People.com Entertainment Music Fyre Festival Founder Dubbed 'Serial Fraudster' by Judge and Sentenced to 6 Years in Prison William McFarland, the man behind 2017's catastrophic and ultimately aborted Fyre Festival, has been sentenced to six years in prison By Jordan Runtagh Jordan Runtagh Twitter Jordan Runtagh is an Executive Podcast Producer at iHeartRadio, where he hosts a slate of pop culture shows including Too Much Information, Inside the Studio, Off the Record and Rivals: Music's Greatest Feuds. Previously, he served as a Music Editor at PEOPLE and VH1.com. He's written about art and entertainment for more than a decade, regularly contributing to outlets like Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly, and appearing as a guest on radio and television. Over the course of his career, he's profiled the surviving Beatles, Brian Wilson, Aretha Franklin, Roger Waters, David Byrne, Pete Townshend, Debbie Harry, Quincy Jones, Brian May, Jerry Lee Lewis, James Taylor and many more. A graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, he lives in Brooklyn, where he can be found DJing '60s soul records. People Editorial Guidelines Published on October 12, 2018 03:45 PM Share Tweet Pin Email Photo: Mark Lennihan/AP/REX/Shutterstoc William McFarland, the man behind 2017’s catastrophic and ultimately aborted Fyre Festival, has been sentenced to six years in prison. The sentencing was handed down on Thursday in a Manhattan federal court, reports the Associated Press. Back in March, McFarland pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, effectively swindling over 80 investors out of a collective $26 million. He also copped to two counts of bank fraud: one for a “sham ticket scheme” that sold approximately $100,000 worth of tickets to fictitious events, and another for falsifying a check by using the name and account number of one of his employees without their consent. He also pleaded guilty to making false statements to federal law enforcement. RELATED VIDEO: Fyre Music Festival Apparently Turned Into The Hunger Games For Rich People “The defendant is a serial fraudster,” Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald said in court, according to CBS. She then added that the Fyre Festival endeavor was “not a good idea gone bad” but dishonest and fraudulent from the start. “Mr. McFarland is a fraudster and not simply a misguided young man. Bad intent was longstanding.” Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman told CNN in a statement that McFarland acted with a “disturbing pattern of deception.” The prosecutor in the case asserted that McGarland diverted $13 million of the money raised for the event into a private personal account used to fuel a lavish lifestyle. Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin and More Face Social Media Backlash for Promoting Disastrous Fyre Festival Patrick McMullan via Getty ‘Literally Bread, Cheese, and Salad’: How Fyre Festival-Goers Were Duped After Promise of Celeb Chef Meals In late April 2017, ticket holders traveled to the Bahamian island of Great Exuma believing that they were to see performances Blink-182 and Migos alongside high-profile social media influencers. Instead, they discovered that many of the artists had pulled out due to serious organizational flaws and ramshackle conditions. Rather than the luxury accommodations that were promised, guests were provided with flimsy tents and cheese sandwiches distributed from the back of trucks. I Survived Fyre Festival: Exactly How the Mayhem Unfolded (Tents Were Set on Fire!) Courtesy Brett Linkletter “As he had previously admitted, Billy McFarland did not deliver on his promises to his investors and customers,” Berman continued. “Today, McFarland found out the hard way that empty promises don’t lead to jet-setting, champagne, and extravagant parties — they lead to federal prison.”