Billy McFarland, the founder of the infamous Fyre Festival, is out of prison and has his next business venture.
The man behind the Bahamas-based luxury show that went down to chaos, told NBC News that he has opened PYRT (pronounced “pirate”), which plans to open to the public with a remote island event for influencers and creators.
That has evoked many memories of the Fyre Festival, which, in 2017, was billed as a luxury event in the Bahamas catering to the ultra-rich. Marketing materials promise exclusive performances by bands like Disclosure and Blink 182, luxury villas and top-notch food. Attendees, some of whom paid up to $12,000 to attend, found themselves staying in disaster relief tents and eating packed sandwiches, with no entertainers.
“I was talking to people yesterday and they were like, ‘You can crawl in a hole and die, or you can try to do something and it’s like no promise of results,”’ McFarland told NBC.
McFarland, in 2018, admitted in Manhattan federal court that he had defrauded 80 festival investors and falsified documents related to the festival’s funding. Breaking promises made in the leadup to the Fyre Festival led to a fraud conviction and six-year prison sentence for McFarland in October 2018. He also faces millions of dollars in civil penalties.
This time, the PYRT promotion discusses the global treasure hunt in the Bahamas footage.
Does that mean the event will be held there? Indefinite. The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism told NBC that no application had been submitted by McFarland for an event there, adding that “The Bahamian Government will not endorse or approve any event in the Bahamas associated with him”. It also labeled McFarland a “fugitive.”
While there is no timeline for the event, McFarland said, he has also taken on consulting projects, helping startups market themselves as well as starting a Cameo account to do custom videos, to help fund PYRT.
Former employees are skeptical about McFarland’s plans.
“Billy is still Billy. They’re using different words, but they’re selling the same thing,” Shiyuan Deng, a former product designer at Fyre Media, the company behind the Fyre Festival, told NBC.
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