William Zervakos McFarland (born December 11, 1991) is an American businessman, entrepreneur, and financial criminal. He was convicted of financial crimes related to Fyre Festival, having defrauded investors of $27.4 million. Vanity Fair describes him as "the poster boy for millennial scamming".
In 2013, McFarland founded Magnises, a card-based club marketed for millennials, using $1.5 million of investor funding. He later founded and was CEO of Fyre Media, which developed the Fyre mobile app for booking music talent. In late 2016, along with rapper Ja Rule, McFarland co-founded the Fyre Festival, a "luxury" music festival intended to promote the Fyre app. The event was scheduled to take place April 28–30 and May 5–7, 2017, but was aborted – after attendees had arrived – due to problems with security, food, logistics, understaffing, accommodation, and talent relations.
In May 2017, McFarland and Ja Rule were sued for $100 million in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Fyre Festival attendees. The following month, McFarland was arrested and charged with wire fraud in Manhattan federal court for his role in the organization of the festival. After pleading guilty to two counts of wire fraud in March 2018, he was sentenced to six years in federal prison. He was released in late March 2022 after serving less than four years. He announced a Fyre Festival II for May 2025, with tickets going for as high as $1.1 million each, but an investigation by The New York Times found multiple irregularities and the event was later postponed indefinitely.
Read more...The December 11, 1991 was a Wednesday under the star sign of ♐. It was the 344 day of the year. President of the United States was George Bush.
If you were born on this day, you are 33 years old. Your last birthday was on the Wednesday, December 11, 2024, 271 days ago. Your next birthday is on Thursday, December 11, 2025, in 93 days. You have lived for 12,325 days, or about 295,806 hours, or about 17,748,379 minutes, or about 1,064,902,740 seconds.
Date: 11 December 1991
By Alex S. Jones
Alex Jones
The unions at The Daily News said yesterday that they would become a buyer of last resort to keep the paper alive should that prove necessary. The fate of The News has been in doubt since the death of its owner, Robert Maxwell, and the collapse of his business empire. Last week, the paper filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code.
Date: 12 December 1991
By Alex S. Jones
Alex Jones
Representatives of The Daily News management and unions met yesterday to begin work on a reorganization that they hoped would cut the bankrupt newspaper's costs and let it keep operating. The two-hour meeting left both sides expressing confidence that the paper could be saved. "I am satisfied there is enough cash on hand or receivable to give us enough time to work out a solution to save The News," said Theodore W. Kheel, a union representative on the committee. The committee is scheduled to meet next Thursday, after an analysis of financial documents.
Date: 12 December 1991
Robert Maxwell was hailed as a philanthropic savior when he bought New York's strike-torn, dispirited Daily News in March, just as he was when he revived London's languishing Daily Mirror in 1984. Now, sadly, both The News and The Mirror seem little more than pawns in a vast and duplicitous game that Mr. Maxwell was playing with other people's money. Mr. Maxwell deserves the blame for his financial shenanigans. But lax British regulation contributed; it's unlikely that he would have succeeded in a country with tough financial disclosure laws, like the U.S. And he almost certainly would not have succeeded without the complicity or inattentiveness of others, including the lenders who happily ignored his reputation as a financial rogue. All of them loved the color of Mr. Maxwell's money as long as he seemed to have plenty of it, and any fair and final reckoning will hold them to task as well.
Date: 11 December 1991
By Steven Prokesch
Steven Prokesch
An American suspected of having played a central role in helping Robert Maxwell siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars from employee pension funds has been barred from leaving Britain, it was disclosed today. Larry Trachtenberg, who became a director of Bishopsgate Investment Management Ltd. in September and resigned last week, was ordered by a judge not to leave the country. Mr. Trachtenberg was also an executive at London and Bishopsgate International Investment Management P.L.C., which is under investigation for its role in transferring pension funds.
Date: 11 December 1991
By Michael Specter
Michael Specter
Punchy with liberty and exhaustion, Terry Anderson returned to America yesterday, sweeping into the marble foyer of The Associated Press headquarters in New York as his colleagues dropped yellow rose petals from their offices above. First they chanted, then they clapped. Finally, they cried as Mr. Anderson walked haltingly into their world again.
Date: 12 December 1991
By Andrew L. Yarrow
Andrew Yarrow
A Puerto Rican journalist has reached an agreement with Government prosecutors that allows her to stay out of prison and avoid surrendering the original videotapes of her interviews with two fugitives who are suspects in a robbery in Connecticut. The reporter, Daisy Sanchez, signed an affidavit yesterday affirming the veracity of the tapes after a judge had ruled that she did not have to surrender them. She had been subpoenaed and ordered to turn over tapes of four hours of interviews with two men linked to a militant Puerto Rican independence group who are suspects in the robbery of $7.1 million in 1983 from a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford.
Date: 11 December 1991
By David M. Oshinsky and Michael Curtis
David
College newspapers are facing a dilemma that pits free speech against historical deception. A group calling itself the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust has sent an advertisement to at least a dozen leading campus dailies. The ad contends that the Holocaust never occurred. Newspapers at Harvard, Yale, Brown, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California have refused to run it. Those at Northwestern, Cornell, Duke and the University of Michigan have published it amid protests from students, faculty and members of their own editorial boards. At Rutgers, the ad was printed free of charge on Dec. 3 as a "guest commentary," surrounded by rebuttals.
Date: 11 December 1991
By Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
Texaco U.S.A., the domestic operations unit that accounts for about 48 percent of the earnings of Texaco Inc., projected that its 1991 earnings would decline substantially. Projecting from earnings already reported in the first three quarters, the unit said that 1991 earnings would be $619 million, about 7.7 percent less than 1990's $853 million, which was helped by the higher oil prices brought on by the Persian Gulf war.
Date: 11 December 1991
By Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
British Aerospace P.L.C. said today that it had appointed George Simpson as its new deputy chairman effective Jan. 1. Mr. Simpson will continue as chairman of British Aerospace's car subsidiary, the Rover Group. In addition, the company named Lord Hollick and Robert Kirk as non-executive directors, also effective Jan. 1.
Date: 12 December 1991
By Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
The Marriott Corporation, which built a reputation on quality hotels and airline catering, plans to reduce its debt by as much as $1 billion over three years, from $3.5 billion. The company's board today approved the sale of $220 million in assets for cash, including 14 Courtyard by Marriott hotels for $140 million, within 60 days. Marriott is selling the Courtyards to a group of institutional investors.