? Like the Ryan Lochte incident, to cite another example.
Because they’re losers and very, very ignorant.
The article from The Cut makes it CLEAR that the writing was on the wall to begin with: https://www.thecut.com/2017/04/fyre-festival-exumas-bahamas-disaster.html
I think part of it was that they had no idea what they were doing and expected it all to come together, but I think the biggest issue was that they didn’t care. At all.
It shows their insanity & how clueless they were that they were told but whatever “they are going to be legends!!!” Wtf.
I just watched the documentary “Betting on Zero,” about he con of Herbalife. This guy seems just like those shady, pyramid scheme operators. But worse.
They still sell the stuff in my country! Is it banned in the US?
I appreciate the defense of the Bahamas. I have been there more times than I can count and it annoyed me McFarland tried to blame them.
How much money did they get from ticket sales? Have the tickets been refunded? The Bahamas should also sue him for slander.
I understand that the accommodations were absolutely not what was advertised, but the island they were staying on was an inhabited island with an economy that thrives on tourism and is full of hotels, motels and resorts and restaurants. It’s not like it was the show Lost. At any time they could have just left. They absolutely should sue over the fraud of the festival, but it’s not like they were at risk of dying or anything.
It was right next to a Sandals resort.
There was insufficient food or sanitation.
Apparently it was a nightmare getting off the island.
That you, Billy?
Billy has moved from the penthouse back to Mom and Dad’s house.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/fyre-festival-founder-moving-back-parents-jersey-article-1.3294114
From what i read he tried to scam a lot of wealthy people and was counting on their money but some of them were not buying what he was selling them and did checks and found out before hand that he was a fraud hence the stand by of the organization. In the middle of everything he had no more money to pay for the completion of the place, paying the singers in advance etc. He spend all his money on publicity hoping to gain investors. I think he will get away with this lightly.
I think Vanity Fair got a copy of the pitch deck McFarland used and it’s nothing but vague marketing-bro language. One slide that just said “Understand brand goals,” “Ideate,” “Conceptualize” and “Execute” and then a note that says “Our 360 methodology allows to capture brand revenue in a unique manner.” What does that even mean??
He spent all the money on surrounding himself with Insta-models and running around like he was the creative genius of the next Coachella, that he never stopped to think about how difficult it is to actually put on a music festival.
Sure he deserves to be punished, but it’s also hella funny, and I can think of way worse people, very highly placed, who deserve it more. Way.