Getty Image / Stephane Cardinale - Corbis / Contributor
It has been over two years since the Fyre Festival was supposed to happen on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma. Yet, there are still legal actions taking place years after the epic fail of the Fyre Festival.
The trustee in the Fyre Festival bankruptcy case filed lawsuits against Emily Ratajkowski, Kendall Jenner and Blink-182 in an effort to win back funds invested in the dumpster fire of a music festival. One lawsuit is suing Blink-182 for $500,000 because they were the band that was originally supposed to headline the Fyre Festival.
Another lawsuit was filed against supermodels and Instagram influencers who helped promote the doomed festival. The trustee sued Kendall Jenner for $275,000, which is how much the Kardashian sister was paid to do an Instagram post promoting the Fyre Festival. Another lawsuit demands that Emily Ratajkowski return the $300,000 that she was paid for an Instagram post promoting the festival. EmRata got paid $300K for a Fyre Festival post on Instagram? I need to post more bikini pics on Insta.
The lawsuits allege that the models demonstrated a “clear lack of good faith” because they didn’t list their Instagram posts as sponsored ads. Weird how they had no issue with the ads two years ago.
“Nor did they inform their fans and followers that they ultimately decided not to attend the Festival because of problems with the Festival of which they and their agencies were uniquely aware,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuits allege that the money paid by McFarland was a “scheme to defraud investors, and therefore should be voided.”
Fyre Festival director Yaron Lavi was also sued for $315,000 in a new lawsuit. Lawsuits against companies who worked with the festival were also filed, including a yacht company, a ticketing company, and a catering company. They better not be suing Maryann Rolle, the Bahamian woman who lost $50,000 of her life savings after catering the Fyre Festival.
In April, Gregory Messer, the Chapter 7 trustee for the Fyre Festival estate, asked a judge “to require Hulu and Netflix to show whether they paid for footage that should have been deemed an asset of the company.”
The makers of Fyre Fraud documentary on Hulu, Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason, allegedly paid Fyre Festival organizer Billy McFarland for “licensed behind-the-scenes footage and consent to an eight-hour interview.” The trustee argues that footage was an asset and should have been paid to Fyre Festival LLC. Netflix also made a Fyre Festival documentary with footage, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened.
Variety reported that the trustee is “seeking to void the transfer of $14.4 million from the festival company to Fyre Media, its parent company.”
The report claims that $11 million was transferred to McFarland and the fraudster spent $315,645.87 on his personal expenses, including his “luxury penthouse, hotel stays, dining, entertainment and clothing.”
McFarland is currently serving a six-year prison term after pleading guilty to federal fraud charges. McFarland was ordered to pay restitution of just more than $26 million that he raised to fund the disastrous event.
[Variety]