.If you were feeling severe FOMO over not being able to afford a ticket to Fyre Festival when your favorite Instagram celebrities were promoting it heavily, now is your chance to relish in one final opportunity to be a part of one of the greatest scams of the 2010’s. Yes, that’s right. The Fyre Festival merch is about to be auctioned off to support the victims of Billie McFarland’s elaborate fraud.
Fyre Festival tore through a remote island in the Bahamas just a couple of years ago. It didn’t seem as if there were many “victims” at the time, but the local economy took a major hit. The primary audience for the festival was to gather as many influencers and celebrities as possible to create one epic social media storm. It was a brilliantly executed brand venture online, but it failed miserably in real life.
Auction
Now, with nearly $26 million owed in debts toward a large handful of people and companies, McFarland is desperate to find one last way to make some money to cover the damages. But don’t worry, the money isn’t going anywhere near McFarland’s grubby hands. The products were seized during the festival, and the funds are going directly toward repaying the people that lost the most.
The Manhattan US Attorney’s office will be auctioning off all remaining Fyre Festival merchandise in order to pay back the victims of the festival. When McFarland chose the remote Bahamian island to use as the venue, the local community suffered in its wake. A good amount of infrastructure was created in hopes of Fyre Fest’s success. However, there wasn’t any sort of plan in place to clean the island up afterward.
The island locals also invested a lot in the prospect of the island festival’s success. When the festival failed miserably, the local workers were never paid for their services. For many, the festival required months of work that would have paid for their livelihoods. The auction of the goods is set to go toward paying off some of these costs, which added up to nearly $26 million.
Failure Festival
Billy McFarland is currently set to go to federal prison for six years because of the allegations against him. The allegations were tied to the production of Fyre Festival. The US Marshal acquired two boxes of original Fyre Festival merchandise. They plan to auction off at an undisclosed date. The Marsha’s Service feels that there is a big enough buzz surrounding the items to draw in a good amount of funds to go toward reimbursing the victims.
The festival gained a lot of notoriety throughout the extensive news coverage surrounding the fiasco when it happened. What solidified Fyre Festival into the scam zeitgeist, though, came after two documentaries were made about the event. McFarland is often compared to the likes of Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey, two other major players in the great schemes of twentyscamteen.
Among the items that will be up for auction are t-shirts, tank tops, hats, and wrist bands. All of the merchandise in the auction will don the Fyre Festival logo. The date for the auction has yet to be officially announced. But there is no doubt that Fyre fans will swoop up the remaining merch in no time.
