In 2017, Billy McFarland’s Fyre Festival was a fraudulent luxury music festival scheduled to take place on the Bahamian Island of Great Exuma. It was created with the intent of promoting the company’s Fyre app for booking music talent. During the Fyre Festival’s inaugural weekend, the event experienced problems related to security, food, accommodation, medical services and artist relations, resulting in the festival being indefinitely postponed and eventually cancelled. Instead of the gourmet meals and luxury villas for which festival attendees had paid hundreds of dollars, they received packaged sandwiches and were lodged in poorly furnished tents. At least eight lawsuits were initiated against the organizers for defrauding ticket buyers, several seeking class action status, and one seeking more than $100 million in damages. Billy McFarland was sentenced to six years in federal prison and agreed to a lifetime ban on serving as a corporate officer or director.
