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Billy McFarland has been called a lot of things in the six-plus years since he was arrested and charged with wire fraud for his role in the infamous Fyre Festival: Con man. Scam Artist. Fraudster. Liar.
“Legend!”
That last label was flung at him across a barn positioned near a small runway in upstate New York on a brisk day in September. The admirer was one of 60 guests, mostly white, instagram notorious, and wearing some combination of Prada and Louis Vuitton, who were on hand for what seemed to be the kick off of Billy’s comeback tour. There were the rappers Capella Grey and Bobby Schmurda, the reality TV star Joey Joy and luxury car influencer Ethan Duran. They passed handles of vodka. According to the FYRE website, the event had been priced at $1000-a-head and sold out.
Legends are in the eye of the beholder, but McFarland, in his black fleece pullover, dark gray slim-cut jeans, white AirMaxes, and ingratiating smile, looked pleased. He herded people, eight at a time, toward a small aircraft for a “Zero Gravity” experience. Each group ascended to a certain height, at which point the aircraft’s pilot turned off the engines. Selfies were taken in freefall before the engines choked back to life and another climb began. Another parabolic arc.
The event had been branded by McFarland as a “Survival Training,” one of a handful that would take place before Fyre Festival 2, which is ostensibly scheduled for December 2024 at an as yet unnamed location in the Caribbean. But the event seemed, more than anything, like a demonstration of Billy’s personal physics. Everything that goes up is content. Everything that goes down is also content. He had a team of videographers on hand to capture B-roll for a social media hype video. The event existed simultaneously as an experience for those present and as evidence, not of a crime but of McFarland’s ability to conjure cultural moments.
On the ground, in the shadow of the excitement, hip-hop thumped from a DJ booth inside the barn. It was like a mini-Fyre Festival if Fyre Festival had ever actually happened.
The most generous reading of the Fyre Festival story might be that McFarland was guilty of overpromising and under delivering. There were all those photos of Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner frolicking on the beach. There were the promised performances from Blink 182 and Migos. There were the descriptions of lavish living quarters and meals.
Then, at the end of the day, there were the Storm-soaked FEMA tents and cheese sandwiches. There was no Bella Hadid, no Kendall Jenner – not a single Migo.
The legal reading of the Fyre Festival story is more straightforward. McFarland was found guilty of one count of wire fraud for defrauding investors, one count of wire fraud for scheming to defraud a ticket vendor, one count of wire fraud for a sham ticket scheme, one count of bank fraud for writing a check with the name and account number of one of his employees, and one count of making false statements to a federal law enforcement. On October 11, 2018, he was sentenced to six years in federal prison. He served almost four years and spent 10 months in solitary confinement, first for possession of a flash drive and then for participating in a podcast about his failed festival .McFarland was released from prison in March 2022 after former President Donald Trump’s First Step Act made some nonviolent offenders eligible for early release. He remained under house arrest until September 2022.
Now a free man, he remains financially shackled. McFarland owes $26 million in restitution to his victims. Getting his hands on that kind of money isn’t going to be easy. But he does have one advantage: Attention. McFarland fascinates people.
This August, he announced that the first 100 tickets to Fyre Festival 2, which he dreamt up in solitary and, listed at $499 each, had sold out. McFarland says he is leaving the festival planning to experts, but he remains the face of Fyre and the flawed hero of the Fyre story, which is, the way he tells it, all about realizing a dream.
He tells the story well. McFarland is surprisingly approachable. After the zero gravity flights, he and I spoke. He seemed relieved and excited. The event was going off without a hitch. Holding a bottle of Corona, as he was often seen while planning the first Fyre Festival, he told me the event was attended by mostly Fyre Festival 2 ticket holders.
As Billy rounded up more groups for the flights, I went to ask those ticket holders why they would trust our friendly host with their money.
I met an EDM journalist, a couple who supported McFarland but hadn’t purchased tickets, a man who said he had attended the first Fyre Festival, and several women who said they hadn’t even heard of McFarland but had been dragged to the event by friends. One woman who had been invited through a friend had assumed the event wasn’t actually being put on by McFarland’s team, but by a group ironically cashing in on his infamy. None of them had bought a Fyre Festival 2 ticket.
Eventually I found one man who had actually paid the $499. He worked in venture capital and had been introduced to McFarland through a mutual friend. He was skeptical of the convicted felon at first, he told me, but found him to be intelligent when they met in person. I also met a day trader, who told me he had purchased a “placeholder” for a festival ticket, though it wasn’t clear exactly what that meant. He added that he believed in Billy and was eager to see him prove the doubters wrong. Both men were, in a sense, gamblers and the bet made sense. They’d either get a great experience or a fun story – the sort of tale you spin for a Hinge date. I told both men I’d circle back but, when I did, both declined to speak further.
As the sun set over the airport, a bus arrived and then dropped everyone off at Le Baratin, a French restaurant in the West Village that often goes viral on TikTok: servers hand out sparklers and encourage diners to dance atop chairs. Like many things in McFarland’s orbit, it seems deliberately engineered to look cool on social media.
Shmurda, who spent more than six years in prison for conspiracy to murder, among other charges, performed during the dinner, and at one point McFarland took the microphone himself: “It has been a long seven years, but Fyre is back. This is our first step of many,” he said, his voice rising as people cheered, “let’s fucking go!”
When most people experience some form of humiliation, they try to distance themselves from it. McFarland has done the opposite. He leans into his greatest failure. One could argue that he’s disciplined about it and that It’s a savvy move: The FYRE name has national recognition. If McFarland wants to to eventually pay off his debts, he needs the kind of platform that takes years to build the traditional way – by actually throwing festivals – and less time to cobble together from infamy, hustle, and proximity to fame.
After the Zero Gravity Experience, McFarland planned several “Survival Training” events, including an “underwater concert” in Miami. The official Fyre website advertised tickets for that event from $600-$5,000. At the same time, the Fyre website reported that tickets for the Zero Gravity event, advertised for $1,000, had sold out. But I never met anyone who admitted to purchasing such a ticket. When I emailed McFarland for clarification, he responded with an invitation to attend the Miami event without answering my question. I pressed him again, but as of press time, he had yet to respond.
Billy promoted the Miami event with a series of Instagrams showing him submerged and holding poster cards – another low gravity situation. But that event was canceled and the promotional posts were deleted.
Recently, Billy started marketing pre-sale tickets for Fyre Festival 2 for up to $1.02 million – yes, million – for the so-called Klymene pass. In lieu of tangible information detailing the Klymene pass’ perks, the Fyre website promises a “comprehensive experience that immerses you in the elements of Fire, Earth, Sky and Sea.” The pass, the description continues in language that could only be comprehensible to the very greedy or the very stoned, “opens, and literally builds, doors to an island escape that transcends the confines and dates of FYRE II.”
McFarland told me 25 people had expressed interest in the Klymene pass, but that he’d been holding off making the sales until he could provide more details. He told me he didn’t want to get in trouble.
