Monday, April 3, 2023

Fyre Festival Fraudster Billy McFarland Lands $19,000 To Speak At Germany's "Entrepreneur University’s Founder Summit"

From the New York Post, March 28:

Con artist Billy McFarland bags $19K to ‘own up’ to Fyre Festival fraud 

For nearly $19,000, Billy McFarland is ready to spill the Fyre Festival beans in Germany.

McFarland, the infamous fraudster who bilked victims out of more than $26 million, will be jet-setting in April for an appearance at Entrepreneur University’s Founder Summit in Wiesbaden — where he intends to share his side of the 2017 fiasco, he told The Post.

“This is a way for me to own up to what went wrong,” McFarland, 31, said in an exclusive interview ahead of his 30-minute slot.

“The best live audience to do that in front of is the entrepreneurial crowd.”

Weeks ahead of the “part-cautionary, part-motivational” speech, McFarland said he’s ready to talk frankly about his experience to entrepreneurs — and pay down $7,492 of the $26 million he owes....

....MUCH MORE

The Post has taken an especial interest in Mr. McFarland, for year chronicling the twists and turns of the story. Which could be said of Climateer Investing as well. Here's a post from May 2022: 

The Party That Never Ends: "Fyre Festival’s Billy McFarland mulls over ways to pay $26 million to victims while in halfway house"

He was given early release from prison due to the covid pandemic. Because, of course.

From the New York Post:

Billy McFarland, the fraudster behind the ill-fated Fyre Festival, is out of prison but he’s far from home free in his halfway house.

McFarland was sprung from prison this spring after serving less than four years of a six-year sentence in connection with his 2017 Caribbean retreat fiasco....

....MORE

Much of the history has been lost although fragments of tweets from the well-to-do young Blink-182 fans survive:

Many people mentioned the feral dogs, either silently eyeing the festival-goers or howling in the moonlight. 

This was also nice: 

And many more; but for me the quintessential Billy McFarland story is the fact he got taken in by another fraudster:

Scam the Scammer: "Wannabe socialite swindler may have bilked Fyre Festival fraudster"

From Page Six:

We have a winner in the Scammer Olympics — after Page Six learned that “socialite grifter” Anna Sorokin managed to bilk months of free accommodation in a Soho loft out of a fellow (alleged) heavyweight con artist, Fyre Festival organizer Billy McFarland.

In May 2017, it was revealed that Sorokin had posed as a German heiress called Anna Delvey to allegedly trick banks, businesses and friends into giving her hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and goods.

But we hear that New York’s most beloved swindlers went head to head back in 2013 when Sorokin — who managed to stay at high-end hotels such as 11 Howard for months before being discovered — moved into the Wooster Street headquarters of McFarland’s dubious credit card company Magnises for four months.

“Anna knew people on Billy’s team,” explains an insider. “She just asked to stay for a few days … then she wouldn’t leave.”

Magnises — which McFarland once notoriously said is “Latin for absolutely nothing” — produced “black cards” linked to members’ regular credit card accounts. It also threw bashes at the Soho loft....MORE 

And more to come, I'm sure. 

For now however, the Founder's Summit looks like McFarland's natural habitat.

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