Fyre Festival Founder Billy McFarland Arrested for New Ticket-Selling Scam

By Variety Staff

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Fyre Festival founder , who pleaded guilty to two counts wire fraud in March, was charged Tuesday with running a fraudulent ticket-selling scam while he was out on bail and faces new charges, federal prosecutors told the New York Times on Tuesday.

McFarland was rearrested Tuesday and charged with earning $100,000 by selling fake tickets to events including the Coachella Festival and the Met Gala through NYC VIP Access, a company he controlled, and attempted to hide his involvement by sending sale proceeds to other people’s bank accounts, according to multiple news reports .

The charges add third count of wire fraud onto the existing two counts, as well as a count of money laundering. Each of the four counts carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, although, on the initial charges at least, he was realistically looking at a much lighter sentence .

Prosecutors said McFarland, 26, began running the scheme late last year, several months after his arrest for defrauding Fyre investors out of $26 million. They also allege that he may have committed bank fraud and identity theft in the past few months.

“William McFarland, already awaiting sentencing for a prior fraud scheme, allegedly continued to conduct criminal business as usual,” United States Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a statement.

He is scheduled to be sentenced on his original charges next week. An attorney for McFarland did not immediately respond to Variety’s request for comment.

The heavily hyped   was to be a “luxury concert” — taking place on a small island in the Bahamas and featuring Blink-182, Migos and Disclosure — but  collapsed on in a mess of disorganization on April 29  before it had even started. Far from the luxury accommodations and celebrity-chef-prepared meals promised by its producers — McFarland  and rapper Ja Rule — concertgoers were met with flimsy tents, boxed lunches, near-total disorganization and long waits for flights to return to the mainland after airlines began refusing to fly would-be concertgoers to the overcrowded island of Exumas.

One  production professional briefly associated with the festival told Variety  the event was marked by “incompetence on an almost inconceivable scale.”