Fyre Festival Organizer Pleads Guilty to Selling Fraudulent Tickets

NEW YORK — Billy McFarland, whose efforts at running the disastrous Fyre Festival led to wire fraud charges last year, pleaded guilty to a new set of federal charges Thursday related to a fraudulent ticket-selling scam that authorities said he operated while out on bail in the first case.

The plea was entered in U.S. District Court in Manhattan where investigators had charged McFarland, 26, with selling fictitious tickets to high-profile events like Burning Man, the Super Bowl and Coachella.

At least 30 people had spent $150,000 for the tickets from McFarland’s company, NYC VIP Access, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office.

“These customers later learned that the tickets didn’t exist, and that this was just another fraud in McFarland’s disturbing pattern of deception,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in a statement.

McFarland pleaded guilty to wire fraud, bank fraud and making false statements to a federal law enforcement agent and agreed to a forfeiture of $151,000.

It was but the latest chapter in what has become a series of problems for McFarland since he launched on the idea of staging an extravagant music festival, the Fyre Festival, in the Bahamas. Tickets to the disastrous April 2017 event cost from $1,200 to over $100,000, but when customers arrived, they were greeted with soggy sandwiches and Blink-182, one of the promoted acts, was nowhere in sight.

McFarland later pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud linked to the festival.

On Tuesday, in another case spawned by the festival, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced it had agreed to settle with McFarland, and others, over charges they fraudulently induced investments in his companies.

McFarland is scheduled to be sentenced for the charges related to the festival and the ticket selling on Sept. 17. As part of McFarland’s plea agreement, the prosecution will ask for a sentence of between 11 and 14 years.