I’m sure we all remember the Fyre Festival, now a synonym for “legendary fiasco”.
Loyal readers of my blog, and perhaps others, may remember that one of the principals, William McFarland, pled guilty to wire fraud charges related to the festival.
You’re probably not going to believe this. I have trouble believing it myself. On Thursday, Mr. McFarland pled guilty to even more charges.
Mr. 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.
Astonishing part one: this had nothing to do with the Fyre Festival. From the Justice Department’s press release:
From at least in or about late 2017, up to and including at least in or about March 2018, McFARLAND owned and operated NYC VIP Access, a company based in New York, New York. NYC VIP Access purported to be in the business of obtaining and selling for profit tickets to various exclusive events such as fashion galas, music festivals, and sporting events, including the following events, among others: the 2018 Met Gala, Burning Man 2018, Coachella 2018, the 2018 Grammy Awards, Super Bowl LII, and a Cleveland Cavaliers game and team dinner with Lebron James. McFARLAND, while on pretrial release, perpetrated a scheme to defraud attendees of the Fyre Festival, former customers of Magnises (another company operated by McFARLAND), and other customers by soliciting them to purchase tickets from NYC VIP Access to these exclusive events when, in fact, no such tickets existed.
Astonishing part two: notice the dates? Yes! He was running this scam while under indictment for the Fyre Festival scam!
McFARLAND, 26, of New York, New York, pled guilty to one count of wire fraud while on pretrial release, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, one count of bank fraud while on pretrial release, which carries a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, and one count of making false statements, which carries a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison. McFARLAND also affirmed his previously entered guilty plea to two counts of wire fraud, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. In connection with his previously entered plea, McFARLAND agreed to forfeit $26,040,099.48. In connection with today’s guilty plea, McFARLAND agreed to forfeit an additional $151,206.80.
Max sentence, whale sushi, yadda yadda. But I would expect running a second scam while you’re under indictment for the first one to be what they call an “aggravating factor”, and I’d expect Mr. McFarland’s sentence to be on the high end of those ranges.
Of course, I Am Not a Lawyer, so take that with some salt.
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 28th, 2018 at 1:23 pm and is filed under IANAL, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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