FESTIVAL FRAUDSTER JAILED
He promised a luxury party, but it was all more ‘Hunger Games’ than Coachella, writes Elizabeth Sleith
Aman who raised millions of dollars selling tickets to a disastrous music festival in the Bahamas has been sentenced to six years in prison, after pleading guilty to fraud earlier this year. American Billy McFarland, 26, was the founder and CEO of Fyre Media, which promoted the Fyre Festival, supposedly a luxury music event to be held on the island of Great Exuma in April and May 2017.
Tickets prices ranged from $1,200 (about R17,000) to $100,000 (R3,5-million), promising gourmet meals, accommodation in villas, and high-profile acts. Top models such as Emily Ratajkowski, Kendall Jenner, and Bella Hadid were paid to promote the festival on social media.
But when partygoers started to arrive on the island — having spent thousands of dollars on tickets and travel — they found scenes of chaos, with inadequate toilets, shoddy accommodation and limp toasted sandwiches dished out in polystyrene containers.
They started to share their fury on social media. One person posted: “So Fyre Fest is a complete disaster. Mass chaos. No organisation. No one knows where to go. There are no villas, just a disaster tent city.”
Suddenly the festival was “postponed” and hundreds of patrons, stranded without enough food or water, had to be evacuated.
The festival later became the focus of federal investigations and several lawsuits, one of which condemned it as “nothing more than a get-rich-quick scam”.
That lawsuit added: “The festival’s lack of adequate food, water, shelter, and medical care created a dangerous and panicked situation among attendees — suddenly finding themselves stranded on a remote island without basic provisions — that was closer to The Hunger Games or Lord of the Flies than Coachella.”
McFarland pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud in March for his part in the failed festival — and admitted to using fake documents to attract investors to put more than $26m into the company.
He also pleaded guilty to a further two charges relating to a different ticket-selling scam — promising investors tickets to events such as the Met Gala, Burning Man and Coachella.
He was ordered to pay the $26m back to Fyre’s investors, and was this month sentenced to six years in federal prison.
The rapper Ja Rule, a “coorganiser” of the event, denied liability and was not arrested or charged. His lawyers argued that McFarland had used his name and connections to promote the event.