Fyre Fest Victim Receives More Than $160,000 in Donations After Scam

Dueling documentaries help raise money for unpaid Fyre Festival workers

A Bahamian caterer who went unpaid after the fraudulent Fyre Festival founder Billy McFarland, 27, failed to pay for thousands of meals prepped, has managed to raise more than $160,000 through a GoFundMe campaign. 

Maryann Rolle, the proprietor seen in one of the two documentaries about the Fyre Festival meltdown in 2017, says she had to dip into her life savings to pay the workers who helped feed hundreds of hungry party-goers. 

McFarland, who is now serving prison time on charges related to the epic festival failure, promoted the music event as a VIP experience featuring music from acts like Blink-182. But, the "luxury accomodations" ended up being unfinished FEMA tents and mattresses that had been soaked through after a monsoon moved through the area. 

"Back in April 2017 I pushed myself to the limit catering no less than a 1000 meals per day," Rolle writes on the page. "Breakfast, lunch and dinner were all prepared and delivered by Exuma Point to Coco Plum Beach and Roker’s Point where the main events were scheduled to take place. Organizers would also visit my Exuma Point location to enjoy the prepared meals."

But after the glitz and glamour promised by the organizers of the festival devolved into the chaos documented on social media that weekend, Rolle says she was left with a nightmare of debt after being forced to pick up the tab for all the meals eaten by the festival attendees. 

"As I make this plea it’s hard to believe and embarrassing to admit that I was not paid…I was left in a big hole! My life was changed forever, and my credit was ruined by Fyre Fest."

GoFundMe identified the fundraiser as legitimate after questions of another scam related to the festival began to arise. 

Dueling documentaries released last week, Hulu's Fyre Fraud, and Netflix's Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, chronicles the social media build up of the event which was advertised as an exclusive, unfiltered, island-getaway for millennials. Some of Instagram's biggest influencers were key to promoting the event, with major names like Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid and rapper Ja Rule advertising the festival.

However, when party-goers eventually arrived on the island, they found limited drinking water, no electricity, and emergency shelters that had been soaked by an overnight monsoon. 

As of this writing, more than 5,400 people had donated $160,000 to the GoFundMe for Rolle. 

McFarland is currently serving six years in prison for a fraud estimated to have stolen up to $27.4 million from investors. Ja Rule insisted on Twitter Friday that he too had been "hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hood winked," and "lead astray" by McFarland's promises. 

Photo: GoFundMe


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