William Mcfarland, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Fyre Media, has been arrested Friday in New York, New York on charges of wire fraud. He is expected to be presented before U.S Magistrate Judge Kevin N. Fox tomorrow morning. Joon H. Kim (the acting US attorney for the southern district of New York) and William F. Sweeny Jr. (assistant director in charge of the New York Field Office of the FBI), announced the unsealing of a criminal complaint that charges William McFarland with Wire Fraud; a charge connecting him to a scheme that was set in motion to defraud investors, as well as the participating parties who were responsible for organizing a music festival set to take place in the Bahamas.
[pdf-embedder url=”https://oneedm.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/william_mcfarland_complaint_0-3.pdf” title=”william_mcfarland_complaint_0″]The Fyre Festival, which promised both investors and festival goers a “life-changing musical festival” experience, ultimately delivered a music festival disaster that left festival goers stranded, and investors highly unsatisfied.
Upon further investigation, it has been realized that Mcfarland presented fake documents in order to induce more than one investor to put well over a million dollars into his project that resulted in the Fyre Festival Fiasco. Unfortunately for Mcfarland, the FBI got involved and are making sure that someone will be answering for the allegations.
“life-changing musical festival”
Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr. said, “Under McFarland’s direction, Fyre Media created a promoter’s marketplace for entertainment bidding. In addition to this initial business venture, McFarland went one step further in establishing a subsidiary of the company, Fyre Festival LLC. But in order to drive the success of both entities, as alleged, 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.”
Willam Mcfarland was the founder and Chief Executive officer of Fyre Media. Fyre Media was started in 2016. The initial intention was to build an app that would allow individuals who were organizing commercial events (such as concerts) to bid
on artists and celebrity bookings at such events.
For over a year, William Mcfarland perpetrated a scheme that at least 2 individuals fell privy to, and lost approximately $1.2 million dollars worth if Fyre Media incentive. Considering the misrepresentations about the revenue and income of Fyre Media during that time, it is safe to say that Fyre media earned less than $60,000 in revenue from approximately 60 artist bookings.
Furthermore, William McFarland, in an effort to make it appear that he could personally guarantee the investment, allegedly provided at least one investor an altered Scottrade statement that purported that he owned shares of a stock worth over $2.5 million, when in all actuality, his shares of the stock valued at less than $1500.
