Fyre Festival founder Billy McFarland was released from prison early. He was originally meant to be released from prison August 30, 2023.
Billy pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud in March 2018 for using fake documents to attract investors into giving him money for the scam festival. Ja Rule was one of the founders but avoided any prison time. Billy originally faced up to 20 years in prison.
“When I think about the mistakes that were made and what happened, there’s just, like, there’s no way I can just describe it other than, like, what the f*ck was I thinking? And I think that applies to so many people on just so many decisions that I made,” McFarland said from his prison cell last year.
McFarland agreed to pay back the $26 million to his victims. McFarland also pleaded guilty to selling phony tickets to events, cheating his victims out of $100,000.
“What I did was inflate our company’s numbers. How much money we had, how much money we were making, in order to raise overall money. I tried to justify to myself, well, you know, everybody has access to my bank account, they all know what’s going on. And so, just give us more money. We’re going to make this happen, we all know what’s happening. But in reality, everybody didn’t understand, you know, what was going on in my head,” he added.
