Billy McFarland Biography
Billy McFarland(fraudster) is an American convicted fraudster who co-founded the ill-fated Fyre Festival. By marketing and selling tickets to the festival and other events, he defrauded investors of $27.4 million. He founded Magnises a company that marketed an invitation-only charge card, using $1.5 million of investor funding in 2013. Later he founded Fyre Media and acted as CEO which he developed the Fyre mobile app for booking music talent. In late 2016, along with rapper Ja Rule, he co-founded the Fyre Festival a luxury music festival intended to promote the Fyre app. In May 2017, along with Ja Rule, they were sued for $100 million in a class action lawsuit on behalf of Fyre Festival attendees.
Billy McFarland Age
He was born William Z. McFarland on December 11, 1991.
Billy McFarland Girlfriend
He is currently in a relationship with a Russian model Anastasia Eremenko.
Billy McFarland Early life and education
He grew up in the Short Hills section of Millburn, New Jersey. His parents are real estate developers. He founded an online outsourcing startup that matched clients with web designers just at the age of 13. He attended Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he studied computer engineering for less than 9 months.
Billy McFarland Career
Toward the end of his freshman year, he dropped out of college and founded the short-lived online advertisement platform Spling where he served as the CEO. He seeded payments company Magnises with $1.5 million of investor funding in August 2013. He aimed to create an exclusive “black card” with social perks such as club membership, targeted at status-oriented millennials in certain big cities.
He launched Fyre Media Inc. the parent company of the Fyre Festival. Fyre Media claimed to be worth $90 million in a term sheet sent to investors. The New York Post reported that would-be New York socialite Anna Delvey may have helped herself to four months of free lodging at the SoHo loft owned by McFarland, after asking to stay for a few days on July 23, 2018.
The loft was also used as the headquarters for the defunct millennial black credit card company, Magnises.
Fyre Festival
After he founded Fyre Media, he publicized a luxury music festival in the Bahamas called Fyre Festival, that was meant to promote the Fyre music-booking application. The festival was to be held in April 2017, was advertised by a video which included a bevy of Instagram models including Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski who, along with Kendall Jenner were supposed to be at the festival.
The festival experienced a number of serious management issues and was canceled after the guest had begun to arrive on Great Exuma island. It became the focus of U.S. federal investigations and multiple lawsuits.
He borrowed $7 million in an effort to fund the festival, taking one loan with an effective annualized rate of 120 percent. In 2019, the controversy around Fyre Festival was detailed in two documentaries: On January 14, Hulu released Fyre Fraud, and Netflix released Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, directed by Chris Smith, on January 18.
Billy McFarland Fraud conviction
On May 1, 2017, alongside Ja Rule, he was sued for $100 million in a class action lawsuit in relation to the failed Fyre Festival that left attendees stranded on the Island without basic provisions. There were six federal and four individual lawsuits filled in relation to the scheme.
On June 30, 2017, he was arrested by federal agents and charged with wire fraud in relation to Fyre and Fyre Festival. On July 1, he was released on $300,000 bail. He faced up to four years and nine months under U.S. sentencing guidelines, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristy Greenberg.
He was presented by a public defender at a bail hearing in July 2017. He later hired Boies, Schiller & Flexner as representation.
He pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud in Federal Court in Manhattan and admitted to using fake documents to attract investors to put more than $26 million into his company in March 2018. He was charged with selling fraudulent tickets to events such as the Met Gala, Burning Man, and Coachella while out on bail.
He was sentenced to 6 years in federal prison on October 11, 2018. He is now incarcerated at FCI Otisville, in Orange County, New York.
He has a celebrity friend in prison
He is serving his six-year sentence in federal prison for fraud-related charges regarding his company. However, that he has got a new pal to help him through his prison stay: Mike ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino from Jersey Shore, who is serving an eight-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to tax evasion.