My Love Story With Fyre Fest's Billy McFarland
For those of you who know me personally, I apologize if this story is old news to you. The truth is, I wrote much of this post two years ago and never published it, but I’ve been watching Inventing Anna and it feels relevant again. If you haven’t watched Inventing Anna, it’s about a scam artist named Anna Sorokin. In one episode, she was staying with Fyre Fest’s Billy McFarland in his New York City condo while he was working on his early scam called Magnesis. Considering my path eventually crossed Billy’s, I felt like telling this short silly story as well as including some never-before-seen documentation I feel like should live on the internet somewhere for posterity.
On the morning of February 22, 2019, I received a rather common email from my freelancing website requesting a price estimate on a new book that needed editing. I downloaded the sample file and found this photo.
The cover letter read:
Last month 2 documentaries came out about FYRE FESTIVAL but unfortunately both misrepresented the real events and Billy would like to share his story.
I responded to the job request saying I was able to take it on but needed more details. Ten minutes later, I would be on the phone with Billy McFarland’s girlfriend, Ana (not to be confused with Anna Sorokin, both Russian though), and six days later, I’d be on the phone with Billy from Otisville Correctional Facility. At the end of my call with Ana, she told me that a guy named Brandon would also be calling to go over the details.
When Brandon called it was immediately clear that he was as saturated with THC as possible without being asleep. He told me that Billy had been reading a lot in jail and felt that he was “the best writer in the world.” He had supposedly filled up 400 pages of notebooks. He said Billy had dedicated almost a whole notebook to his first scam—or what he called “a business”: charging kids to repair their Crayons in second grade.
Brandon Rubinshtein, I would later find out, was Billy’s new manager who oversees Billy’s new projects, legal proceedings, and image reparation. Brandon runs a PR and media company he affectionately calls DSM or Dog Shit Media. The name fits, his only other clients are Dennis Rodman and Charlie Sheen. When I met with him at the SLS Hotel in Los Angeles—where he was staying with Dennis Rodman—Brandon also told me (who knows if it’s true) that Ryan Seacrest had been visiting the Otisville Correctional facility and was planning to purchase the rights to Fyre Fest and to try it again “for real.”
In the weeks that followed, I communicated with Billy for several weeks over the prison email system and also on recorded calls. I didn’t end up working on the book and honestly had no intention to. I was there for morbid curiosity, and on the off chance I could doula Billy to a come to Jesus moment. When it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, I just leaked it to NY Mag and moved on. Still, there are some details and “artifacts” that the NY Mag article didn’t include that I wanted to share here—like the Ryan Seacrest tidbit.
Funny side note. When NY Mag published the story, the name of the book— Promythus: God of Fyre—became public knowledge. A year later, on Hugh Lorrie’s HBO sci-fi comedy Avenue 5, I was tickled to see this quick shot in one of the spaceship’s museums:
Through it all, the part I find most baffling about Fyre Fest is that Billy actually did try to pull it off. It wasn’t a scam from start to finish. There were some tents, there was some food, there was a stage: he just failed spectacularly.
But when someone with good intentions fails, they try something new, they don’t silence the conscientious objectors on their team, swindle customers, systematically lie to their investors and the public, and end up in prison.
In the Fyre Fest documentaries on Netflix and Hulu, when faced with any problem, Billy’s tagline was “fixed it,” even though he invariably had just made everything so much worse. Don’t have money to pay people? Just fake some wire transfers. Don’t have actual villas for rent? Post some drawings of fictional villas. Hundreds of people stranded on an island begging for answers? Just stand on a table and tell them to go find a place to sleep. And now, sitting alone in a jail cell in New Jersey, he was facing the problem of having blown his only chance at success and planned to solve it by profiting off of the crimes themselves by writing and selling a book. He told me he reached out to me because my profile included celebrity clients and he felt he belonged on the list next to US Vice Presidents and Emmy Award winners. I won’t lie, I was in some weird way honored.
I don’t know if his book is ever going to come out but there are some goodies below to explore: his description of the book—typos and all, an email from Billy, as well as his tentative outline for the book, featuring The Trump Campaign, Jay-Z, and other big players.
