With the recent release of not just one, but two documentaries about the disastrously failed Fyre Festival, the various lawsuits and criminal cases that resulted from the festival’s fraudulent activity are back in the news. TMZ reports that models Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, and Kendall Jenner may expect subpoenas for their participation in the promotion of the festival after a judge in the case allowed authorities to request payment documentation from their representation. In other words, those models’ agents are going to have to show some receipts.
As you probably know if you watched the documentaries, Fyre Festival creator Billy McFarland — who was hit with some pretty heft charges and jail time himself for fraud related to Fyre — paid the models exorbitant sums of money to appear in a teaser trailer for the fest, which you can watch above. They also posted photos from the Caribbean island where they shot the ad, as well as hints that performers like Kanye West’s GOOD Music family — Kendall’s extended family through her sister Kim’s marriage to Kanye — would appear at the festival, even though some hadn’t even been paid yet.
According to TMZ, federal agents want to track the approximately $26 million in investors’ money that was supposedly spent on the festival, including payments to those models and artists in the amount of $5.2 million. Per the legal documents obtained by TMZ, IMG Models, which manages Hadid, Hailey Bieber, and Elsa Hosk, was paid over $1 million, Kendall’s own company received $275,000, and DNA Modeling, repping Ratajkowski, was paid $299,000.
The most eye-catching name in the documents is Soulja Boy, who supposedly received $115k for reasons TMZ doesn’t specify. Soulja has recently been in the news for making all kinds of outlandish statements (and selling bootleg products) so there’s a kind of poetry to him ending up in an item about a massive scam perpetrated by a big talker whose proclivity for hanging out with models led to his eventual downfall.
