Getting arrested and being forced to pay $26 million dollars for the Fyre Festival fiasco apparently wasn’t enough to stop entrepreneur Billy McFarland pursuing other fraudulent ventures.
According to newly surfaced reports, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office has revealed this guy is facing even more charges for ticket scams that came after Fyre Festival. In the following months, as McFarland awaited sentencing, he was allegedly money laundering and partaking in another wire fraud scheme.
The notorious business figure is accused of heading up a business called NYC VIP Access — a business that from late 2017 through March 2018 sold bunk tickets to events including Burning Man, the Grammy Awards, the Super Bowl, Coachella, the Met Gala, and more.
Once hopeful Fyre Festival attendees feared they were being targeted by another ticketing scam as emails for these glamorous events came through with offers too good to be true. They were right. Customers said they either didn’t receive the passes they bargained for, or worse, didn’t receive any tickets at all.
This is some serious (and shady) business going on here. The FBI has even gotten involved.
FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr. commented on McFarland’s case: “Today’s charges depict our intolerance for such fraudulent activity, and we will continue to diligently investigate acts such as this.”
The NYC VIP Access website has since expired.
We can’t say we’re surprised…
Source: Pitchfork