On our last call, billy explained that there was “there's some sort of path to learn from Jordan Belfort.” I couldn’t help but gawk. Belfort, the once imprisoned stockbroker behind “The Wolf of Wall Street,” does not have a career that most people are keen to follow. In most cases, scam artists like this are wounded so deep that they can never meaningfully repent. They are too deep in the lie of themselves. In fact, barely a week after Fyre Fest, 60 Minutes aired an expose showing how Jordan Belfort—who had reshaped his image via multiple publishing and movie deals and through becoming a motivational speaker—had done it again. This time, he scammed the Australian government out of millions of dollars for athletic training services that never existed. And this is the type of person McFarland looks up to: a man who will go to extreme lengths, at thousands of people’s personal expense, to just—in the words of Billy’s collaborator on Fyre Fest, Ja Rule— “live like movie stars, party like rockstars, and fuck like pornstars.”
I find the email below fascinating namely because it was wild to see how a con artist never stops scamming—he was constantly overly polite and trying to subtly manipulate me. I almost took him seriously but it all felt like coldness masquerading as earnestness. It was wild to watch in realtime as he attempted to craft himself in the public’s eye alongside other famous conmen. It all felt icky.
He had no interest in actually repenting, the book was just another scam.
Billy’s Description:
I decided to share my story to entertain, give back, and to show that with technology, viral marketing, and ambition, I was able to cause a social phenominom and make a cultural impact. I wrote PROMYTHYUS: THE GOD OF FYRE, in its entirey, from my jail cell. I had a dream of telling the story raw, and directly from the source. I believed that the best way to do this, particularly with the number of third-parties re-telling a version of the events, was to use the time locked ina cell to write myself, and directly share the wild ride that got me here.
PROMYTHTYUS: THE GOD OF FYRE shows how, as an eight year old, my discovered passion for technology, intuition for viral marketing, and constant drive to set my own path by outgunning authority and the status quo, combined with an incessant passion and demand to live life to the fullest, started me down a path that would take me through the absolute extremes of society.
I tell how I went from hiding suitcases of cash under my bed at 13, to eloping from my private high-school to join underground fighting gyms, to failing college, but getting a check from the man who Forbes described "America's Most Reckless Billionaire" just days later, to crashing a plane I shouldn't have been flying, to becoming a confidant of celebrities, super-models, and politicans, to getting arrested by the FBI and confined to a 9' by 12' amidst violence and gang wars (//not relevant at my current location).
Most of all, I hope my story entertains, teaches, warns, and inspries, while providing restitution to my former team and also to the incredible people of The Bahamas.
The Outline/Selected Stories:
1) John Ason - Spling's First Check over Coffee - Spring 2011
2) America's Most Reckless Billionaire - Aubrey McClendon at The Four Seasons in San Francisco with Tim Komada and Andre De Baubigny - Deciding to Invest in Magnises - August/September 2013
3) Introduction to Fall Fashion Week at The Top of The Standard 5 Year Anniversary party - w/ Patrick McMullan, Tiffany Trump, Alan Rish, Lindsay Lohan - Note: A picture, with the above group, that can be used in the story, can be seen on Patrick McMullan's website, under the title of the top of the standard's 5th year anniversary - September 2013
4) Hawaii for Alex Von Furstenburg's 40th Birthday - w/ Dori Cooperman and Owen Wilson - January/February 2014
5) Magnises Washington DC Launch Party - post Fox-TV w/ Ja Rule and Alan Rish - Missing Woman - Fall 2014
6) Macau for Manny Pacquio Fight - Dave Chappele Drugs my Girlfriend - w/ Ja rule, Dave, Arnold Swarzeneger, Sylvestor Stalone - November 2014 ***NOTE: I re-wrote the second draft of this story in the red notebook titled "Insert Rewrites." You have this, but it hasn't been typed. Let's take pictures of the re-write of this story, as well as any other stories in that red note book, and share them along with the others.
7) Norman's Cay Promotional Trips - September - December 2016 - 4x Trips - Include All - Orange Tile Launch - Bella, Emily, Hailey, Kris Jenner gets too drunk Christmas Eve, Zero Gravity, Keith Arrested by Army, Bikini Castings in NYC tech office, Plane Crashes, Boat crashes. ***NOTE: might be best to include the full note book or two of these trips.
8) Magnises Leaks "Secret" Jay-Z Tour While Meeting with Roc Nation President at Fyre - December 2016
9) Ja Rule Vermont Skiing Birthday - with Keith Flying - Landing in Backyard - "Found" Car - Crash - February 2017***
10) Trump Administration Dealings - Inauguration Artists w/ DT Jr, Tommy Mottola - Planes given to FYRE by Secretary of US Army, Painting over Mike Pence and Trump's Faces w/ "FYRE" and Models on Official VP Campaign Plane to Use for Festival Guests - January - March 2017
An Email From Billy:
