Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Billy McFarland, the notorious scammer behind 2017’s comically terrible Fyre Festival, was sentenced Thursday to six years in prison for fraud charges related both to the Fyre Festival and other schemes. “The remorse I feel is crushing,” McFarland said, according to a report from Vice News. “I lived every day with the weight of knowing that I literally destroyed the lives of my friends and family.” As The Daily Beast previously reported, after millennials shelled out thousands of dollars for what was supposed to be a “VIP” festival in the Bahamas, unlucky attendees instead arrived to find “tent village[s]” that some described as “like a refugee camp.”
Even after his humiliation at Fyre, he continued to scam innocent consumers with schemes like selling nonexistent tickets to high-profile events, prosecutors said. McFarland’s lawyers had asked the court for leniency, Vice reports, claiming McFarland suffered from bipolar disorder and couldn’t tell right from wrong. But the judge, unconvinced, noted that “It is my conclusion based on all the submissions that the defendant is a serial fraudster and that to date his fraud like a circle has no ending.” The verdict gave solace to Joe Nemeth, one of McFarland’s victims: “It took me 20 years of saving my lunch money to save $180,000,” he told Vice, before noting that he and his wife can no longer retire. “I hope the justice system has the last laugh at Mr. McFarland.”