Billy McFarland, Fyre Festival organizer: I lied to investors

If only he had had enough time, Fyre Festival could have been criminally fun.

In a new interview in a prison, incarcerated party organizer Billy McFarland admitted to lying to investors who invested millions in funding his notorious 2017 luxury retirement failure – but blamed an impossible timeline for the scam that it is now time to co-organize.

“I think the biggest mistake before I was wrong was just setting an unrealistic schedule for the festival,” McFarland, 29, told Jordan Harbinger in an unapproved interview that has since driven the scammer into solitary confinement. , according to the personality of the radio.

“If we had given ourselves a year or two and obviously hadn’t made the terrible decision to lie to my supporters, I think we could have been in a little better place, but whatever mistakes I made have done or what has done things wrong. , “he continued.” So that’s where it started and ended. “

McFarland is quick to admit that he lied, later repeating, “I knowingly lied to them to raise money for the festival. Yes. And that’s what the crime was. The crime inexcusably lied about the status of the company to get the money I thought I needed for the festival.

The con artist – who is serving a six-year sentence for fraud, currently at the Elkton Federal Correctional Facility in Lisbon, Ohio – swears the biggest lie he told himself was to himself and maintained truly the illusion that the festival could succeed until the end.

“I legitimately thought the festival was going to be run,” he said, before embarking on a story of trying to hire a cruise ship to accommodate guests who were promised luxury accommodation but who ended up sleeping in FEMA tents.

Looking back, he repents and regrets.

“[There’s] no apologies and I wish I could have woken up one of those early mornings and just quit, ”he said, acknowledging that at the time he hadn’t had the patience to getting help quitting and his impatience had cost him his morale.