McFarland has helped connect Trump with rappers in an effort to appeal to Black voters. Fyre Fest’s Billy McFarland Is Working with Donald Trump Eddie Fu
"The First 100" tier tickets are available for $499 despite not having a lineup, venue, or date. Billy McFarland Puts Fyre Festival 2 Tickets on Sale Eddie Fu
After Billy McFarland’s release from prison, the Bahamian government isn’t open to considering second chances for the disgraced Fyre Festival founder. McFarland wasted no time scheming his plan to return to The Bahamas. He recently took to TikTok to cryptically tease the details of a so-called scavenger hunt, “PYRT,” which rapidly morphed into the groundwork for a nebulous follow-up to 2017’s disastrous Fyre Festival on the island of Great Exuma. It didn’t take long for the Deputy Prime Minister of The Bahamas, Chester Cooper, to catch wind of McFarland waiting in the wings. In a statement obtained by TMZ, Cooper spelled it out for McFarland, whom he referred to as a “fugitive,” that Bahamian locals have not forgotten how they were left holdi...
Billy McFarland, convicted felon and founder of the infamous 2017 Fyre Festival, is back with a new venture. In a video released Monday (Oct. 24) to TikTok and YouTube Shorts, the disgraced entrepreneur — who was released from prison in March after serving four years behind bars — notes he’s “working on something new” that’s “a little crazier but a whole lot bigger than anything I’ve ever tried before.” He then flips a whiteboard to reveal a treasure map taped to the other side and says he’ll reveal the full scope of his plans in November. “This time, everybody’s invited,” he adds, before ripping the treasure map from the whiteboard to reveal a phone number. Calling the number from a cell phone causes a text message reading “Welcome to the Treasure Hunt” to be automatically delivered to th...
Infamous Fyre Festival founder and convicted felon Billy McFarland is out of prison after serving less than four years. McFarland was released early on March 30th and then transferred to community confinement until August 2022, Deadline reports. And now that the disgraced festival organizer is free, he’s planning a comeback and may even start a new company. “I’d like to do something tech-based,” McFarland told the New York Times. “The good thing with tech is that people are so forward-thinking, and they’re more apt at taking risk. If I worked in finance, I think it would be harder to get back. Tech is more open. And the way I failed is totally wrong, but in a certain sense, failure is OK in entrepreneurship.” “At the end of ...
Fyre Fest co-founder Billy McFarland has been released early from prison and is currently living in a halfway house, according to Billboard. McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison in 2018 for the fraudulent festival, which promised attendees a luxurious Bahamas experience complete with catered meals, luxury villas, and performances from the likes of Migos and Blink-182. Instead, guests were stranded in a tent city offering little more than school lunch food. McFarland pleaded guilty to bank fraud, wire fraud, and lying to investigators. In October 2020, the con artist was placed in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement after recording a tell-all podcast from prison. Six months later, he was released from solitary in Lisbon, Ohio’s FCI Elkton prison and transferred to FTC Oklahoma City...
McFarland has been released from the Milan Federal Correctional Institution in Milan, Michigan, where he was being held, according to the Bureau of Prisons website and confirmed by his attorney Jason Russo. He is now under the management of Residential Reentry Management New York — the administrative office overseeing halfway houses located in southern New York, eastern New York and New Jersey. TMZ first reported the news. McFarland’s release date from the halfway house is currently set for Aug. 30. In 2018, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison after admitting to defrauding investors in the disastrous 2017 Fyre Festival, which was promised to be a luxury destination music event with extravagant promotion from A-list celebrity influencers. But when ticket-holders showed up to the ...
Oh, Fyre Festival. The gift that keeps on giving. When a gaggle of vapid influencers pay a notorious scam artist thousands of dollars to fight for mattresses on a decrepit beach with less infrastructure than post-1986 Chernobyl, the Internet did what it did best—roast them. From that cheese sandwich to the legendary Andy King, the imagery from Fyre Festival is timeless. To remember the best festival that never was on its four-year anniversary, here are the best memes from 2017 that helped take down Fyre’s scammer-in-chief, Billy McFarland. If you know, you know @TheSecretVice Live from Fyre Festival The cheese sandwich from hell Sad and bougee @_maleficentt It’s Always Sunny In The Exumas The only guy who enjoyed Fyre KATNISS EVERSCHEME Has anyone seen Ja? Keeping Up With ...
Prior to its catastrophic downfall, it at one point seemed that Fyre Festival could command any price for a coveted ticket to the Great Exuma event. Now, four years in the rearview, it ended up being the attendees who would be compensated for their troubles. Well, at least some of them anyway. According to The New York Times, 277 ticket holders have reached a settlement with Fyre Festival amounting to a total of $2 million—that’s $7,220 apiece. Due to the stratification of ticket prices, which ranged from $1,000 to $12,000 a pop, and with some limited luxury packages priced in the tens of thousands, it’s difficult to say whether anyone came out ahead or even broke even in terms of financials after all of this. The initial class action suit was submitted for a cl...
<span class="localtime" data-ltformat="F j, Y | g:ia" data-lttime="2021-04-17T23:48:31+00:00“>April 17, 2021 | 7:48pm ET Fyre Fest co-founder Billy McFarland is out of solitary confinement after spending six months in lockup for his participation in a podcast interview, according to Insider. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons database, McFarland was released and transferred to FTC Oklahoma City from FCI Elkton prison in Lisbon, Ohio, where he was previously held in solitary. “It was punitive. At first, they said he violated rules by speaking to the media — which there is no such rule,” McFarland’s attorney, Jason Russo, told Insider. “Then they accused him of doing three-way calls, which you’re not allowed to do — but these were n...
Billy McFarland’s newly launched Fyre Fest podcast has reportedly landed him in solitary confinement. According to the New York Times, McFarland was placed in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement, and may remain there for up to 90 days or more, pending an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. “We believe the investigation stems from his participation in the podcast and the photographs that were taken and utilized in the trailer, which were all properly taken,” McFarland’s lawyer Jason Russo told the Times. “We don’t believe he’s violated any rule or regulation, and there can’t possibly be anything else. He’s been a model prisoner there.” A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons declined to comment and told the Times the agency does not discuss the housing arrangements o...
That’ll teach him. Fyre Festival founder/convicted felon Billy McFarland tried to skirt the rules in prison by starting his own podcast. The aptly titled Dumpster Fyre was launched earlier this week and he appeared via phone in an interview with Jordan Harbinger. As the pod’s description of that episode says: In the premiere episode of Dumpster Fyre, Jordan Harbinger interviews a remorseful and seemingly humbled Billy McFarland. Calling from prison, Billy reflects on his mistakes while exposing the culmination of events leading to the Fyre Festival disaster. Well, that landed him in solitary confinement. According to the New York Times, he was thrown in there for participating in the show. “We believe the investigation stems from his participation in the podcast an...