$100 MIL IN FYRE DAMAGE
Suit blames Ja Rule for fiasco
Fyre Festival co-founders Ja Rule and Billy McFarland have been hit with a $100 million lawsuit that calls the debacle a “get-rich-quick scam from the very beginning.”
The disastrous Bahamas extravaganza lacked adequate food, water, shelter and medical care, creating a “dangerous and panicked situation among attendees” who plunked down between $1,200 and $100,000 for tickets, according to the class-action suit filed Sunday.
“Festivalgoers survived on bare rations, little more than bread and a slice of cheese, and tried to escape the elements in the only shelters provided by defendants: small clusters of ‘FEMA tents,’ exposed on a sand bar, that were soaked and battered by wind and rain,” says the suit, filed in California federal court.
A source said on Monday that McFarland and the Queens-born Ja Rule, ak a Jeffrey Atkins, still owe hundreds of thousands of dollars — including customs fees for exporting items, like the staging, back to the US — and have not paid most vendors for their services.
“There are mammoth bills,” the source said. “Hundreds of thousands of bills, from everyone who was running the charter flights to the laborers and security.”
But despite knowing that they were “dangerously underequipped” and that the festival “posed a serious danger,” McFarland and Rule allegedly continued to promote the event and sell tickets — even billing it as being held on a private island once owned by drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, the suit claims.
“The island isn’t private, as there is a Sandals resort down the road, and Pablo Escobar never owned the island,” the complaint says.
Fyre Festival was canceled on the morning of its first day “after thousands of attendees had already arrived and were stranded, without food, water, or shelter,” the suit says.
Many didn’t have money to get around the island because the “cashless” event made them upload funds onto wristbands ahead of time, the complaint says.
The lawsuit was filed by celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos on behalf of plaintiff Daniel Jung of Los Angeles, who bought a ticket package and airfare for $2,000.
The suit seeks damages in excess of $100,000 because plaintiffs’ “damages in being lured to a deserted island and left to fend for themselves — a situation tantamount to false imprisonment — exceed the face value of their ticket packages by many orders of magnitude.”
Neither McFarland nor a Fyre rep immediately returned messages seeking comment. A rep for Ja Rule could not be reached.
McFarland blamed the chaotic festival conditions on a freak storm and insisted there was “plenty of food and water” on site.
Rule tweeted an apology and insisted Fyre Festival was “NOT A SCAM as everyone is reporting.”