Billy McFarland in 2014 – before he was sentenced to 6 yrs. in prison for fraud
By Kylie Mar, Yahoo Entertainment | [Editor’s note: Why is this here? Because there are way too many unscrupulous promoters who do not have the funds to put such events on and booked bands usually get the really short, short end of the deal!] On ABC’s The Con: Fyre Festival Wednesday, which focused on the disastrous 2017 music festival and its founder, Billy McFarland, the disgraced organizer finally broke his silence from his jail cell in his first televised interview since being sentenced to six years in prison.
“When I think about the mistakes that were made and what happened, there’s just, like, there’s no way I can just describe it other than, like, what the f*** was I thinking? And I think that applies to so many people on just so many decisions that I made,” McFarland said.
Fyre Festival, which was promoted as a luxurious music festival on the Bahamian island of Exuma over two weekends in 2017, with musical acts like Blink-182 and Migos, and was promoted by supermodels like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid, was an epic fail as customers spent thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars on luxury accommodations and gourmet food, only to be met with emergency disaster tents, soaked mattresses and, of course, the infamous cheese sandwich, which broke the internet.
In 2018, McFarland pleaded guilty to defrauding investors and apologized for his role in the scam.
During the episode, which captured the making of the new Dumpster Fyre podcast, in which McFarland is currently 50 percent owner, McFarland admitted to lying to investors to swindle them out of $26 million. “I knowingly lied to them to raise money for the festival, yes,” he said. McFarland also explained exactly how he did it.
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The Con airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on ABC.
Go here to watch the full story:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/fyre-festival-founder-breaks-silence-first-tv-interview-from-jail-knowingly-lied-to-them-064811860.html
From Wikipedia:
William Z. McFarland is an American convicted fraudster who co-founded the ill-fated Fyre Festival. He defrauded investors of $27.4 million by marketing and selling tickets to the festival and other events. In 2013, McFarland founded Magnises, a club targeted at millennials, using $1.5 million of investor funding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_McFarland_(fraudster)