That Fyre Festival guy is at it again.
Even from behind bars where he’s serving a six year sentence for fraud, Billy McFarland manages to win friends and influence people.
The impresario behind a music festival so disastrous they made rival documentaries on Hulu and Netflix about it reportedly attempted to record a podcast from jail.
McFarland’s lawyer, John Russo, ran to the New York Times to state that his client had been transferred to solitary confinement. He alleged the treatment “stems from his participation in the podcast and photographs that were taken and utilized in the trailer, which were all properly taken. We don’t believe he’s violated any rule or regulation, and there can’t possibly be anything else. He’s been a model prisoner.”
Given his client’s reputation, it’s not certain that the Times didn’t fall for another publicity stunt. The Federal Bureau of Prisons declined comment as they do about any prisoner’s housing.
McFarland’s podcast is called “Dumpster Fyre” and features Jordan Harbinger interviewing McFarland from prison. The big reveal is that McFarland allegedly admits guilt in the first episode — a conclusion that pretty much everyone on the planet (as well as a jury of his peers) had already come to and which nobody in particular was waiting to hear from McFarland.
McFarland previously asked for leniency on account of mental illness (untreated bipolar disorder and “severe alcohol abuse”). In April he petitioned for release from prison on account of the coronavirus. McFarland admitted to the judge then that he was “totally wrong in my actions.”
In addition to the six year federal sentence, McFarland has been sentenced to provide his victims with $26 million in restitution.
