Federal prosecutors on Friday charged the founder of the disastrous Fyre Festival with one count of wire fraud in connection with supposedly swindling more than a million dollars from a pair of investors prior to April’s calamity of a concert.
Fyre Festival organizer William McFarland, 25, was arrested in New York City following the unsealing of a criminal complaint in Manhattan federal court Friday, the Justice Department announced afterwards.
Mr. McFarland used bogus financial statements to misrepresent his company’s value in order to convince two investors into funding Fyre Festival to the tune of $1.2 million, prosecutors allege.
Mr. McFarland told investors that the company behind the festival, Fyre Media, “earned millions of dollars of revenue” by booking thousands of various musical acts, the Justice Department said in a statement Friday. “In reality, during that approximate time period, Fyre Media earned less than $60,000 in revenue from approximately 60 artist bookings,” the statement said.
Prosecutors allege he also provided at least one investigator with an altered stock ownership statement doctored to suggest his owned over $2.5 million worth of a specific stock – a gross exaggeration of the $1,500 worth of stock he actually held, according to prosecutors.
“McFarland truly put on a show, misrepresenting the financial status of his businesses in order to rake in lucrative investment deals. In the end, the very public failure of the Fyre Festival signaled that something just wasn’t right, as we allege in detail today,” said William F. Sweeney Jr., the assistant director-in-charge of the FBI’s New York field office.
Organizers had touted Fyre Festival as a luxury event in the Bahamas where attendees could be mingle with models and eat gourmet cuisine surrounded by the sounds of big name rock and hip-hop acts. It quickly turned chaotic when attendees arrived in late April to find the festival site in disarray and was canceled by organizers on the second day.
“As alleged, William McFarland promised a ’life changing’ music festival but in actuality delivered a disaster,” said Joon H. Kim, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Mr. McFarland is expected to appear before a federal magistrate judge on Saturday, the Justice Department said. He separately faces a handful of lawsuits brought on behalf of festival goers seeking millions in damages for allegations of fraud, breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation, among other accusations.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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