Billy McFarland
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William Z McFarland (Born 11th December 1991) Is a convicted Fraudster mostly known for the disastrous "Fyre Festival" in 2017, which he started up with Ja Rule. Before Fyre Festival he was the CEO of Magnises, a card-based club for Millennials. Not long after Fyre Festival, he was arrested and convicted of scamming Investors, which resulted in him being sentenced to 6 years in Prison in 2018, albeit he was released in May 2022.
Biography edit
Early Life edit
Born in 1991, McFarland was raised in New Jersey, where at age 13 he was already creating Tech startups, although they would never gain any traction due to the likely poor quality of them. Throughout the Early 2010s, he would graduate from High school and enter himself into college, however he would dropout not long after
Magnises edit
In 2013, McFarland would create "Magnises", a Card-based club for Upper-Class Millennials to get discounts at "exclusive clubs", however this card was merely for socialization as the card couldn't actually buy goods unless linked up to the customers actual credit card account. It is also believed that Magnises itself was a scam, with some users of the cards claiming that they saw no real benefit to it. Nonetheless, the Card was able to gain decent traction among New Yorkers, and he was able to gain a decent amount of connections and fame with this business.
It is also at this time he met Ja Rule while booking for Rappers sometime in 2015 - 2016, this would lead to both of them becoming close, with McFarland making Ja Rule an Ambassador to Magnises.
Lead up to Fyre Festival edit
In 2016 McFarland and Ja Rule would create Fyre Media in 2016, where they would eventually come up with the idea of Fyre Festival, a Music festival that would help promote a music booking app they had created.
McFarland and Ja Rule began to promote the festival in 2017, with McFarland paying multiple influencers on Instagram to promote the festival as a luxurious Island once owned by Pablo Escobar, although the event was actually going to take place in Exuma. The rampant promotion of Fyre Festival resulted in it selling out of Tickets quickly, with nearly 5,000 people buying a ticket.
However, McFarland immediately began to experience problems as he realized the event would cost at least 50 Million and likely an extra year of planning to actually meet expectations, but due to the overpromotion of the event and pressure from investors he was forced to continue on as planned. This would be the death blow to the event, as most of the planned luxuries were cut back significantly.
Fyre Festival edit
Fyre Festival took place on April 27th 2017, and already began to experience problems as earlier in the day a heavy rainstorm saturated the Tents that were meant to house customers, which resulted in most of the tents being damp and wet. This caused McFarland and the organizers to take the 500 actual attendees to a party at a random beach restaurant for 6 hours so workers could attempt to repair the damp tents to the best of their ability, it is also at this time Blink-182 pulled out of the event.
After Guest were finally taken to the main event itself, they were met with Damp housing and poor-quality food; This was also made worse with the fact that most had to wait for hours until they were finally able to get to their tents, with some attendees not even being able to get a tent. This resulted in most of the planned music events to get cancelled quickly, mainly due to not being paid and the poor conditions of the event itself. Many other problems plagued the event, such as theft of belongings, poor lighting, and a lack of medical staff; this was made worse as the surrounding hotels were all sold out for the islands regatta.
By the Early morning of April 28th the event was a complete mess and event organizers announced the event was now "postponed" to May, with attendees being scheduled to return to America as soon as possible. This however would also be plagued with problems aswell as the Bahamian government had restricted aircraft to land on the island due to the event, which resulted in most of the attendees being stranded with no food or water for hours, which resulted in one attendee being hospitalized. Eventually however, they were able to depart by morning.
Aftermath edit
In the aftermath of the event Ja Rule and McFarland immediately attempted Damage control with Ja Rule stating "IT WAS NOT A SCAM" and that "IT WAS NOT MY FAULT", McFarland responded with a statement using the storm before the event as an excuse as to why the event was botched. The Internets public reaction to the festival was a mixture of sympathy and mockery of the attendees, with some people (mostly on twitter) believing that the attendees deserved it.
Not long after the event, both McFarland and Ja Rule were sued multiple times over, and eventually McFarland himself was arrested in June 2017 for Wire Fraud but would be released on Bail not long after. Even during this time, McFarland was still conning people as it was revealed that he was selling tickets to events that hadn't even happened yet.
In March 2018, McFarland pleaded guilty to 2 counts of Wire fraud and was sentenced to 6 years in prison. During this time he would attempt to get compassionate release from prison due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however this was rejected and at some point he was said to be in solitary confinement. In May 2022 he was released and sent to a halfway home, where he will remain until August 2022.