NEW YORK — Billy McFarland is all fyred up.
The creator of the infamous 2017 Fyre Festival is ready to rise from the ashes after a four-year stint in federal prison — and his plans might involve another entertainment venture.
The 30-year-old disgraced promoter “has put together a team of professionals to brainstorm and come up with ideas in entertainment and other avenues to generate income,” his attorney, Jason Russo, said, according to The Guardian.
In October 2018, McFarland was sentenced to six years behind bars over fraud charges for his role in organizing the disastrous, and aborted, music festival in the Bahamas. During his sentencing at Manhattan Federal Court, U.S. District Judge Naomi Buchwald called him a “serial fraudster” whose “fraud — like a circle — has no end.”
McFarland was serving his sentence at a federal prison in Milan, Michigan.
Earlier this week, several news outlets reported that McFarland had been released early from federal custody. He was moved into a halfway house in New York on Wednesday, his lawyer told USA Today.
Halfway houses, also known as residential reentry centers, are designed to “help inmates rebuild their ties to the community and reduce the likelihood that they will recidivate.”
Inmates are allowed to leave the facility to work, seek counseling, visit others, and similar activities, as long as they are approved to do so.
McFarland is set to be released on Aug. 30, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
According to his lawyer, the disgraced promoter now wants to be able to pay back the $26 million he was ordered to reimburse investors of the failed festival.
“His sole priority and focus is how can he make these people whole and get their money back for them,” Russo said. “That’s what he’s been focusing on.”
McFarland is “relieved to be out and be done with the incarceration part of his sentence” — and also “looking forward to reuniting with and seeing his family and truly just focusing on his efforts to get this enormous amount of restitution paid,” according to Russo.
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