Fyre Festival’s Billy McFarland Rents A $21,000-A-Month NYC Penthouse But Is Reportedly Too Broke To Pay For Lawyers


Bill McFarland, the 25-year-old behind the catastrophic Fyre Festival, was arrested by federal agents on Friday on a charge of wire fraud.

He was released Saturday on $300,000 bail, but not before the court heard details about McFarland’s grandiose lifestyle. According to The New York Times, McFarland is making payments on a Maserati with a retail price of $110,000 and renting a Manhattan penthouse apartment for a reasonable $21,000 a month. At the time of his arrest, McFarland had $5,000 in cash on him. Yes, the same guy who had to call up Fyre Festival employees and tell them he doesn’t have the funds to pay them.

But, when McFarland showed up to court on Saturday, he was wearing a light blue t-shirt and black jeans and being represented by a public defender. Assistant US Attorney Kristy Greenberg questioned whether McFarland’s luxurious lifestyle met the criteria to be represented by a public defender.

After the Fyre Festival saga took on a life of its own, McFarland hired  both a crisis public relations firm and a legal team to defend him from numerous pending lawsuits, but his lawyers had not been paid enough to continue to represent him, reports The Times.

“There are real questions about where his money is,” Greenberg told the judge at McFarland’s bail hearing.

McFarland is facing allegations that he lied on financial-disclosure forms and defrauded investors in Fyre Media by overstating the company’s income, Business Insider reports. McFarland had allegedly doctored a Scottrade account statement to say that he owned $2.5 million in a company’s stock, when in reality his position was worth only $1,500.

[h/t The New York Times]

 

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Matt’s love of writing was born during a sixth grade assembly when it was announced that his essay titled “Why Drugs Are Bad” had taken first prize in D.A.R.E.’s grade-wide contest. The anti-drug people gave him a $50 savings bond for his brave contribution to crime-fighting, and upon the bond’s maturity 10 years later, he used it to buy his very first bag of marijuana.