What is PYRT? Former colleagues warn against Fyre Festival scamster founder Billy McFarland’s new venture
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Billy McFarland, the founder of the fraudulent Fyre Festival who admitted to scamming $26 million from investors for his disastrous music event, is ready to launch his new venture. After serving four years in prison, the con artist is set to make a fresh comeback but his new idea is bringing alarming flashbacks from his former colleagues.
The 2017 Fyre Festival was a hyper-extensive event in the Bahamas featuring A-listers such as Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, and Emily Ratajkowski. However, when guests arrived at the festival, they were faced with a massive setback as customers who paid around $1,200 to over $100,000, were greeted by mayhem, canceled acts, packaged food, and catastrophe tents instead of the promised opulent lodgings. Despite serving time and pending legal complaints from his previous case, McFarland is working on a new project involving yet another island party called PYRT.
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What is PYRT?
McFarland's new business called PYRT, pronounced 'pirate', is allegedly yet another sham for an island party, according to his ex-colleagues who have condemned his new project and are warning everyone against it. “Billy’s still Billy. He’s using different words, but he’s selling the same thing,” Shiyuan Deng, a former product designer at Fyre Media, the company behind Fyre Festival suggested to NBC, reported New York Post.
McFarlands “is making plans for what he calls "virtual immersive decentralized reality’ events: exclusive parties — attended by influencers and entertainers — that would be broadcast to the ‘entire world.’ Users on their couches at home could pay to ‘actually change’ what’s happening at the party,” reported New York Post. However, McFarland's former colleague, who spoke in anonymity, claimed, “PYRT appears to be an exercise in smoke and mirrors, buzzwords and empty promises of lavish trips to the Bahamas.”
“As a previous employee who trusted Billy’s leadership in the past, new customers, investors and employees should all proceed with caution,” Deng said. Furthermore, after McFarland hinted his new project is set to launch in the Bahamas, local authorities said the government is not aware of any such plans and instead claimed he is considered a fugitive with pending complaints.
“The public is advised that no application has been made to the Government of The Bahamas for consideration of any event promoted by Billy McFarland or any entity or parties known to be associated with him,” Deputy Prime Minister Chester Cooper said in a statement in November. “He is considered to be a fugitive, with several pending complaints made against him with the Royal Bahamas Police Force (RBPF),” the statement went on to say. “Anyone knowing of his whereabouts should report same to the RBPF," the statement added.