Not the Who, just the world’s most expensive Who cover band.
The Whom
If anyone is interested – and the sheer audacity of this scam is intriguing – there are two different documentaries that were done about the first fiasco, the one that got McFarlane sentenced to 6 years and released after 4 (I was mistaken earlier about the length of the sentences). The better of the two is the one that Netflix did about 5 years ago called Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. This is nothing like scam on the scale of Bernie Madoff or even Donald Trump, but still, owing something like $26 million in restitution to his gullible victims is a pretty big deal.
Hey now, maybe he’s just trying to make good and pay restitution by having another festival?
I say that practically makes him a saint, I do!
Ahh! Now I see what’s going on. How’s a fella supposed to pay back the people he cheated - where’s he supposed to get that kind of money, and quick? I know, throw another music and lifestyle festival! Because those are so popular and so successful now! It’ll be tremendous!!
NYT:
There is much left to plan. The Isla Mujeres municipal government said in a statement that no permits had been requested or approved for the festival.
GPS coordinates provided by the company point to a spot off the coast of the island. The festival is scheduled for this May 30th.
Ah, the old put-everything-onto-a-barge-that we-can-tow-into-international-waters-if-the-local-cops-come trick. Foolproof!
Either that or he thought he was booking a now-closed resort on Isla Nublar at a very good price.
I think the thing that confounded a lot of people was: why there was anything at all there on the island; if you’re going to scam people, why not just take the money and do nothing at all except to run?
But I suppose the answer is that actions in the lead-up to the event gave the whole thing more of a facade of plausibility (which probably has a direct effect on ticket sales), but also, the half-assed accommodation etc provides a sort of figleaf for the argument ‘I tried to do it! I’m just as much a victim as you guys!’
If you watch the documentaries, they legitimately thought they could pull this off until almost the deadline hit. One of the guys on the team admitted on camera that he was willing to perform oral sex on a customs agent in order to clear 4 pallets of Evian water to be served at the festival. It’s intimated that Billy was high as fuck the entire time and took regular breaks to “go jetskiing” to top up his nose candy.
This was the peak era of “fake it until you make it”, “move fast and break things”, “better to ask forgiveness than ask permission” startup life.
One of my favorite quotes from the docs was, during one of the planning meetings where everyone was rightfully bringing up all of their concerns of why this might be difficult to pull off and it was all overruled by Ja Rule who said “let’s just do it and be legends, man”.
I came in to quote this because, say what you will about any other outcome, the Fyre Festival has definitely passed into legend. Never let it be said they did not achieve this specific goal in a spectacular fashion.
Last night I watched the documentary I mentioned upthread and was going to summarize it here, but I see that @Shalmanese beat me to it! But I’ll add a few more points of interest. It was quite an effective documentary partly because a lot of the events were being filmed as they happened, and also because many of the principals – both co-conspirators and victims – were willing to talk about it afterwards.
From the beginning, there were two separate things going on. One was that McFarlane, obsessed with the VIP lifestyle, really did intend to put on an extravagant four-day super party. But the other was that he was also a natural-born con-man and compulsive liar, so that the fundraising, both from ticket buyers and investors, was filled with deception right from the start. As someone said in the film, there were really two Fyre festivals – the promotional photo shoots with villas and dozens of bikini-clad models on beautiful beaches and fancy yachts, a glamorous ideal which McFarlane had neither the plans nor the resources to provide, and the disaster that actually unfolded
The thing became an epic flop basically because he kept running out of money (and, arguably, really bad planning). It’s not clear that McFarlane had any performers of note other than the rapper Ja Rule who was part of the scam. Everything got downgraded to nothing. The “villas” the guests were supposed to stay in became emergency tents, the kind used after natural disasters. To make matters worse, there was a big rainstorm just before the event, leading to soaked mattresses, especially the many that had been left outside. He did at least have caterers lined up to feed the crowd, but they bailed when it was clear they wouldn’t get paid, which is how everyone ended up with the infamous cheese sandwiches and nothing else.
One notable fact here is that while he was out on bail after being arrested on fraud charges, McFarlane perpetrated a second fraud by selling non-existent VIP tickets to an upcoming Grammy Awards show. McFarlane was arrested a second time, and the list of fraud charges grew longer.
One prescient comment from someone at the end of the movie was that, knowing McFarlane, he was bound to try another project like Fyre. That’s just who he was.
My favourite line from the movie: “Every time a rich kid gets scammed, an angel gets his wings”.
Hey, “gullibility” separates us from the lower animals. Except, maybe, the gulls.
This feels more like booking a cruise on the Titan submersible.
It must be about time the folks on reddit decided to try buying an island again
Incidentally, the first Fyre wasn’t on an island, though McFarlane claimed it was. It was actually on the coast of the Bahamas just north of a Sandals resort. But it looked like an island, because a view of the site taken from the air was altered through the magic of Photoshop. Basically everything about this thing was at best a shameless exaggeration, but mostly it was outright lies. I have no reason to believe that Fyre 2 will be any different.
McFarlane claims that this time things will be different because the festival is being created by third-party organizers. He seems to imply that this is because of his new-found wisdom, but neglects to mention that due to his fraud convictions he’s been banned for life from being the officer or director of any company, so he’s apparently created some sort of arms-length legal fiction in which he appears to have no direct control but still gets to collect the proceeds from fleecing the rubes. In fact, due to his criminal convictions, he may not even be able to attend the event himself (assuming it even happens).
The festival was originally going to be held on Norman’s Cay, an island that is infamous because it was once owned by Carlos Lehder Rivas, a member of the Medellin Drug Cartel. The current owners of Norman’s Cay have been trying to downplay the island’s connections to drug smuggling; they agreed to license it to Fyre Festival with strict instructions that any advertising materials for the festival could not reference drugs, the Medellin Cartel or Pablo Escobar. Of course, none of those conditions were met so they got kicked out.
Redacted
The Beatles with all 4 members.
Correct, but McFarlane continued to claim it was going to be on a “private island” even after they got kicked off, hence why the promotional aerial view of the site was Photoshopped to make it look like one. There’s even a “before” and “after” picture somewhere comparing the authentic photo with the Photoshopped one.
The Bahamas is entirely islands. Great Exuma is an island.
You mean it wasn’t on a small private island.