Billy McFarland, the creator of Fyre Festival, a failed attempt at a music festival in the Bahamas, is speaking out for the first time since he went to prison.
McFarland, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges in 2018 and was sentenced to six years in prison by a federal judge, said he “knowingly lied” to investors to raise money for the festival. The comments appear in a preview of an interview with podcast host Jordan Harbinger, which will air Wednesday evening on ABC News.
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“There’s no way I can describe it other than, like, what the f— was I thinking?” he said. “And I think that applies to so many people on just so many decisions that I made.”
“I think the biggest mistake before I went awry was just setting an unrealistic time frame for the festival,” McFarland added. “Had we given ourselves a year or two, I think we could have been in a better place.”
Embattled “Fyre Festival” mastermind Billy McFarland, who is currently serving a six-year sentence for defrauding investors of more than $26 million, speaks out for 1st time behind bars. @arobach reports. https://t.co/i9rZzYvW4s pic.twitter.com/ZpvY4PfJoI
— Good Morning America (@GMA) March 3, 2021
Fyre Festival was billed as an event that would be unlike any other. Organizers brought attention to it with an enormous influencer-based social media marketing campaign. The actual event, however, didn’t live up to what McFarland and his team promised. Rather than getting luxury accommodations, attendees slept in tents akin to those from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and fought over mattresses.
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A photo of a cheese sandwich took Twitter by storm.
The dinner that @fyrefestival promised us was catered by Steven Starr is literally bread, cheese, and salad with dressing. #fyrefestival pic.twitter.com/I8d0UlSNbd
— Trevor DeHaas (@trev4president) April 28, 2017
Attendees, who had flown to a remote island to attend the event, found it difficult to leave when they realized Fyre Festival wasn’t going to be anything like what they had seen on Instagram.
The debacle was the subject of two documentaries, Netflix‘s Fyre and Hulu’s Fyre Fraud, making the event even more famous than it had already become.
