Billy McFarland - the creator of the fraudulent Fyre Festival - has a new idea and is planning to make a comeback.
Despite being barred from ever serving as a public director ever for a public company ever again, McFarland is planning an audacious comeback with a project that sounds like a party on an island.
What was McFarland's downfall last time was his broken promises, which got him in an awful lot of trouble.
The previous entrepreneur promoted the Fyre Festival on social media with celebs and well-known names promising an event like Coachella in the Bahamas.
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The deceitful event was also promised to deliver luxury villas and some nice, fancy dishes to match.
But the festival was anything but, as attendees posted videos and photos online of the event, which was more like a camping trip with packaged sandwiches - and no sign of the promised entertainment.
The videos of course went viral, which alongside two documentaries and many podcasts, was a disaster for McFarland.
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And in October 2018, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison for fraud, as he defrauded investors a whopping $27.4 million.
But McFarland was released in March last year and is now fully planning his comeback.
In a recent interview with NBC News, he said: "I was talking to somebody yesterday and they’re like, ‘You can crawl in a hole and die, or you can go and try to do something and just, like, not promise any results’."
McFarland's new project comes under the name of PYRT, which is actually just pronounced Pirate.
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It was officially launched on social media in October, and will kick things off with a remote island extravaganza.
An event which McFarland's insists is not a festival, PYRT will bring together influencers and content creators in a tropical experience.
It will feature virtual reality technology that the company says will allow people to control what happens on the island from the comfort of their own home.
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But two of McFarland's former associates believe that this new project is showing similarities to his previous, fraudulent one.
Shiyuan Deng - a former product designer at the company behind Fyre Festival, told NBC News: "Billy’s still Billy. He’s using different words, but he’s selling the same thing."
Meanwhile, another former employee who wished to remain anonymous, added: "The similarities are there around the vague mysterious promotion.
"PYRT appears to be an exercise in smoke and mirrors, buzzwords and empty promises of lavish trips to the Bahamas.
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"As a previous employee who trusted Billy’s leadership in the past, new customers, investors and employees should all proceed with caution."
Topics: News
Callum Jones