Billy McFarland

William Zervakos McFarland (born December 11, 1991) is an American businessman whose enterprises have been characterized by fraud.

He has served time in prison for financial crimes related to Fyre Festival, having defrauded investors of $27.4 million.

Vanity Fair describes him as "the poster boy for millennial scamming".

McFarland was born in 1991, and was raised in the Short Hills section of Millburn, New Jersey.

His parents, Steven and Irene McFarland (née Zervakos), are real estate developers.

He graduated from the Pingry School in 2010.

He then attended Bucknell University, but he dropped out in May of his freshman year.

After McFarland dropped out of college, he founded the short-lived online advertisement platform Spling, where he served as CEO.

TechCrunch described Spling as a content-sharing network, criticizing its similarity to other services which existed at the time.

In 2013, McFarland founded Magnises, a card-based club targeted at millennials, using $1.5 million of investor funding.

He later founded and was CEO of Fyre Media, which developed the Fyre mobile app for booking music talent.

In August 2013, McFarland seeded payments company Magnises with $1.5 million of investor funding, aiming to create an exclusive "black card" with social perks, such as club membership, targeted at status-oriented millennials in certain big cities.

McFarland also launched Fyre Media Inc., the parent company of the Fyre Festival.

In a term sheet sent to investors, Fyre Media claimed to be worth $90 million; however, according to authorities, the company only did about $60,000 in business.

McFarland founded Fyre Media and publicized a luxury music festival in the Bahamas, called Fyre Festival, to promote the Fyre music-booking application.

In late 2016, along with rapper Ja Rule, McFarland co-founded the Fyre Festival, a "luxury" music festival intended to promote the Fyre app.

The event was scheduled to take place in April and May 2017, but was aborted – after attendees had arrived – due to problems with security, food, logistics, understaffing, accommodation, and talent relations.

In May 2017, McFarland and Ja Rule were sued for $100 million in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Fyre Festival attendees.

The following month, McFarland was arrested and charged with wire fraud in Manhattan federal court for his role in the organization of the festival.

The festival, 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 all expected to be at the festival.

However, the festival experienced a number of serious management, administration and misrepresentation issues, and was canceled after guests had begun to arrive at Great Exuma island.

Guests were met with tents and pre-packaged sandwiches instead of the lavish villas and meals they were promised.

The festival subsequently became the focus of U.S. federal investigations and multiple lawsuits.

McFarland borrowed as much as $7 million in an effort to fund the festival, taking one loan with an effective annualized rate of 120 percent.

McFarland defaulted on the loan, and the lender sued.

On May 1, 2017, Fyre Festival organizers Billy McFarland and Ja Rule were sued for $100 million in a class-action lawsuit in relation to the failed Fyre Festival that left attendees stranded on the island of Great Exuma without basic provisions.

In addition to the class-action lawsuit filed in May 2017, 6 federal and 4 individual lawsuits were filed in relation to the scheme.

McFarland was arrested by federal agents on June 30, 2017, and charged with wire fraud in relation to Fyre and Fyre Festival.

He was released on $300,000 bail on July 1.

McFarland faced up to 4 years and 9 months under U.S. sentencing guidelines, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristy Greenberg.

She added that McFarland's short but eventful career showed a "pattern of deception" and "overpromising luxury experiences that were not delivered".

In July 2017, McFarland was represented by a public defender at a bail hearing after his previous legal team "had not been paid enough to continue to represent him".

McFarland later hired the private firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner as representation.

While on bail, he committed further fraud with a scheme called "NYC VIP Access" selling tickets to events that had either not been announced or that tickets were unavailable for public purchase to attend, including the Met Gala.

Footage of him carrying out this fraud was (inadvertently) recorded and later appeared in Netflix's Fyre documentary.

After pleading guilty to two counts of wire fraud in March 2018, he was sentenced to six years in federal prison.

He was released in late March 2022 after serving less than four years.

In March 2018, McFarland pleaded guilty to 2 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.

He agreed to forfeit $26 million.

The controversy around Fyre Festival were detailed in two documentaries in January 2019: Hulu released Fyre Fraud directed by Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason on January 14, and Netflix released Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, directed by Chris Smith, on January 18.