Fyre Festival boss Billy McFarland issues grovelling apology in first TV interview after prison: ‘It was so incredibly stupid’-Rishma Dosani-Entertainment – Metro

Billy McFarland has apologized ‘letting people down’ over his attempts to host the now-infamous Fyre Festival, in 2017.

The 30-year-old was behind the bash, which was initially promoted as a luxury music festival with a star-studded line-up, but turned into the furthest thing from a swanky getaway.

Instead of stunning villas and Michelin-star meals that festival-goers were promised, and had paid a lot of money to receive, they were met with FEMA tents, barely any water and basic sandwiches – which went viral at the time.

The disgraced entrepreneur was later sentenced to six years in prison for fraud, and is now full of apologies over his part in the scandal.

In his first TV interview since leaving jail, he sat down with Michael Strahan on Good Morning America to reflect on his past.

‘I need to apologize. And that is the first and the last thing that needs to be done. I let people down. I let down employees. I let down their families. I let down investors. So I need to apologize. I’m wrong and it’s bad,’ he said.

Billy McFarland spoke out over the scandal on Good Morning America (Picture: ABC)

‘I should’ve listened. There’s no excuse.

‘The hardest thing for me is the trust that I violated. Whether it was friends, investors, or employees, people gave up a lot to try and make this happen. 

‘How do I call them now and look them in the eye when I let them down? I just really should have canceled everything and stopped lying.’

Fyre Festival promised fun and frolics in the Bahamas – but the reality was very different (Picture: Netflix)

The highly-publicized scandal promptly received the TV treatment with two documentaries, Netflix’s Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened and Hulu’s Fyre Fraud, released in quick succession.

In 2018, McFarland pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and admitted to using fake documents to attract investors to his business.

McFarland was ordered to pay $26million in restitution (Picture: Getty)

He was sent to jail for six years and was made to forfeit $26million in restitution to repay investors and vendors, as well as those who forked over their own money for tickets.

The businessman’s wages will be garnished until it has all been paid back.

‘I had these early investors, backers, employees, and I think I was so insecure that I thought the only way to prove myself to them was to succeed and that led me down this terrible path of bad decisions,’ he continued to Michael Strahan.

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‘I started lying to get the money and I would literally wake up every day to a document that we called Urgent Payment Sheet. And it had an amount of money that I had to acquire before the bank closed that day to stop the company from going underwater.

‘So I was literally, day-by-day, doing whatever it took. And looking back, it was so incredibly stupid.’

McFarland added: ‘I was wrong. I messed up. I was so driven by this desperate desire to prove people right.’

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