26 August 2023 , 15:50
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During his four-year prison stint, 10 months of which were spent in solitary confinement, Billy McFarland had a lot of time to think.
He was $26 million in debt, had alienated family and friends, and become a global laughing stock. By anyone’s standards, this was rock bottom. His solution? Why not try and.... do the exact same thing again?
Yes, at 31 and fresh out of prison, the convicted fraudster is relaunching his infamous Fyre Festival - the worst event thrown on a tropical island since kids danced around a pig's head in William Goulding’s novel Lord of The Flies.
Billy announced that the $499 tickets for Fyre Festival II - which has no date, location or lineup - were on sale last week in an Instagram video, wearing a fluffy white dressing gown. And now speaking exclusively to themirror.com, Billy brazenly reveals it will be different this time... honest.
“So it’s going to be in the Caribbean at the end of 2024 and the biggest difference this time is that I have the best logistical and operational help,” says Billy, on the phone from New York.
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Fyre Festival creator Billy McFarland announced a festival comeback while dressed in a fluffy bathrobe (Twitter)
Many people were also stranded at Exuma International Airport after opting to return home having seen the incomplete trashy festival site (Prahl / Lee / Splash News)The people who attended the original Fyre Festival might raise an eyebrow at the memory of their “adventure”. The conman, who the judge labelled repeatedly dishonest, claims: “The reception has just been wild. The first tickets have sold out, and really we have just created an international moment.”
In fairness, Billy is good at garnering international attention.
If you didn’t watch the hit Netflix documentary revealing the disaster of the first Fyre Festival, or see the persistent news coverage at the time, here is a reminder.
In 2017, then just 25, Billy partnered with rapper Ja Rule [who was cleared of any wrongdoing] and sold 8,000 tickets ranging from $3,000 to more than $12,000 to a music festival on Pablo Escobar’s former private island in the Bahamas.
Rich punters were promised luxury in abundance, and reeled in by watching a promotional video of famous models, including Kendall Jenner, zooming through the turquoise ocean on yachts.
What actually transpired was no music, disaster relief tents, a lack of basic amenities including water - and total pandemonium. Instead of gourmet meals, a photograph of a flimsy slice of cheese and dry bread in a polystyrene box went viral, becoming an emblem of how Fyre had gone up in flames.
People arrived to find half-built tents, rat droppings and stray dogs wandering around the festival site (Prahl / Lee / Splash News)“As silly as it sounds, I truly thought up until that literal last moment that things would work out,” says Billy.
Even as guests got to the island, where there was no running water or electricity set up, and no headliners to look forward to, he insists, “It was a few hours into people actually landing and arriving on the island really when things actually fell apart.”
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Billy, the former founder of card-based membership club Magnises, defends himself by saying he was naive to the magnitude of the operation until it was too late: “I’m really good at bringing people together. I’m good at creating experiences and adventure, and I’m good at marketing. I’m obviously terrible at hosting a music festival, like really bad at it.”
It transpired that Billy had lied to investors to raise funds, and defrauded hardworking locals who had worked around the clock to try and do the impossible.
One Bahamian caterer, Maryann Rolle, lost her life savings as a result of the flop, and many more were left struggling.
After he arrived back in New York, Billy was arrested and while on bail set up another fraudulent scheme called “NYC VIP Access” selling tickets to events that had either not been announced or that tickets were unavailable for public purchase.
The disastrous Fyre Festival eventually saw founder Billy McFarland jailed (Lee/Prahl/ Splash News)“I was so scared of prison. So scared of the ramifications of what I did. And once again I deluded myself into thinking I could fix this and I tried to resort to something bad to fix it,” he says. “It was wrong, but there’s no excuse.”
In 2018 Billy was sentenced to jail on several counts of fraud for six years but walked out after four. He was also ordered to pay back the $26 million (£21,000,000) and banned from ever being a company director.
The New Jersey native, who has been coming up with money-making schemes since he was 13 years old, kept busy in prison and was sent to solitary twice; for trying to record a podcast about himself on the prison payphone, and for smuggling in a USB drive to write his autobiography.
“I think when you’re by yourself the hardest part is you have the worst thoughts and you think your mind can just go to the darkest places, you don’t have anybody else to check on you or bring you back to life,” he says.
Was it worse for him because he likes to be the centre of attention? “It definitely made it hard. It’s like the loss of individuality and the loss of mental and physical freedom,” he says.
A measly cheese sandwich served to festival goers who had forked out hundreds, some thousands, of dollars for a ticket (Collect)For his victims, it might be considered retribution that when he was allowed company it was one that spent a lot of the time on the toilet by his bed.
“I had a cellmate whose nickname was Bags, and that was because he got into a shootout with the police before going to jail, and they shot his colon. He didn’t get given a colostomy bag so he had to use the bathroom every 30 minutes. That was quite the experience,” he admits.
“Everywhere in jail people were coming up to me and asking me for tips on all these scams and I clearly had no clue what they’re talking about. They all thought I was lying but I was like the most naive person to be labelled a scammer,” he insists.
During our chat, the fraudster often flicks between trying to paint his wrongs as ignorance and taking accountability, but gives any apology or words of remorse towards his victims a wide berth. He explains his intentions were “pure-hearted” when creating Fyre Festival, and hints at an altruistic motive of simply wanting to share the magic of the Bahamas with others.
“It just derived from this dream to share what was actually happening. I truly loved everything we were doing and I wanted everybody to also do it.” When pushed, he admits, “I certainly enjoyed being the leader or the guy who was, you know, the one behind all of it.”
(Prahl/Lee Splash News)Billy also claims he wasn’t totally aware he was breaking the law, stating with characteristic vagueness: “Subconsciously, I probably knew that what I was doing was wrong.”
Aside from his business reputation, in the embers of Fyre Festival are many of Billy’s close relationships. “It was definitely hardest on family and friends, right?,” he says. “I think it’s almost easier for the person who commits the crime because they understand what they did, and they understand that there are consequences for that. But when you’re punished for something you didn’t do, I think that is just like the most difficult part of this process.”
The words sound genuine but is it real remorse? Or will buying into him as a reformed character prove as misguided as buying a ticket for the original Fyre Festival?
“The best thing about everything I’m doing now is this provides a platform to pay back everybody that’s owed,” he insists. “And whether that’s an investor, whether that’s an employee, a vendor, there really is a massive business opportunity, where a percentage of all these proceeds are going back to everybody affected by Fyre One.”
Kendall Jenner was quick to distance herself from the original disaster, later explaining to her fans via the New York Times: “You get reached out to by people, whether it be to promote or help or whatever, and you never know how these things are going to turn out, sometimes it’s a risk.
(Twitter)“I definitely do as much research as I can, but sometimes[..] you kind of have to have faith in it and hope it will work out the way people say it will. You never really know what’s going to happen.” Well, we certainly didn’t expect what did.
While safe to assume the Kardashian alum will be avoiding the event this time around, unbelievably Andy King, the events producer whom Billy hired last minute to try and get the original festival back on track, actually is working with him again.
Andy has spoken widely about how his involvement negatively impacted his career and became an internet meme when he claimed in the 2019 Netflix documentary, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, that Billy once suggested he perform oral sex on a customs officer to release crates of water.
That’s probably one for HR, for sure. “[Andy] reached out shortly after [prison] and we just kind of sat down and spoke and aired, where we’re coming from and where he was at,” Billy says.
Now Andy says he wants to “execute the ultimate redemption,” and they plan to serve cheese sandwiches together at the new festival. That’s one bridge rebuilt, but there are many more to go, and the loss of his reputation is Billy’s biggest regret.
“What hurt me is when I started lying to investors and started lying to partners about the status of things and that really pushed help away…my problem was losing my integrity in the months leading up to the festival,” he explains. “That’s what eats me the most.”
Now a free man, he is intent on spinning the negativity to his advantage and relaunching his ill-fated dream. “I’ve created this concept where I’m flying this little propeller plane through a hurricane,” he muses, with a touch of grandiosity. “You don’t know if I’m going to crash or land, but that turbulence is what’s going to draw people in,” he adds.
Although Billy might see himself as a heroic pilot navigating a storm, there aren’t many with their feet on the ground who believe Fyre Festival II can land.
Not that it has to, apparently. “I’ll find more pride in trying and failing honestly than giving up,” he says, somewhat bizarrely. “I think that’s more a coward’s move to never try again and you say ‘Sorry guys, I messed up. But that’s it’.”
“I don’t want to go down that way,” he adds in his sunny American twang, having seemingly forgotten that failure leaves him unable to pay back both the investors and Bahamian locals.
He then says “it would be pretty easy to go into a different line of business and not have to deal with all the scrutiny and issues that would come by going right back into the storm here. But yeah, I think this is kind of my odyssey to make Fyre II happen.”
Who knows, maybe he will redeem himself, pay back those who lost out, and see ticket sales fly. Or maybe he’ll be brought back down to earth with a bump again. The big question for this pilot of havoc - to continue his metaphor - is: who would risk getting on board with him in the first place?